Locking Revit Links

[nnguyen]

Is it possible to lock Revit Links in the Project. I would like to do this because it has already happened that for some reason one link in my file was accidentally removed. I checked in the "manage links" to see if I could check something like "lock link" but nothing like that was there. I read about using worksets to "control" what can be edited. However, I am unsure if I place each of the Revit Links on it's own workset, then changing my user name to administrator and "checking" out the workset the links are on would work. If I do that, will that not allow people to change the visibility of the link files? Has anyone done this before? And what errors/problems/issues have arise? Or is there another way of achieving "locking" the links? Any suggestions is welcomed.

[greg.mcdowell]

You could Pin the Linked file... that wouldn't "prevent" deletion but would warn the deleter what was going on.

[nnguyen]

I did that, but sometimes people don't "see" the warning or understand it. I would rather still try the locking because when you Pin items, they can always unpin them, either intentionally or accidentally.

[greg.mcdowell]

In that case... make them fix their own mistakes to your satisfaction... that'll teach 'em!

[nnguyen]

That's a good answer. But the question will arise, can't we lock it?

[Steve Mintz]

Place the link into its own workset, then make the workset editable by you (or another user, or a pseudo user) and never relinquish it when saving to central.

For each linked model, there are three objects which will need to be placed in the workset (don't ask...). They can be tricky to get. You might need to only lock one to prevent the model from being unlinked; I know from experience that you need all three to copy/monitor. Here's how I've done it in the past:

1. Lock all worksets in the model with another user.
2. Go in as yourself and try to remove the link. You'll be asked to place a request to edit the object.
3. Write down the object number.
4. Unlock all the worksets, create your new workset for the linked model.
5. Select each of the 3 objects by ID number and place them in the workset.

This ends up being pretty complicated. Hopefully one day I'll be able to take the time and write this up with lots of pretty pictures.

EDIT:

Oops!! Didn't see your whole message; you already know about this method. Other users should still be able to control the visibility of the linked model using Visibility/Graphics. As an added benefit, they would also now be able to control the visibility using worksets...