small firm getting into revit

[denverdave]

we are a small firm consisting of two architects. that's it, but we have a bright future. i am an experienced revit user, he is not as much. i don't have any experience with the it side of revit. my question would be, what is the best way for a small group like ours to get started here? should we go a head and invest in a server for 10-20 people? do we use an old beater for now to act as the server? do the big companies, i.e. dell, ibm have servers for an operation this small? currently we use dropbox for file sharing and it's fine for cad, but i'm scared to use it for revit. any advice here would be great.

[CAtDiva]

I'm sure some of the more experienced users will come in, but here's my 2 cents as a BIM Manager for a small firm: definitely invest in a decent server. Check out the Hardware sub-forums for specifics (I'd have to go there if I were researching what was needed in a server, so you might as well go there yourself). It's definitely time to abandon DropBox as your file sharing tool - I've seen one "study" (one person's personal experiment) using DB as a "server" and the general result was "don't do it".

I do not advocate an "old beater" unless you absolutely can't afford anything else. I would guess a server for 5-10 would probably serve your needs, but some of that depends on if and/or how fast you hope to grow. And yes, Dell definitely can supply a server for your needs (and probably anybody else).

In addition to the AUGI Hardware subforum, you might want to check out the revitforum.org hardware subforum (http://www.revitforum.org/hardware-infrastructure/). There's a bunch of sticky threads there worth sifting through.

[denverdave]

Thank you Catdiva. We talked it over a bit yesterday. I will probably be the one using it the most for the time being, and we will have times when we both work in the model at minimal times. so what i'm thinking that we use my laptop as the "server" for lack of better terms by setting up a local network and he can see my d drive. i think i may need to test this out with the free trial before we make a commitment to that setup.

[ghale]

I would agree with your approach. You can just setup local sharing on your local workstation and then setup a Revit central file for those projects that you both need to work on at the same time. You might consider going to a dedicated server when you get up to 4 or 5 production employees.