Wow... Worksets are soooo much better now in 8.1...

[hand471037]

Just wanted to take a moment and thank the Factory for making the workflow around worksets much, much better.

I'm under the gun of a bad deadline and man... I guess I just didn't notice until now how much faster working with worksets is in 8.1, both in the automated borrowing & in the save times... until every moment counted. ;-)

So thanks!

and... back to work! :D

[iru69]

Just wanted to take a moment and thank the Factory for making the workflow around worksets much, much better.
I've been meaning to post those same sentiments. Worksets in 8.1 are rad.

[ariasdelcid]

Great! I was checking archicad's TeamWork features and was kind of jealous of some things...having used worksets in 6.1. So great !!!!! Go Revit!

[Wes Macaulay]

Heh -- no more unchecking "Editable Only" either. Between that and being able to rotate around selected objects in 3D (how did we wrap wall sweeps around corners before now?) I figure I'm saving half an hour a day.

[hand471037]

Heh -- no more unchecking "Editable Only" either. Between that and being able to rotate around selected objects in 3D (how did we wrap wall sweeps around corners before now?) I figure I'm saving half an hour a day.

one day... one day, I can see myself telling people that 'back in my day, we had Revit 3.1, back when PHASING was the new hot thing, and we liked it! (my memory is getting dim... isn't that when Phasing was done? or was it Worksets in the first place?). We couldn't even format our own Color Fill Legends, but we didn't care! We instead made our own custom ones with matching colors, from scratch, in the Family Editor as annotation families, and we still liked it! (sadly, this last bit is true...)'

Oh wait... I say that now...But I sure do like this more! ;-)

(Uphill, in the snow, both ways... uh... Well, I did work in a place without heat, once, but being in California I don't know if that counts as much)

[Shaun v Rooyen]

I must also agree, worksets are a hell of alot better. No longer do I hear "please grant me a request" being bellowed across the office.

[Mr Spot]

love em, love em, love em...

[Shaun v Rooyen]

Hey! have you also noticed, the factory has cleaned up the backup folder, no longer do you have all those weird DIR's "0a1b2483-a203-46d9-af96-1a6bbfeed90b".

[Wes Macaulay]

Yup... it means less overhead for backup and operating systems. Good news...

[paul.licameli]

On behalf of the Worksharing team of Revit's development organization, I thank all of you for your appreciation of our efforts!

For 8.1, besides making the save-to-central part of workSHARING faster, we were also trying to deemphasize the use of workSETS.

We hoped to make the frequent, fine-grained editability control by means of element borrowing work fast, and automatically. Fast enough, we hope, so that you can rely on it for prevention of conflicting changes, without needing the infrequent, coarse grained control of workset checkouts (which may exclude too many people from doing too much, so that they "bellow" at you).

An editing permissions system is essential to Revit's worksharing to prevent simultaneous editing of one element by two users, but "worksets" are just a detail (and an optional, perhaps obsolescent one, now) in the use of that system. They shouldn't be a synonym for the larger worksharing system.

Experienced users like you may have the old terminology ingrained, but we hope to hear the new Revit users say, "Worksharing is easy!" and, "Worksets? What are they?"

[hand471037]

You know, the only 'problem' I can think of that still exists with Worksets is the issue of having someone working remote, i.e. outside of the local network.

Can those out there doing VPN's and such comment on this? Is Revit 8.1's STC moving less data than before making it more viable over slower connections, like FTP or cheap VPNs?

[janunson]

We hoped to make the frequent, fine-grained editability control by means of element borrowing work fast, and automatically. Fast enough, we hope, so that you can rely on it for prevention of conflicting changes, without needing the infrequent, coarse grained control of workset checkouts

Thanks!
It's caught on like wildfire in our office, We're saving hours per day not checking in and out worksets! Best improvement in all of 8.1, By Far!

[Steve_Stafford]

...(and an optional, perhaps obsolescent one, now)...I don't think they are obsolete, at least not as long as they allow us to unload large collections of objects or control the visibility of them. If we could accomplish the same thing on the granular level as we can borrow them, perhaps then we wouldn't need them (worksets). Such as a window selection, right click, choose Unload objects or Make Invisible in View.


They shouldn't be a synonym for the larger worksharing system.Thanks for making that point.


Experienced users like you may have the old terminology ingrained, but we hope to hear the new Revit users say, "Worksharing is easy!" and, "Worksets? What are they?"I'll try my best! :wink:

[david.kingham]

Yes Jeffrey VPN is much much better now, I've had two different users try it and their comment was that they hardly notice a difference working at home or the office now

[hand471037]

Yes Jeffrey VPN is much much better now, I've had two different users try it and their comment was that they hardly notice a difference working at home or the office now

ROCK. ON.

I'm freelancing now, and had a major concern about what to do if someone needs help with a large project where they just need an extra hand and the Central file is on their network. Now if those clients have any kind of a VPN we can realistically give it a go...

thanks for the tip.

[paul.licameli]

I don't think they are obsolete, at least not as long as they allow us to unload large collections of objects or control the visibility of them.

I said not "obsolete" but "obsolescent," wink.

True, worksets have acquired another use in Revit's UI, explicitly for the purpose of visibility control. That is extraneous perhaps to their original purpose, but still, that is one reason why they didn't disappear completely.

On the other hand, it's also worth mentioning that some users have a misimpression that one purpose of putting elements in a workset and checking them out is to "lock" them so that other users can't change them, but that was never their true purpose. Checkout is meant to prevent irreconcilable, simultaneous, direct user changes to one element -- changes that can't be merged automatically by reload-latest, but rather have to be done in sequence: one user changes it only after loading the other's changes.

