Revit and Buzzsaw

[sfraney]

I've been thinking about this but am not sure if it's really the best way to do it, but here goes it.

Say I have two company offices, one in California and one in New York. Both need to work on the same Revit file for a major company project. Can the Revit Central file for this project simply be uploaded to the company's Buzzsaw site and then have each office download a local copy, make changes, and resave back up to the Central File that's located on the Buzzsaw site?

If this is a viable approach, is there any limit to how many remote offices can access the central file via the Buzzsaw site, download a copy to a local computer, and continue to resave data back to the central file?

Is Buzzsaw absolutely nessessary to do this? Couldn't the Central File be placed on any FTP site and then accessed via internet connection similar to above? Provided that the connection speed is very fast?

[cphubb]

No FTP sites typically cause errors for Revit central files. You need a fully resolved UNC path for the central file and it cannot move or be synchronized or you will lose the data in the file that is overwritten. At this point in time a broadband WAN is the only way to share files between remote offices. We are hoping for a solution to this in the near future

[sfraney]

Thanks for the response, this is helpful indeed.

[PeterJ]

I have a multisite project which we are hosting through Buzzsaw to enable around 45 users to share AutoCAD 2006 files and we have found a bug in Buzzsaw, which isn't a complaint, just a comment. When our tame Buzzsaw expert approached Autodesk about the matter it became clear to him that development resources were placed elsewhere so the bug was a low priority and it was suggested quietly that they were trying to resolve how Revit and Buzzsaw might work together.

My Buzzsaw guy is not a Revit fan so I kick him under the table from time to time and then look in the other direction.

[sfraney]

Thanks for the reply Peter, anyone else out there using Buzzsaw with a Revit project with more than one office. Please share your experiences. Does it work well? What kind of problems are you having? Etc.

[cphubb]

Thanks for the reply Peter, anyone else out there using Buzzsaw with a Revit project with more than one office. Please share your experiences. Does it work well? What kind of problems are you having? Etc.

I do not think Buzzsaw is really ready for use with Revit. Until they are able to get any synchronization between remote central files people are stuck with one central file or will need to use linking.

We have used Buzzsaw for Autocad projects in the past and uploaded Revit files for outside access and the process is pretty slow for a 75mb Revit file as opposed to 10 Autocad files. I think there will probably be a solution in the near future but how it might work I don't know.

[sfraney]

But think how fantastic it would be if you could just put a central file up on an ftp site (or Buzzsaw) and then have different offices linking to this file. An individual could simply re-save back to it as if it were on a local server. I can't accept that this cannot currently be done using Revit. Has anyone been trying to make this work?