Revision Tracking and Workflow

[Andrew Dobson]

Whilst the Revit Revision system looks good at first, wouldnt it be better if when you set an old revision as Visible, instead of just showing the revision cloud, it actually showed what the model and drawing looked like at that time, enabling you to go back to previous revisions of things? I dont see the point of showing the revision clouds without them actually showing what changed!

I know that you can make a record print/pdf of each issue of a drawing, but it would be useful to be able to revert to an earlier revision sometimes.

Also, when you make changes to the model, if that impact made a change on a particular sheet, marked as "issued" it could start a new sheet revision letter and then display the sheet name in a different colour until you set the sheet as issued again?

The reason I am suggesting this is that our document management (which we are trialing but I cant stop the company buying) does this kind of thing, and I want to get my company to buy into Revit - I need to show that it is as good at handling revisions, without saving each drawing out to AutoCAD to work with our document management.

Has anyone got any thoughts on this subject?

[aaronrumple]

That would be nice. I don't see it happening in the near future - too many other mundane things on the wishlist. File size would be an issue, I'd think.

[funkman]

try adding a new phase to the end?
try save as <new filename>

[Kirky]

Other Cad software I used had a file database when you openned any drawing, this was a useful tool and could easily be linked to the revision table of issued drawings? I think it would be a good feature to be able to underlay previous versions and if this was done as a link there would be no significant file increase? I tend to save each day as a seperate file in date order, because sometimes your first ideas were the best and gives me a better record of what was actually done to that date.

[Andrew Dobson]

That would be nice. I don't see it happening in the near future - too many other mundane things on the wishlist. File size would be an issue, I'd think.

Maybe Revit could maintain a separate "backup file" with previous revisions that it could automatically pull in and out as necessary withour effecting the size of the main database?

[Andrew Dobson]

Other Cad software I used had a file database when you openned any drawing, this was a useful tool and could easily be linked to the revision table of issued drawings? I think it would be a good feature to be able to underlay previous versions and if this was done as a link there would be no significant file increase? I tend to save each day as a seperate file in date order, because sometimes your first ideas were the best and gives me a better record of what was actually done to that date.

Our documents management could easily handle versions of the same revit file, as it only saves the byte-level changes between them, the trouble is, you have to lock and unlock the file to yourself, which means single user working, and I dont think that worksets would work. Actually - could the central file be locked whenever a user wanted to save to central, and then set as read only aty other times, or can the central file have multiple users writing to it at once like an access database?

Cheers

[ppelegrin]

Our documents management could easily handle versions of the same revit file, as it only saves the byte-level changes between them, the trouble is, you have to lock and unlock the file to yourself, which means single user working, and I dont think that worksets would work. Actually - could the central file be locked whenever a user wanted to save to central, and then set as read only aty other times, or can the central file have multiple users writing to it at once like an access database?

Cheers

Hi ajd,

And therein lies the gap between 'most' CAD document management tools and smarter database applications like Revit. These CAD Document Management systems are good at handling single instances of a drawing and even handling xrefencing but are typically not so good at handling something like Revit. However I do believe this will change as CAD Management tools work with more modern and common BIM systems, as they do in the manufacturing industry - where solid modellers with good data management are already common place.

I am aware that Autodesk has recently developed significant enhancements for Revit file management within Buzzsaw, which it has to do to make this product more practical for our industry.

I believe a good Document Management system needs to be CAD aware IMO. As generic systems rarely rate well with CAD users. The primary issues with these are that they do not understand 1) the CAD file format, 2) understand complexities of referencing systems, 3) understand multiple people working on the 'same' project file, 4) Typically 'copy' an instance of the file as an amendment, snapshot if you like, 5) Do not understand the concept of a BIM and 6) Do not typically manage internal or external 'data' attached to CAD files.

In response to your earlier point:

wouldnt it be better if when you set an old revision as Visible, instead of just showing the revision cloud, it actually showed what the model and drawing looked like at that time, enabling you to go back to previous revisions of things?

Yes that would be good. I think this will be a feature for Revit in the future, and in fact should be 'relatively' easy due its relational database file structure. However, today, I suggest that the development is focused on other higher priority feature improvements - Unfortunately, CAD Document Management controls/electronic work flows etc have an unusually low acceptance in our industry and does need re-balancing...

Regards
P Pelegrin