I remember one design assist project where I was the model manager on the design firm side. I think the biggest issue that I’ve seen is using worksets as if they were AutoCAD layers. This can help you decrease the time it takes to open a model or even prevent Revit from crashing due to a corrupt model being loaded through a link.Īlthough worksets were designed for permissions, I’ll often see them being used incorrectly. There are several benefits to this workflow, one is having the ability to not load links at the time of opening the host model. It is common practice to load linked Revit models into their own worksets. Revit actually somewhat ignores those model elements when the workset is closed which means less RAM will be required to work in the model with less worksets open. Keep in mind that you are not simply hiding them or turning off their visibility. By closing entire worksets, you are essentially temporarily removing the model elements from the model (for lack of a better term). Again, more work for Revit and your network connection, means decreased model efficiency.Ĭlosing Revit worksets can also give you a boost in performance on a local level. In contrast, borrowing elements on the fly means that Revit will have to check if the element is being edited by another user before claiming ownership. This is particularly helpful for large models with several users and in my personal experience I’ve seen massive speed increases when connecting MEP systems in a model when the workset that they live on is editable. This means less work for Revit (which is always a good thing). When making a workset editable, Revit no longer has to check for ownership of every element that a user is attempting to modify. In addition to controlling ownership of elements, making Revit worksets editable has a major performance advantage. This prevents users from being able to borrow and edit those elements until the user who has the workset checked out explicitly chooses to check it back in, thus allowing other users to either borrow elements from that workset or even make the Revit workset editable for themselves.Ĭlosing Revit Worksets Can Increase Model Efficiency This allows any member of your team to make a Revit workset editable, which in other words means they are claiming ownership of all of the elements on that workset. The way to avoid the somewhat irritating nature of this workflow is to create a Revit workset and assign model elements to it. Once the sync is complete, any other team member can now borrow them as needed and continue the cycle. They’ll maintain ownership until the next time they sync, at which point the ownership of those borrowed elements are relinquished. This is due to the borrowing method, where users don’t check out an entire workset, but rather borrow elements. Walk through an engineering firm at 4pm on a Friday night when a 100%CD set of drawings are due by the end of day and you’ll hear designers yelling over cubicle walls at their coworkers to sync to central. With all of that being said, one could consider Revit worksets as a way to help assign ownership of elements within a model.īorrowing elements is a technique that works fairly well for most situations, however it can become particularly cumbersome when team members are working in the same area of a model. I won’t dive into all of the complexities of worksharing in Revit, however let’s at least try to understand that worksets were implemented to alleviate some of that pain. If you’ve ever been tasked with collaborating on a single Revit with multiple team members (I’m sure most Revit users have), you understand the challenges associated with worksharing.
Worksets Are Designed for Permissions Control When first attempting to identify what the “correct” way to use Revit worksets might be, I would recommend to understand the functionality that Revit worksets provide.
#REVIT MODEL HOW TO#
In this post, I’ll share my views on how to use Revit worksets properly and why. Over the 15 years that I’ve been using Revit, this topic seems to have the least consensus amongst BIM managers who strive for solid standards. One feature of Revit that remains particularly controversial after all these years is the implementation of Revit worksets.