WORKSETS EXPLAINED!!!

[ykang]

Please advise us if we are going to a right direction. Below is what we have distributed to employees.

The most important use of workset is to prioritize which element of the drawing gets to be saved into the central file.(besides increasing your speed by turning them off)

Basically same concept as Autocad sharing. When someone has the file open you do not have access to it until that person finishes the drawing.

Therefore in Revit, when the project is divided into X number of worksets, you can look at that as it has the same X number of Xref within that drawing.

In Autocad, when you want to edit an element in an Xref, you do have to go to the xref and then edit it. In Revit, you either have to,

1. to go to workset window and click ¡°YES¡± for owning the entire workset, in this case, this is same as opening the xref where no others can change until you save,
2. borrow the element of the workset.


Borrowing the element is the new concept to Autocad Users. When you borrow the element, you have a risk of losing your element if the other person happens to borrow an element from the same workset that you have borrowed. Let¡¯s say there are 1st borrower and 2nd borrower of a workset. If 1st borrower made 15 percent changes of the workset and 2nd person made 86 percent of the changes and only 1 percent change is overlapping by both users, 2nd borrower of the workset will not be able to save and will lose all of the work. This case, 1st borrower will have previlege to save to central.

Per Revit Book, they say it is the best practice to own the workset so that you can prevent others from losing what they have borrowed.(as above case indicates)

Lastly, when you borrow an element from an workset that no one happens to own, you actually have to go around and ask the person to relinquish and save whereas when someone owns the workset and you are borrowing an element, Revit pops up an window to grant/not grant a person to borrow.

[davidcobi]

Here are a few tips we are very confident in after having used worksets for the past year:

http://revitbeginners.blogspot.com/2...-and-tips.html

The most important use of worksets for us is to allow multiple users to access and modify the same database at the same time.

With worksets enabled everyone can have access to the same file at the same time.

Xrefs in AutoCAD are more like linked files in Revit than worksets. A workset is not an Xref.

We have never experienced users losing work as a result of borrowing parts of the same workset. Revit will prevent two users from borrowing the same element.

We have found that the best practice is to only borrow the elements you intend to change. No matter how you decide to divide your worksets users will often need to work on different parts of the same workset at the same time.

When you borrow an element from a workset that no one happens to own, you DON'T have to ask any users to relinquish and save unless the element is borrowed by another user.

[aaronrumple]

Please advise us if we are going to a right direction. Below is what we have distributed to employees.

The most important use of workset is to prioritize which element of the drawing gets to be saved into the central file.(besides increasing your speed by turning them off)

Basically same concept as Autocad sharing. When someone has the file open you do not have access to it until that person finishes the drawing.

Therefore in Revit, when the project is divided into X number of worksets, you can look at that as it has the same X number of Xref within that drawing.

In Autocad, when you want to edit an element in an Xref, you do have to go to the xref and then edit it. In Revit, you either have to,

1. to go to workset window and click ¡°YES¡± for owning the entire workset, in this case, this is same as opening the xref where no others can change until you save,
2. borrow the element of the workset.


Borrowing the element is the new concept to Autocad Users. When you borrow the element, you have a risk of losing your element if the other person happens to borrow an element from the same workset that you have borrowed. Let¡¯s say there are 1st borrower and 2nd borrower of a workset. If 1st borrower made 15 percent changes of the workset and 2nd person made 86 percent of the changes and only 1 percent change is overlapping by both users, 2nd borrower of the workset will not be able to save and will lose all of the work. This case, 1st borrower will have previlege to save to central.

Per Revit Book, they say it is the best practice to own the workset so that you can prevent others from losing what they have borrowed.(as above case indicates)

Lastly, when you borrow an element from an workset that no one happens to own, you actually have to go around and ask the person to relinquish and save whereas when someone owns the workset and you are borrowing an element, Revit pops up an window to grant/not grant a person to borrow.

I'd retract the document in whole. There's a lot of misinformation in there.

First, borrowing objects DOES NOT put any information at risk. The scenario you have outlined is not the way it goes. Borrowing is just like passing a book back and forth. Whoever has the book is the one that can make notes an alterations.

The only time you are at risk is if you check out something while not connected to the central file. This could happen if someone puts a local file on a laptop and disconnects from the network. Or is a desktop loses connection to the network. In either case Revit will warn the user that additional work might be at risk.

You should NOT check out worksets in total as it slows down the whole borrowing process. Everyone will tell you that borrowing has made Revit worksets very user friendly. Checking out worksets doesn't.

Checking out worksets doesn't prioritize information that is saved. It can speed selecting some object on a slow network. but in general checking out entire worksets should be reserved for operations that require operations to be performed at once in a whole group of objects. I did such an operation today when I updated the view templates of an entire project. I first assumed control of all the views so tat the command wouldn't have to be canceled and I wouldn't have to run across the office to have someone grant a request.

You cannot look at worksets as Xrefs. they are very different.

Where was it all this information came from?

[ykang]

Information came from reading user manual of Revit 9.1 and other books that I have been reading and talking to bunch of people that took Revit 9.1 classes authorized by Autodesk.

