Remote File Sharing?

[rstarling]

We are working with an associated architect who is considering trying out Revit rather then working off of Autocad exports from our model. They will be working primarily on the interiors, including elevations, casework etc. Does anybody have any insight on the how to handle this. It seems more difficult then working with consultants that are different disciplines.

[dhurtubise]

If you plan on working in the same model you will need some serious hardware.
If not you could split the model and link each other

[Brockway]

Be careful if you split the model. As soon as you have room bounding objects that are not connected but linked, you run into a world of hurt. And if, for example, a wall resides in a model that is linked but you want to attach a wall based element, you are out of luck.

There's a technique that I've been tinkering with lately that takes a bit of management and hasn't been completely tested, yet. Basically turn back the clock to the time when worksets made a difference and clearly define the boundaries of the models via worksets. Check the worksets out that you "give" to the consultant under a dummy user name (consultant) and don't relinquish them in house (and vice versa for the consultant). So long as you both don't cross workset boundaries you could save back to central once receiving the updated file (again, vice versa).
I've tested this out by taking files home over the weekend but nothing big and nothing complicated, yet. It's more a theory than anything else.

[DaveP]

We're doing a couple of projects right now with an outside Equipment consultant.
We're trying the same technique as Brockway.
So far, it's been working OK, although its only been a couple of weeks, so we haven't gone back & forth much yet.

One issue we had was that some of their Families were created from AutoCAD blocks and still had Layers floating around. We happened to have some of the same Layers in our Revit model, so they couldn't load their families until we renamed our Layer. Once we did, it worked fine.

[Justin Marchiel]

i would say that if they "considering" using revit for there first project, that you ask not to be the guinea pig. you dont need them going thru the learning curve and trying to link files togther. sounds like a lot of trouble for both of you.

Justin

[Teresa.Martin]

Everyone has excellent points. Additionally, I might look at using copy/monitor and coordination review for the files. That way if they are linked you can see what has changed. This is how Revit Structure and Revit Architecture talk to one another. You can do it with two architecture files as well.
Good luck!