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Relinquish automatically on close

Relinquish automatically on close

I think Revit should automatically relinquish all elements when a user closes a workshared model. A user has to synchronize periodically and when closing anyway. If a user works for long without synchronizing and then closes the file, any changes lost will be problematic for that person. When elements are reserved by someone who forgot to relinquish and then left on holiday, it stops everybody else from doing their job, potentially for several days. I am working on a big project, and we are having issues with this on a weekly, if not daily basis.

21 Comments
gminson
Explorer

Have the ability in the 'synchronize with central' dialog box to relinquish all mine automatically.

Have a check box similar to the 'save local file before and after synchronizing with central' that lets user relinquish all of their elements.

 

We should have the option to relinquish automatically.  Too many times have we had to stop production due to someone having to relinquish before we could continue working on the project.

Hi guys,

 

Could you use the "relinquish all mine" button in the collaborate tab, instead of syncing?

 

Or are you wanting elements to relinquish fully-automatically, as in the central requests to relinquish an item from another's local file, if they have not edited it and you want to select/edit it?

 

image.png

dplumb_BWBR
Advisor

Isn't that what the "Borrowed Elements" box already does?

And it's checked by default.

There are two "Synchronize" options. Synchronize and Modify Settings - the one with a green recycle arrow - is shown below.

Synchronize Now uses whatever options you last checked in the Modify Settings dialog.

Relinquish.PNG

gminson
Explorer

That's what I needed, thanks dplumb.  That middle section was always greyed out so I could never pick the borrowed elements.  Now that I know the modify settings exists life is easier.  Thanks again.  I withdraw my revit change request.

dplumb_BWBR
Advisor

When using a Workshared model, if Open a Detached copy, it still has elements marked as Borrowed.

Same thing happens is you have a Local Copy open and do a SaveAs nad check Make this a new Central file.

In either of these cases, you're out of luck, because someone else owns the Borrowed elements and you can't edit them. However, they probably don't even know you've got another copy, so they can't Relinquish.

 

My proposal: When you Open Detached or Save As new Central, flush out any element ownerships.

Relinquish everyone's ownership regardless of who.

Anonymous
Not applicable

When you 'Detach from Central', it already does this. Whoever does the operation and resaves as a central file will then own everything in the model until others borrow it.

ipselute
Advisor

Autorelinquish owned objects should be an obvious feature by now. iSync extension can do. But such obvious feature should be in Revit by default. Common sense dictates it.

Tags (1)
dplumb_BWBR
Advisor

What do you mean by "Autorelinquish"?

Borrowed Elements are relinquished by default at SWC

j0258169
Advocate

This comment isn't true. Detaching from Central does not cause everyone to relinquish. I'm constantly detaching a model and saving as a new Central for some reason or other, only to realize that I can't edit something because someone else still owns some elements; then I have to ask them to go into the detached file and sync. Best practice is to detach when no one else is in it, but that's not always practical. I think the way Revit detaches is fine as the default, but there should be an option/checkbox to force relinquish, at my own risk.

sheard4EAGU
Participant

yes please

magne.ganz
Enthusiast

This is a "must have". No one should own anything when the model is closed.

fredrik_kjelman
Explorer

Obvious improvement to enhance workflow and diminish known human shortcomings.

 

Hauk-Morten
Enthusiast

@dplumb_BWBR : Yes, that is supposed to happen upon synchronization. But even though the box is checked, elements have apparently not in fact been relinquished many times. So the synchronize butten isn't really working as it should.

Andres_Jimenez
Contributor

If someone else has ownership in a workshared model you have open, you can go into the cloud model menu and force relinquish. See screenshot below. Keep in mind that this will make them unable to sync any unsaved work.
Force Relinquish.png

magne.ganz
Enthusiast

Hi Andres

We are well aware of that.
Both the author of this idea and myself work in a very large Metro Project with over 100 Revit-files. It takes 20-25 minutes just to open "Manage Cloud Models", and it takes another 10-15 minutes to "Relinquish" a model.

To adress the issue here: When you are a mediocre Revit user and close a Revit model, would you intuitively expect to maintain ownership of elements or would you not? .... I would say not. 

christopher_bahr
Autodesk

@Hauk-MortenFrom your perspective what would be the correct behavior when a user has modified some elements locally and closes Revit? It can't relinquish them until the changes are saved to the central model.

 

 Off the top of my head in this case Revit could:

  1. Keep the existing behavior
  2. Relinquish any unmodified elements and keep ownership of anything modified
  3. Prompt the user to sync & relinquish

Edit:

Trying this out in Revit it looks if you have unsaved changes it will prompt you to do a Sync With Central which will relinquish your owned elements. If you have elements checked out but not modified it will prompt you to relinquish them when you close. So as long as people choose those options all elements should be relinquished on close.

christopherbahr_0-1643406428367.pngchristopherbahr_1-1643406434420.png

 

scott.r.kennedy
Enthusiast

Across many projects users (including myself) are still unintentionally owning elements even after they have relinquished and saved to central. In many instances, Revit does not properly prompt the user when exiting the model that they are still borrowing a schedule / panel schedule or something else. This is frustrating. Rather than another user having to go into BIM360 to force a relinquish (if the borrower is not around), what if elements are only borrowed for a period of time, determined by an administrator? After that time, the elements are relinquished without an user input.

