MEP model sharing between remote offices

[mark_hartman]

We are a single discipline electrical firm and are splitting single Revit MEP model production between remote offices. The lighting and power production will be done in one office and telecommunications production will be done in a separate (geographical) office. We have a VPN between offices but it takes to long to load the references (arch model, struct model, etc) when saving or opening our Electrical model. Does anyone have any ideas on how we can reference the (arch, struct, etc.) models locally in each office? If we could get the reference paths to work via drive letter instead of UNC path, I think we could do this seemlessly but I don't think Revit will allow this? We have looked into Steelhead from Riverbed but it is out of our budget. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[cporter.207875]

Look into the GlobalScape WAFS replication solution. It takes some rigging and it might be too expensive for you, but it probably is the best option if you want to workshare the same central file. Go to this website for more info:

http://help.globalscape.com/help/wafs3/Using_Revit_with_GlobalSCAPE_WAFS.htm

[ghale]

Your best bet short term and with little money is to work via VPN and Remote Desktop with all the files in one location. You just have to sacrifice one extra PC in the host office.

Another option which is just starting to become popular is creating your own "Private Cloud." You can read an article on this in AEC Bytes here: http://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2010/BIM_Cloud.html. While this is certainly not any easy setup, it is the long term answer to most of these types of workflows that we find ourselves in these days.

[joseph_turc]

Why don't you treat your offices as seperate companies. Each office gets a copy of all the reference files. Then reference lighting/power into telecom and vice versa. If you have an "ftp" site, your company could swap internal references a few times a day if you wanted to.

Assign one person to keep the sheet numbering, indexes, schedules, and all other common sheets in order/updated.

[tabest]

Consider using the new Revit Server extension also. I've used the remote desktop process many times, it works beautifully, the best part, is you can still obtain the great performance of a powerful machine, when you are using a weaker machine (the desktop does all the work, just sends you an image, and all you send is your user input).

Another option is if you have a server, so long as everyone designates their path to that server via the same drive letter, AND all offices have access to this server, then you can reside your central file on the server, and anyone can work on it, albeit those in more remote locations will suffer some time delay due to distance and transmission speeds.

GL

[bjohn]

We have been told recently the Bentley Projectwise handles this nicely for RVT and DWG files.

[blanchardpaul]

Don't use Projectwise, it locks the dat files and does not work well. Use projectwise like an FTP for now.