Sharing Models Remotely

[Anonymous]

I am an experienced Revit user but am at a loss when trying to set up our office for remote model sharing. We have been lucky enough to make it this far without it but now, on a larger project, it is very necessary for the entire team to be in one model. I have set up Autodesk Drive but that does not seem to allow us to all work on one model simultaneously. I have researched 360 but as I'm sure you can understand, am struggling to explain to the higher ups why we now need another $900 a year on top of the already expensive subscription. What is everyone else doing? How are you linking local models and central files remotely? -Thanks

[RobDraw]

BIM 360 is the only live option as far as I know.

[syman2000]

Remote Desktop works as well. BIM360 work seamlessly.

[RobDraw]

If everyone is on the same network, remote desktop might be a better solution. When I read your post, somehow I got the impression that people would be on different networks. My mistake.

[hmunsell · Accepted solution]

we have 70% of our office (400-500 people) working from home.  they all VPN connect to our network and use Remote Desktop from there home PC to remote into there office PC. Once they are on their office PC it is just like working in the office. some have even said Revit runs faster when there remoted in.

[baker]

I was afraid of that. Appreciate the response. -C

[baker]

Appreciate it! -C

[baker]

No worries. I appreciate the feedback! -C

[baker]

Thanks for the info. It is greatly appreciated -C

[ToanDN]

https://www.modelical.com/en/gdocs/revit-server-connection-guide/#:~:text=Revit%20Server%20is%20an%2....

[Lance.Coffey · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the question @Anonymous!

Posting some additional info on this topic for reference. The following Revit Blog post has more details on these options (Cloud Worksharing / Remote Desktop): Remote working with Revit

The linked article (from the blog above) Options for Remote Access in Revit has more options (Revit Server / Citrix).

If your users have systems in the office, then Remote Desktop (or some other remote access solution) as @syman2000 mentioned would probably be the easiest option.

However, if your users are working with systems (most commonly laptops) which they’ve taken home (i.e. no user systems in the office), then this will not work as well.

•             Revit Server: If you have a Windows file server in the office, you could test out the performance of Revit Server as (@ToanDN referred to) for the remote users.

    Some things to keep in mind when considering Revit Server:

• Revit Server’s design intent was to extend worksharing workflows to work between offices within a single company.
• The normal setup would have an Accelerator (running on a Windows file server) in each office to improve local model creation and synchronize times.
• However, as Accelerator is not required it would be possible for users to connect to the office network and work with the Revit Server models (they may see reduced performance on synchronize and create local operations due to the lack of an Accelerator).
• Revit Server is a MS IIS application server, which requires familiarity with IIS, and additional IT maintenance / overhead compared to file-based worksharing or cloud worksharing.

Note: If possible, I would suggest avoiding the use of File-based worksharing (the regular type, that isn’t Revit Server or Cloud worksharing) across an Internet/WAN connection as it isn’t designed for this environment and doesn’t have the necessary protections put in place (like Revit Server or Cloud Worksharing) to prevent corruption or loss of data when there are network hang-ups or interruptions.