Model Linking Procedure

[techsupport.161645]

My office is working on a small pilot project in Revit Arch 2010. Our Structural engineers recently purchased a seat of Revit Structural 2010 and both parties are wanting to test how the model linking works and the proper procedure for both parties to work together in Revit. Obviously comminication is going to play a key roll in the project and we plan to set a weekly schedule to do model tranfsers and dicsussions on changes that have occured

As the architects we have mutiple people working on the project so worksharing has been enabled. We have a central file and a 2 local files, one for each user working on the project. We have not really set anything up with the worksets, just basically enabled it and created the default "workset01".

Now the questions begin:

Do we send the structural engineer our central file or create a local file for them and send that to them?

Before we send them the model, should we relinquish "all mine" when syncing with central?

Any help and info is appreciated. This is a pilot project so we are in the early stages of working through many challenges but it is definately fun so far.

Thank You

[timothy.bungert]

We typically operate on a "Dead File" transfer procedure for sharing with consultants. We'll go to open the central file and check the box that says "Detach from Central." This detached copy is what we share with our consultants, usually uploading to FTP once per week on a predetermined day.

We've had good results with it thus far. Even when we use in-house engineering, our MEP's seem to prefer a "dead" file in lieu of linking our central into their central. That way their backgrounds aren't continuously changing every time we tweak one little thing. They see changes to the architectural drawings on a weekly basis, and we see their changes reflected in the same time frame.