Revit's eTransmit?

[dandan_2]

AutoCAD has eTransmit for sharing dwg files and all of the linked data within them.

What does Revit have?

We are looking for an easy way to make a local copy on a laptop of a Revit project including all linked dwg and image files. This would not be used to bring data back into the original Revit file, but used as a marketing tool for presentations of our Revit capabilities to perspective owners and for interviews. This way we can show live capabilities for massing, construction documents, and basic 3d modeling in real time and show how we are using the data from estimating to fully rendered pictures and project “walk-arounds” and “fly-bys”.

Does Revit have a tool that I just am over looking to do this, or is there a correct way to go about this with a project that has been broken into Worksets?

Thanks in advance for any help on this,
Dan

[sbrown]

export to dwf/post to buzzsaw.

[dandan_2]

We are looking to provide live demos in Revit of current projects and studies showing our "BIM" capabilities. So dwf or dwg files is not the answer that we are looking for. On our last interview, it took me a while to track down all of the linked data so that we would not have any error messages or missing views in our demo. I was just looking for a quick way to make a copy of a Revit project and all of its data. These copied projects would not need to be brought back to the original projects.

Dan

[PeterJ]

What were the error messages? A full install of Revit should include all your material libraries and families, unless you store these items centrally. A project stores just about everything it needs except for rendering materials and linked files in the project file, hence the sizes they can achieve.

When I worked a lot on a laptop with a central base I used windows briefcase so that I could update families etc and they would sync back to the master copy but that doesn't address the central file local file issue that you are coming up against when working on workset files. I think that, as this is a one way process, you should open the file on your laptop while connected to the office network then Save As to your laptop but check the new central file box. Provided you have the right permissions on your worksets you should be able to mimic working on worksets with permissions etc simply by reopening and saving as a local file in a difefrent location on your laptop.

[dandan_2]

The error messages were just simple could not find linked data messages. We wanted to make sure that we were not going to have any of these messages during the presentation/interview.

How we did it, was to open the central file on the file server with the Detach from Central option witch gives us a new central file once we save it to the laptop.
We then copied the linked jpg and dwg files to the same folder on the laptop.

I was just looking for a simpler way to do this.
Dan

[Scott D Davis]

no, thats the only way to do it. There is nothing like eTrasmit which will "grab" all the related files for you.

[Steve_Stafford]

One option that is often ignored is to export to image. When you choose Selected Views/Sheets you'll have the option to create a browsable web formatted export. Then you can browse this using your web browser. See attached image.

You can make the acquisition of linked data much easier on yourself if it is all logically associated with the project in the first place. If it is important to link to Revit then putting such files in the same folder makes sense, even if it might be a copy of the original in a different folder location for historical purposes.

Also linked dwg files and images should appear even if they aren't found, displaying their last saved state. Only linked Revit files should need to be reloaded. Then it is just a matter of quickly ignoring the error messages that Revit puts up.

[iru69]

On our last interview, it took me a while to track down all of the linked data so that we would not have any error messages or missing views in our demo.
If you have a project with linked revit files, and you move them, even if they continue to reside in the same folder, they tend to lose track of each other, especially if worksets are enabled (which all my revit projects are).

There doesn't appear to be a practical solution, not one that is satisfactory to me. You would think the whole "relative path" instead of "absolute path" would take care of this, but it doesn't seem to help. It also makes archiving projects with linked files a real drag because as soon as they get moved to something like a DVD, the links are broken. This is one more reason I avoid linking files whenever possible. This issue really needs to be addressed in my opinion.

[dbaldacchino]

Dan, I think your only problem should be dwg and rvt files. Images are not linked, they are imported into the rvt project. The etransmit function is useful in ADT because you have a lot of data "scattered" around....plot style tables, pc3 files etc. In Revit everything is pretty much contained within your project, with the exception of linked files. So I'd just check your links and make sure you copy those files and ensure the links are re-established.

I do miss some features of the e-transmit function. I used to upload files directly to the ftp and that was handy (just the dwgs). Now I have to export first, and then manually copy the files over.