Saving to Central with Revit 9

[pinky]

We have had this ongoing problem for the past week. For example when you are trying to place a window in a wall, you will get the message "file xxxx is being opened or saved by someone else...waiting for it to become available" even if no one is accessing central at the same time.

This also occurs when you try to save to central or reload latest.
But it only happens sometimes!!!

Has anyone had this problem?

[paul.licameli]

What you may be observing is contention between two users to update the "permissions files." These remember who is allowed to edit what. Revit 8.1 and later may quietly update this file when you try to edit something.

"Something" is an element that exists not just in your local file but also in the central, and for which you did not already have editing permissions.

It may happen that two users get into a race to update these files just in the course of ordinary editing, and the loser of the race has to wait out that dialog for a short time.

[Steve Mintz]

Paul is correct; there are many instances when you are not Saving to Central that the file is being written to. It sounds like you have two or more users actively building the model.

My suggestion would be to make use of worksets. For instance, if you have a building that's roughly two wings, you create two worksets: West & East. The modeler working on the West wing should have that workset Editable, and close the East wing. Vice versa for the other modeler. I believe that will cut down on the number of times you encounter the lock file.

If you really don't want to see it, have everyone save to central in 30 minute increments, offset by 5 minutes. Or not. :)