Alternatively, could BIM360 keep track of all borrowed elements / worksets in all BIM360 models that a user has access to, therefore the user can log in and globally or selectively relinquish borrowed elements across all their project models, without having to manual open individual Revit models.

Thanks.

Tags (4)
Hauk-Morten
Enthusiast

@christopher_bahr:
Thank you for your response, and sorry for my late response. I got a personal message from one of your colleagues(Li Liu), forgot to follow up in the thread as well.

 

First, your question: What is the expected behaviour?

 

 Off the top of your head in this case Revit could:

  1. Keep the existing behavior
  2. Relinquish any unmodified elements and keep ownership of anything modified
  3. Prompt the user to sync & relinquish

I strongly disagree with 2, and think 3 should be unnecessary.

 

The button "Relinquish All Mine" is in my opinion redundant. It should never have been made. I cannot think of a single use case when someone would want to maintain ownership of a Revit model that is closed, saved or otherwise. And so what this button does shouldn't be exposed to the user at all, it should be an automatic backend feature. If you need to go offline and work while traveling, you check out our elements or worksets, save locally every now and then and then synchronize when you get online again. If you have been drafting and don't want to keep it, you close without saving/synching, like you would in Word or any other software. If you want part of the model to be reserved for edits from anybody else, the same, you checkout what you need and synchronize when you are done. If you have simply forgotten to synch, you should synch. If you close without saving/synching, stuff gets lost, like you would expect in Word, Excel and any other software. In all these cases, everything needs to be relinquished before closing Revit. So why have a manual button for it at all?

 

Here is a rephrased part of the reply I gave to Li Liu when she asked whether the "Force Relinquish" button solves the problem:

 

 

The "Force Relinquish" button is useful. It takes 20 minutes to reach since the Manage Cloud Models takes a long time to load, and it takes 4 clicks to find it, but it helps with the described case(user owns elements and is away for a long time). The case was perhaps badly phrased, it doesn’t stop someone from doing their job for days. It stops them for the 40 minutes it takes to either use this button, or the 5-10 minutes required for someone to open up Revit, load the right model and synch. The second case could of course also just rule out one person so the “Force Relinquish” would have to be used anyway.

 

So to summarize, I consider the button you mention a workaround, not a good solution. Why is the “Relinquish All Mine”-button there in the first place?"

christopher_bahr
Autodesk

@Hauk-Morten 

So in general your thought is that whenever you end a Revit session unsynced changes should be discarded and any checked out elements should be relinquished? Essentially removing the dialogs I posted and automatically choosing "Relinquish elements and worksets" and "Do not save the project".

 

Assuming I've got that right I can definitely see your argument but I'm not certain all Revit users would agree. Your case of the offline user for example would lose their work if they closed Revit while offline (further they actually couldn't relinquish elements because they can't contact the service). It would be a tough call to remove these dialogs and reduce the number of options users have for how they want to work. Of course generally speaking if we can replace a dialog with just doing the right thing that's better but it's not obvious to me that discarding work or relinquishing elements is always the right thing. I know some people intentionally keep elements checked out without modifying them to effectively "lock down" some portion of the model.

 

One use case I know of for Relinquish All Mine is if you take ownership of some chunk of elements and then change your mind. That button serves as the bulk relinquish mechanism for that case without needing to close Revit. Certainly though in most cases though relinquish happens as part of the sync rather than as an explicit action.

 

One definite piece of good news (cc @magne.ganz) : Force Relinquish now exists in Revit Home which is much much better than Manage Cloud Models. Manage Cloud Models didn't scale well to large projects at all, Revit Home does a much better job at this.

 

@scott.r.kennedy

Revit _should_ know about everything that's checked out and shouldn't own anything after a sync with the relinquish box checked. It also shouldn't fail to prompt when you close while owning elements. If you run into those cases (and particularly if you can repeatably do it) please contact customer support so we can get a bug filed.

 

Auto relinquish is probably theoretically possible but tricky to get right. The tough part is that the service doesn't know whether a user has changed an element or not until they sync. If we relinquished a modified element all the user's unsynced changes would have to be discarded.

scott.r.kennedy
Enthusiast

@Hauk-Morten, I agree with your assessment, I will contact support to notify them. 

A solution might be to have a separate "Sync and close model" button specifically for the purpose of ending the Revit session and ensuring everything has been sync'd.

But the other issue is just knowing if you have elements borrowed - sometimes people can run dynamo scripts or publish co-ordinates, and unknowingly own elements and worksets in Revit models that they haven't actually opened. So having a facility in BIM360 where the user can see their ownership status across various models would be good. Alternatively if BIM360 could send emails to users if they have elements / worksets opened for more than a set period of time, say 24 hours, or 7 days, that would be extremely helpful.

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