I take it all back, Groups with worksets really are Useless!

[christopher.zoog51272]

Warning: Rant Ahead, I have come to see what Scott Brown said before is true.

OK, I had be using groups to handle multiple units, despite all of the crazy bugs too numerous to list, but today I had to finally abandon all groups in a 120K SF, 115 unit senior apartment building we are documenting. They worked OK, (if you dealt with the bugs) with two users working on the file, but now that we are into c-doc's and have added a third user all hell broke loose.

They seem to be causing severe problems were users just can't save to central, because of issues with elements modified by another user within groups. I examined the objects that were causing the error and after much deliberation, I decided to up-group them all. This allowed everyone to save to central and avoid any data loss. I usually had to delete most them if there was a major change anyway, due the numerous bugs that occur while mirroring them (and forget about nested groups, they stink too), so I figure any major changes to the units now would not be ask much work as chasing down every bug when they were group.

It's a shame, because the potential is huge for groups, it's just that their execution is so shoddy, it's not worth using them in this application. This something revit MUST address, if it truly want become useful in multi-unit applications. (town homes, hotels, apartments, etc)

Anyway, we are still ahead of schedule on this job (the largest we have ever documented in revit)so I’m not too ******, just disappointed.

Z.

[Wes Macaulay]

Hey Chris... what was in the groups, anyway? Any 2D objects, or just all model objects? I've told people not to use 2D objects in groups because these objects will float onto the view worksets where the group is located.

These 2D objects - even though the groups themselves were on the same user-created workset - ended up being in different view worksets. If a user was making changes to a group, and couldn't get access to other view worksets (i.e. someone else had signed them out), the model would lock up.

Groups don't scare me as long as no 2D objects get into them, though I would like very much to see this fixed.

[sbrown]

Sorry to hear your problems, but I feel your pain all to well. Please send your data into Steve Burri or Chris Mahoney, They have been looking at all of our worksets/groups issues and have found a lot of bugs and some workarounds, but bot. line is still don't mix groups and worksets. Pray for significant fix in 6.0. We have a multi building multi unit project knocking on the door and I'm afraid we might have to bail out to acad if 6.0 doesn't fix the issues for this type of job.

[Richard McCarthy]

I totally agree with ya there czoogy ;)
I am having hell of problems with workset and groups while modeling a huge project of a hotel+apartment+luxury Apartment+Shopping mall kinda monster of thing. A lot of things have to be done in GROUPS to efficiently propogate the changes to every level and copied units, and so far I have found a few tricks to avoid all the shortfall of doing workset with groups.

1. When grouping / copying / arraying a template group layout (eg. An apartment unit) to several floors and different locations, ALWAYS make sure interior walls that are dependent on the exterior walls (or structural walls) should always be set to "unjoin" using Wall Join tool. This solve a lot of group copying/array problem. And I have so far have great success in doing this to efficiently propogate all the changes quickly (well, not so quick, sometimes it takes upto AN HOUR AND HALF to update 3 FLOORS of UNIT GROUPS)

2. Model all interior fittings with 2D drafting line and group them (eg, sinks, toilets).. I know a lot of people would say this is NOT the right way to do, but so far I found it works. It is faster when pasting (it has no relation to walls or other dependent objects)





Warning: Rant Ahead, I have come to see what Scott Brown said before is true.

OK, I had be using groups to handle multiple units, despite all of the crazy bugs too numerous to list, but today I had to finally abandon all groups in a 120K SF, 115 unit senior apartment building we are documenting. They worked OK, (if you dealt with the bugs) with two users working on the file, but now that we are into c-doc's and have added a third user all hell broke loose.

They seem to be causing severe problems were users just can't save to central, because of issues with elements modified by another user within groups. I examined the objects that were causing the error and after much deliberation, I decided to up-group them all. This allowed everyone to save to central and avoid any data loss. I usually had to delete most them if there was a major change anyway, due the numerous bugs that occur while mirroring them (and forget about nested groups, they stink too), so I figure any major changes to the units now would not be ask much work as chasing down every bug when they were group.

It's a shame, because the potential is huge for groups, it's just that their execution is so shoddy, it's not worth using them in this application. This something revit MUST address, if it truly want become useful in multi-unit applications. (town homes, hotels, apartments, etc)

Anyway, we are still ahead of schedule on this job (the largest we have ever documented in revit)so I’m not too ******, just disappointed.

Z.

[beegee]

Richard,

Have a look at this topic (www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2033&highlight=groups) also.

[Richard McCarthy]

Wow! Thanks Beegee!

I have never read that post before, but it really sum up all the findings and tricks I have learnt through all the mistakes and errors (+crashes) I have encounter. :) Good post.




Richard,

Have a look at this topic (www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2033&highlight=groups) also.

[sbrown]

You probably shouldn't be modeling all units if they stack, just one floor. If each floor is diff. then you may need to.

[aellsworth]

Would anybody like to update this thread for Revit 2011?
It all still seems pretty valid (8 years later).
I want to make a group with multiple worksets in it, but it seems that isn't possible.
Mirroring a group causes all sorts of chaos sometimes.

Beegee, I would love to read the article you linked to but it isn't there anymore.