Could you be more specific and in detail for us please? We are still confused because what you are saying seems to be completely different.

That boils down to a question, if we can borrow an element from a workset, what's an workset for? Do we even need multiple worksets?

[jcoe]

If you have more than one user in a project, then Yes, you should have multiple worksets.

In our office, I have made it a policy that for each user in the project, there should be at least 2 "user defined" worksets. So if 5 people are on the project, there are a minimum of 10 user defined worksets. This further helps to eliminate conflicts when borrowing. I also created a chart of elements indicating what worksets they should be placed into for the sake of maintaining consistency (ie. Interior doors and windows would be placed into the Partitions workset; exterior doors, windows, walls would be placed in the Building Envelope workset; structural framing and columns would be placed in the Structural Framing workset.....)

Before any worksets are enabled, have a team meeting to anticipate the worksets that might be needed and designate one person on the team to set the worksets up, create the central file and the subsequent local files. We call them the Model Keeper. This will also maintain a certain level of consistency as well.

Worksets is one of the more advanced features within Revit, and before anyone on your team starts using worksets, make sure they go through the worksets tutorial under the help menu.
I think it was Steve Stafford who uses the analogy - and an apt one at that - that when worksets are enabled, Revit acts as a "library" and each workset is a "book" within that library. When a user borrows a book from the library, other users are unable to make changes to that book until it is returned to the library. Along the same line of thinking, the workset manager could be viewed as a "card catalog" of sorts, organizing the books within the library - for those of us who remember card catalogs.

[irwin]

Information came from reading user manual of Revit 9.1 and other books that I have been reading and talking to bunch of people that took Revit 9.1 classes authorized by Autodesk.

Could you be more specific and in detail for us please? We are still confused because what you are saying seems to be completely different.

That boils down to a question, if we can borrow an element from a workset, what's an workset for? Do we even need multiple worksets?

When you borrow an element, Revit records that fact in the central file, and guarantees that no one else can change that element (unless he edits at risk while not connected to the network). I'm not sure what book or instructor said otherwise, but whoever it was was wrong. I managed the development of the element borrowing functionality and stand 100% behind the statement that Revit will not allow two people with different user names to borrow the same element.

Given that, it is very reasonable to ask what worksets are for. The answer has changed as Revit has evolved. When file sharing was first implemented in Revit 3.0, you could not borrow elements -- the only way you could change an element in a shared file was to make its whole workset editable. In version 6.0, we implemented element borrowing, but it required user action every time you borrowed an element so it was usually more convenient to check out the whole workset. In version 8.1, element borrowing was made automatic -- you just change an element and it is automatically borrowed for you. With this innovation many people found there was no longer any need to make whole worksets editable. So, the original reason for worksets is no longer a very good reason for using them.

I can think of a few reasons you might still want to put things on worksets:
1) Putting elements on worksets allows you to selectively open large models. Revit doesn't display elements in unopened worksets, which means that most of the time there is no need to load those elements into memory. This can be a big performance boost if your model is using up most or all of your physical memory.
2) Worksets can be used for visibility control. However, since filters were implemented I'm not sure if there's any reason to use worksets for visibility control anymore.
3) If you plan to take the file home with you, disconnected from the network, it can be useful to make one or more whole worksets editable before you go.
4) You can make a workset editable as a way to try to keep other users from editing any of its elements. I've heard of people checking out grids and levels to a special user name that no one is using to make it hard for people to accidentally change them. Keep in mind that even if you check out a workset other users can still add elements to that workset. They can also delete elements in it by editing them at risk. They can also, possibly, change the elements if they are driven by relationships with other elements that aren't checked out.

On a side note, the change in functionality also suggests a name change. Starting with version 3.0, the functionality that allowed multiple people to work on the same file at the same time was called "Worksets". Now that worksets play only a small roll in this functionality, I think a more appropriate name for the functionality is "File Sharing".

[aaronrumple]

On a side note, the change in functionality also suggests a name change. Starting with version 3.0, the functionality that allowed multiple people to work on the same file at the same time was called "Worksets". Now that worksets play only a small roll in this functionality, I think a more appropriate name for the functionality is "File Sharing".

...the term I've seen batted around most recently was worksharing.

[ykang]

What Mr. Irwin posted cleared my confusion. That information was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much for making it so clear. Our office deeply appreciate your comment.

[MTristram]

How do you manage a multistorey building with worksets.
We break our worksets into the following - Structure, enclosure, interior partitions, furniture etc.

A team has raised the question of how does someone edit/add to the partitions on Level 1 when someone else in the team has the partition workset borrowed and working on Level 3. Ultimately I would not want to see the worksets multiply for each floor level. Is it just a matter of being more disciplined in what each team member is working on, break down the project tasks more?

[rodneyf]

What worked best for me is to not check out the entire workset but instead I would just borrow the elements on a as needed basis that way someone working on the third floor can add or edit partitions and someone working on the first floor can do the same. This type of borrowing became available on 8.1 I think and man is this not a great feature.
Hope that helps.