Worksharing for Students

[kaleighmackay]

Hi there,

I'm a student using Revit 2020. I am looking for a way to use worksharing with my studio partner in another city for school. Since students don't have access to BIM 360 and therefore can't use Revit Cloud Worksharing, is there another way that my partner and I can work simultaneously on a central Revit project?

Really appreciate the guidance!

[Mohamed-Nassar]

you use google cloud or Mega but this bad idea by the way or u can make another account for BIM360

[Lance.Coffey · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the question @kaleighmackay, and welcome to the Autodesk forums!

Revit supports three types of worksharing:

• File-based
• Revit Server Enterprise
• Cloud worksharing.

Cloud worksharing: As you mentioned you don’t currently have access to this. There is a 30 day trial available, if that would be sufficient to try out the features for the project in question.

Revit Server Enterprise: This is designed for use between offices in a large company to facilitate worksharing over a WAN (Internet) connection. If you have a Windows server system available (e.g. Windows Server 2012), you could set this up to allow remote users to connect and work in the central model. The advantage of using Revit Server versus file-based worksharing over a WAN connection is that Revit Server is designed to handle network interruptions which file-based worksharing would not.

File-based worksharing: This is the original worksharing option and is designed for use within a local network (LAN). If you have a sufficiently good Internet connection (between the systems) you may be able to use this type of worksharing, but as it is not designed for this environment, network interruptions can lead to operation timeouts/failures and model corruption (i.e. there is a risk involved when using this worksharing over a WAN connection). Another approach, if you have two systems available at one of the locations would be to use Remote Desktop. One user would remote into the computer on the same network as the other one and access the central model. This would work around the issues associated with working over a WAN connection. You still need to have a sufficiently good Internet connection to support the remote desktop connection and you need a second workstation capable of running Revit.

More info on these options is available in this article: Options for Remote Access in Revit

[rosenbau2]

We have the same problem.  A class needs to collaborate on their model, but using Google Drive results in lots of crashing and corruption.  I've looked at the list of titles available for educational institutions, and Revit Server is not listed.  How might we get access?  

[kaleighmackay]

I've spent a lot of time inquiring with Autodesk and I've been told that worksharing/collaboration is not an available feature for the educational/student license. My studio partner and I have had to share via Google Drive as well. Our best solution has been to work on separate buildings in separate Revit files and link them both into a third Revit project (our site) that we took turns developing. It's been very difficult and time-consuming to collaborate this semester but at least we have run into less crashing etc this way. I hope you find a solution that works for you. Hopefully Autodesk offers the collaboration feature to students for the winter semester!

[Lance.Coffey]

Thank you for the question @rosenbau2!

Access to Revit Server is included with Revit. You can install Revit Server with the Revit Installer (select Tools & Utilities on the first setup/installation page.

Alternatively, you can install Revit Server using the standalone installer: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/downloads

Note: Revit Server is an Microsoft IIS based application server which needs to be installed on a Windows Server operating system. For more information on the setup process, see the following help topic: Revit Server Installation

[mohammad.alfar]

How can we get a class to collaborate on a Revit model using a central model. Do we need one BIM Collaborate Pro subscription? we have 25 computers in the class. We can't end up buying BIM Collaborate Pro 25 times. So if we but one subscription, will the instructor be able to invite all students (with educations access) to collaborate on the project?