Corrupt Central Files Related to Linked Autocad?

[DanielleAnderson]

Recently we finished a set of CDs mostly done in Revit, but the details were mostly linked in from Autocad. There were about 4 users working on the model and about every other day the central file would end up corrupted. It was deduced by others on the team that this corruption problem must be related to Autocad drawings that had been linked into the model. Has anybody seen something like this before?
What are other causes of corruption that are known?
I was working mainly over the VPN - could this have been a contributing factor?

[dgreen.49364]

Just a suggestion...if you suspect the Autocad details, why not eliminate them and re-create the details in Revit? The process involved in bringing Autocad details into Revit Drafting Views, exploding and cleaning up is relatively simple and quick. In my experience, it takes only a couple of minutes per detail. Depending on the size of the project, a couple of hours might be all it takes to do the job and be done with the Autocad links.

[Steve_Stafford]

Working over a VPN means poor connectivity and ensuing corruption. I'd suspect your workflow before I'd suspect the dwg files as a cause. If Revit couldn't find any of the dwgs it would still show them the way they looked before they went "missing".

Most of the file corruption I encounter can be traced directly back to either network connectivity or user habits with their local files and saving to central.

[thillhouse]

We also had some problems with AutoCAD files. We found that if the file is linked, it comes in fine, but if it is just inserted, somehow it gets corrupted. Also check what versions your AutoCAD files are, and make sure they are all the same version...Not sure if this matters, but might help clean things up...

Tim

[vgonzales]

Recover, Audit and Purge all of your AutoCAD files that are linked into your Revit project. Importing and exploding AutoCAD files in Revit should never done. It will make your Project files a total mess. Always link (never import) AutoCAD files.My office made this mistake and regretted it ever since due to ignorance on my part on the first Revit project.

I highly recommend that you start learning to do your (drafting views) details in Revit. Having the details in Revit will make things work better in the long term. Creating drafting views in Revit is not difficult. Our details done in Revit look ten times better than AutoCAD and are fully coordinated with the entire project.

[eric.piotrowicz]

While I agree with the general house keeping tips for AutoCAD files and also that its much simpler to just do the detailing in Revit. I must say that from past experience Steve is dead on about VPN. Central and Local files do alot of talking back and forth and over a VPN connection there is much greater issues with dropped packets (meaning lost data) than over a Local Area Network. If you have ever had a phone conversation with someone on a cell in an area with limited coverage you no doubt know that after just a couple sentences with a few missed words both people are very confused about what is being said and usually its time to hang up and try again. Its the same idea with the Central and Local files and if the Central is getting partial info about changes being made to the Local file it doesn't take long before the file is corrupted. I fully understand the need to work remotely (and the joy of it) but unfortunately Revit isn't really intended to work this way just yet. Wish list maybe??

[DanielleAnderson]

Just out of curiosity, are there any white papers, resources, etc. that document Revit with VPN?
And our reasoning for detailing in Autocad was that we had a couple senior architects on the project who weren't exactly (ahem) on board the Revit wagon.

Addendum:
You know...now that I think about it more, I was told the corruption was happening quite frequently BEFORE I ever joined the project and started working over VPN. Perhaps we really are down to work habits and initial setup? This was a project executed fairly well by newbies (who managed to still cope with life even with all the corruption happening).

[steedlei]

Can anyone explain to me what is VPN? thank you

[DanielleAnderson]

It is a software program that allows you to access a network remotely. When I say I work over a VPN (Virtual Private Network), I am working at home but accessing my company's network over the web through a sort of portal. It is a secure connection requiring a user ID and password. It is very cool, but as people have mentioned above, potentially problematic when using work sharing.

[cknight.138477]

We had this same problem on one of our projects where we were pressed for time and as a last resort imported in some typical details already drawn in autocad. We had to bring the drawings in instead of linking so we could modify some lines and text. When you explode the autocad drawing is where our problems seemed to occur. We figured revit wasn't able to understand some of the tiniest lines and hatch information from autocad - typical for any drafted detail. The warning is something to the effect that it deleted the bad object . . . which implies the small line it's not able to understand. In the rollback process it appeared we were only able to recover the last saved model right before we brought in the autocad drawings. We did not have any issues with corrupt files and linked autocad files.