Checkout is not an absolute ban on all changes to a set of elements -- such as the side-effects that the change propagation engine makes. (If it were such a ban, your complaints about the clumsiness of the old worksets would have been even louder, trust me!) You can also "change a workset" someone else checked out by adding elements to it.

I like to say that worksets, as part of the editing permissions system, are meant as a "traffic cop" that prevents collisions (of edits), not a "security guard" enforcing strict property rights. Perhaps there will be demand for such a feature in Revit, but the use of worksets for that purpose, though it sorta-works, isn't really "supported."

[Fred Blome]

Way better!

Remote user is on comcast cable, with Hamachi VPN to Central.


You know, the only 'problem' I can think of that still exists with Worksets is the issue of having someone working remote, i.e. outside of the local network.

Can those out there doing VPN's and such comment on this? Is Revit 8.1's STC moving less data than before making it more viable over slower connections, like FTP or cheap VPNs?

[iru69]

True, worksets have acquired another use in Revit's UI, explicitly for the purpose of visibility control. That is extraneous perhaps to their original purpose, but still, that is one reason why they didn't disappear completely.
Yes, and this should not be underestimated. Visibility control is the only reason I use worksets (if only I could put annotation onto worksets, I'd be pretty much set). As good as worksets have become, individual object visibility control would be an absolute nightmare without them.

I think worksets are *almost* at the point where there doesn't need to be an "enabling" of worksets... worksets should just be an inherent part of a project file by default. That would help remove the stimga associated with worksets. You wouldn't even have to know they were there until you wanted to use them. I remember the first time I enabled worksets on a project - the whole "once they're enabled, you can't un-enable them" thing was very intimidating.

Edit: I should also note that I like worksets because I can "turn off" unused parts of the project to speed things up.

[jeddafish]

I like to say that worksets, as part of the editing permissions system, are meant as a "traffic cop" that prevents collisions (of edits), not a "security guard" enforcing strict property rights. Perhaps there will be demand for such a feature in Revit, but the use of worksets for that purpose, though it sorta-works, isn't really "supported."


The "security guard" analogy is how I first perceived worksets. That is also on my wishlist to make worksets more robust.
--jeff

[paul.licameli]

The "security guard" analogy is how I first perceived worksets. That is also on my wishlist to make worksets more robust.
--jeff

Well, as I just explained, this reflects a misunderstanding of the purpose of worksets. It would not necessarily be a good thing to "enhance" them this way: at least, not as default behavior.

To overload worksets with too many purposes (as perhaps happened, unfortunately, with visibility control), rather than develop different classifications of elements for different purposes, could cause worksets to serve none of the purposes well. One usage of them could interfere with the others. To classify the elements well for one purpose may be to classify them badly for another.

Besides the visibility control, worksets are there to serve the purpose of excluding simultaneous direct edits to one element by more than one user. This purpose is now also achieved by other means (element borrowing). Our real design intent is to have users exclude the other users' edits for only as long as they need to, to get their own work done and then publish their changes to the other users by saving to central.

Worksets are NOT intended to let one user prevent ALL changes to an element -- meaning, even indirect changes -- by other users. I say this, even though, incidentally to their real purpose, worksets CAN be (mis)used to prevent other users' DIRECT edits (only) to elements for longer durations. This is what leads to the incorrect expectation that they were meant as a "lock" and the wishlist item that they act like more secure "locks" than they do.

But nothing in Revit now is truly intended for such a purpose. If the editing permissions system really did this, it would actually serve its real purpose less well: for instance to drag the west wall of a building would bar other users from making simultaneous indirect changes to the same wall (say, by dragging another wall joined to it, indirectly lengthening it). Such an "enhancement" would be an impediment to collaborative work. Then we are back almost to where we were (before element borrowing), with users complaining that there was too much unintended mutual exclusion of edits for the real work to get done.

All this is not to say "security" is an unworthy purpose, but rather that it is not intentionally supported in Revit now, and if it ever is, worksets are not necessarily what should do it.

Disclaimer: None of my comments constitute promises from Autodesk to deliver any specific functionality in future releases of Revit. I only want to help you understand Revit 8.1.

[sbrown]

I too use worksets for visibility issues and currently couldnt get by without them, however i would love to see a better system for visibility issues, I believe i have unknowingly turned worksets into layers that have nothing to do with sharing the workload, but everything to do with printing a view the way i want it, ie site plans. I also use them to improve performance by using selective open. this used to be a recommended use of ws, is it still?

[paul.licameli]

I too use worksets for visibility issues and currently couldnt get by without them, however i would love to see a better system for visibility issues, I believe i have unknowingly turned worksets into layers that have nothing to do with sharing the workload, but everything to do with printing a view the way i want it, ie site plans. I also use them to improve performance by using selective open. this used to be a recommended use of ws, is it still?

The "selective opening" of worksets that you can specify in the file opening dialog had other implications (and complications!) in older versions of Revit, but for several versions now it has been simply visibility control by other means.

Visibility control can indeed help performance, besides its other usefulness. Not only does Revit spend less time drawing: if certain elements are unaffected by your editing, so that the information in them would otherwise be needed only for drawing, then Revit can postpone or completely avoid the delayed copying of that information into virtual memory, and so spend less time paging.

So visibility control and editing permissions are both important functions that Revit does support, though you might question whether worksets should serve both purposes at once.