Leaving a Model open over night on a Revit Server?

[jbfla311718866]

In our office we have designers that leave their Revit models open over night, and sometimes for days. We are work-sharing with Revit Server in multiple offices over a WAN; how damaging is this practice of leaving models open?

[CAtDiva]

My biggest concern is if they're leaving files open, are they even remembering to SWC on a regular basis (particularly before they and before they start working again)?

Best practices indicate that creating a new local from the central file as one begins each day minimizes syncing errors. Of course, this assumes they have sync'd and closed the file when they finished the day before.

[jbfla311718866]

This is another issue, some leave models open all night without sync, and then when they get in they sync with central, and all of a sudden links or work-sets get turned off or unloaded. I am trying to stress how important it is to close to be safe, but I can't seem to find hard information that says syncing and closing is the best practice.

[CAtDiva]

Here's a couple references I found that might help:

This one has some old information on creating local files as Revit now has the "Create New Local" option on open, but stilll has valuable information on why a new local file everyday is important: http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2008/01/local-files-how-how-often-and-where.html

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?117767-Revit-Crashes-Locks-File

From experience with other programs (i.e. ACA/ACAD), we would have issues with our nightly backups running if someone didn't close a file before leaving. I could see this being compounded with a Revit model. There are also potential performance issues with the computer itself if a user doesn't occasionally (regularly?) log off or restart their computer. This may be less of an issue with newer computers, but with low RAM (2-4 MB), it at least used to be important to dump the RAM in order to have enough for software to function smoothly.

Most of the discussions I have seen that touch on this are related either to "worksharing" in general or "sync with central". I like this search tool (http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com.au/p/revit-master-search.html) because it's targeted specifically for Revit searches and hits blogs as well as several forums.

[jbfla311718866]

Thanks CAtDiva