Consensus on worksets vs. filters

[AaronC]

When it comes to organzing your model and views, how are people most utilizing these features?

Is visibility controlled through worksets? If so, how many worksets? How far are they broken down?

or

Is visibility controlled through filters and view templates? I'm curious as an MEP designer especially, since Revit MEP forces us to use Systems so much these days.

or

Are you using a combination of worksets and filters? We're trying to decide how to move forward in developing our project templates, so any input would be greatly appreciated.

[moliva]

we try and avoid worksets if at all possible. They're a pain and we can get all of our visibility control thru filters.

[ALM BIM]

I think worksets and filters both have their place. I prefer to use worksets in cases like a site plan so anything drawn on that worksets will not be visible in the rest of the model. Also works well for large scale or call outs.

[RevitNinja]

Worksets should be used to reduce the amount of data open in a Revit session. This includes anything that comes into the Revit model from the outside - linked models, AutoCAD drawings, etc.

Regarding visibility, they can be used for site plans, callouts, etc. but in general, filters are a better option.

[Steve_Stafford]

The single advantage a workset has over filters is the global nature of unloading data from the project. That's different from view specific visibility because generally I don't want to "see" certain things at all, meaning I don't want Revit to waste my time generating that stuff regardless of the view I'm in. A filter is far more capable of dealing with specific qualities of elements not to mention any element can be altered by a variety of filters in any number of views while an element can only belong to a single workset.

Worksets - workflow and performance - global
Filters - visibility, presentation and flexibility - local

Revit 2013 View Template features make filters more powerful because they can now alter multiple views automatically, nearly as global as a workset being closed but not quite.

[dennis howell]

I would add too, that we are using more and more the SelectionSet/Filter for views as well rather than Worksets.

[BenSammis]

What Steve said.