Since January, our firm in Kentucky has been using Revit Server 2013 to connect with our partner firm in Oregon to complete a healthcare project using consultant firms from across the country. We met with Autodesk toward the end of last year to discuss the type of connection that we desired and to get suggestions on how to go about setting up this type of connection.

Autodesk suggested that we either use Buzzsaw to maintain a connection to eachother's models, or to use Riverbed to accelerate the connection between our servers. They suggested NOT using a VPN connection to maintain a connection due to the long distance of connection and the lag time associated with the distance. Obviously both of these solutions are an added expense that we were trying to avoid. They offered no support in setting up RS 2013 because "we have very very little experience in this type of direct connection and cannot provide adequate assistance because of this" and cited a few ways that the RS to RS connection had been made using Riverbed or Amazon servers, but no direct RS to RS connections.

We ultimately ended up virtualizating our server and directly connecting our servers together with no riverbed, buzzsaw etc. We are now working in the same revit model (firm responsibilities are broken into Core&Shell and interior fit-out) with no hitches and very, very minimal lag times. We can cite #s and ping times to any that are interested in the nitty gritty.

My question to the forum is: Are there other firms out there that are connecting with partner firms in this type of manner, with no additional hardware or software to aid the connection?

Thank you in advance for your replies and comments. Please feel free to ask any questions that you may have, as this post is an initial introduction to my overall data gathering period. Thank you again.

Chris Fredi
EOP Architects