- [Instructor] In this video, I want to talk briefly
about how to access a workshare enabled project.
Now, just what exactly is a workshare enabled project?
Well, this is a team project,
the project that's specifically designed
to allow multiple user access.
Now, most of the time,
if you're working in a firm with more than one person,
the projects that you use in Revit will be set up this way.
And that is so that each of the team members can all work
simultaneously within the same project.
If you didn't set up the project with worksharing enabled,
then what would happen is,
after the first person opens the project,
the subsequent folks that try and join in would get
a message saying the file is read only
and that they can't save any of their changes.
So that would naturally not be a very
efficient way to work in a team.
All I want to do in this video is show you how to one,
identify that you have a workshare enabled project
and then two, talk about the way to open it correctly.
That's all we're going to look at for worksharing here
in this video and in fact in this course.
But I just think it's important to take
a brief break here and mentioned that.
Now I'm not providing exercise files for this video.
So just watch and kind of make some notes and so forth.
There are some logistical challenges
to trying to provide a workshare enabled exercise file.
Okay, so let's go ahead and walk through the process.
Now I'm going to assume that you're joined the project team,
and somebody else has already created
the workshare enabled project.
This is called a central model.
And the central model lives on a server.
That server can be local in your local area network,
or it could be in the cloud.
So the first question that you want to ask
whoever's administering the whole thing is,
whether or not it's a cloud based worksharing project
or a locally based worksharing project,
because the part of the interface that you're going to use
to access it is going to be different depending.
So let's say that they told you that you're working
in a cloud based project,
then what you would do is you would come over here
and you would click this BIM 360 link
on the recent file screen,
if necessary, over on the right,
it would ask you to sign into your Autodesk Account.
So I would click that.
Then I would put in my Autodesk username, click Next,
put in my password, click Next.
And then it would display all of the BIM 360 projects
that I have access to, and I'd be able to open those up.
I'm going to go ahead and close out of there,
and click back to Recent Files.
So instead, let's say that the administrator told
me that the project was a land based
or local area network based workshare enabled project.
So then here, there's a couple ways
I could access that file.
If I've already accessed it previously,
then I'll actually see a link to it,
on the recent file screen
and I have an example of that right here.
So if we look at the models in my recent file screen,
you can see that the three to the right,
don't have any little icons beneath them.
But the one to the left has a little badge beneath it,
this little cube icon here, and when I hover over that,
you can see that that says it's a central model,
and it lists the path to it and the local path and so on.
Now, these are just regular standalone projects,
they are not central models, they're not workshare enabled.
So if you're looking at your recent file screen,
that's how you can tell the difference
between the two kinds of projects.
If the project that you want to join,
isn't listed on your recent file screen,
then you have to navigate to it using the Open button here.
So let me do that and show you how you would identify it.
So, let's say that we went to a file
that was not workshare enabled.
Let's start with that.
So I'm going to go to my Desktop, my exercise files,
and just go into some random folder here,
and single click any file.
So I'm going to single click this file from a previous video.
If you look down at the bottom of the screen,
there's a worksharing area.
And as you can see, there are two checkboxes there,
but both of them are grayed out and unavailable.
We couldn't check them or uncheck them if we wanted them to.
So that's Revit way of showing you
that worksharing is disabled for this project.
That means that if I went through without opening it,
I would be the only user
that could be in this project at a time.
And if one of my co-workers decided to try and join me,
they would get a message telling me
that they couldn't until I was finished.
All right, so instead, I'm now going to go to My Computer,
and I have a network share here on my local network.
This is my P drive.
And I'll open that up,
and then I have a single folder in there.
And then finally, I have a single Revit project in there,
which I've just called workshare for this demonstration.
Now, if I select the workshare project
and look down at the bottom,
this time the two checkboxes are lit up,
and the Create New Local checkbox is checked.
99.9% of the time, that's the correct answer.
And you'll just move right to Open,
and open up the project.
And what you'll actually be doing then,
is leaving the central model right where it is,
without changing it and you'll be creating a local copy
instead on your local hard drive.
That's where you'll make your changes
and then every so often you'll synchronize
those changes with your co-workers.
And that's how we'll all stay up to date.
On rare occasions,
you could choose the Detach From Central option instead.
Now notice that if I check that, it unchecked this,
so the two can't be checked at the same time.
It is possible, however, to uncheck both,
which is also exceedingly rare.
Neither of those do you want to do lightly,
you only want to do those options if you are absolutely sure,
Detach From Central, or unchecking both which is actually
opening the central file directly.
Now in a worksharing project,
working directly in the central file is considered
to be a bad idea as a matter of best practice.
So we generally avoid doing that.
So unless you are absolutely certain,
the correct answer here is Create New Local
and then you'll click Open.
Now, because I've previously opened this file.
I showed it to you over here, I had it open in the past,
it will ask me what I want to do with my existing local copy,
you can override it, or you can keep it with a timestamp.
It really doesn't matter which choice you choose there.
I like the timestamp option, I tend to do that.
Now when I open it, it loads me into the project.
And for all intents and purposes now,
it looks exactly the same as any other Revit project.
There are a few clues on screen that you can tell
that you're working in a workshare enabled project.
One of the subtle clues is, if you hover over the tab here,
you will see the name of the file workshare.
But then you'll also see my username Paul F. Aubin,
kind of tacked on to that.
Now, you'll also see that here
at the top of the project browser,
and at the top of the title bar in the Revit window.
The workshare is the name of the central model,
but then the username tacked on the end
indicates that you're working locally.
That's what you want.
To other really subtle differences
that indicate that you're in workshare,
is the presence of this small icon here
called Worksharing Display.
It's currently turned off,
but it's a mode that you could turn on or off.
And then the availability of the Worksets button,
and the Worksets pop up right here.
If those items are grayed out,
you're not in a worksharing project.
So with those subtle indications on screen,
you can tell that you're in a workshare enabled project.
Otherwise, it behaves exactly like any other Revit project.
And of course, the one other subtle difference is,
the presence of the Synchronize With Central button here.
So if I click this,
this is how you would save a workshare enabled project.
So every so often,
you've made changes you want to save those changes,
and you also want to see what your co-workers been up to.
Or in other words, we're going to synchronize
and you simply load this box, click OK.
And it will go through the process of synchronizing
your changes with central model.
When I'm done working for the day, I can close the file.
And back here, I've already shown you this little shortcut,
but I just want to show you that this shortcut actually knows,
the correct way to open that file.
So notice it says by opening this central model,
it will actually create a local copy of it.
So unless you are deliberately
trying to open the central model,
which we've already said is generally not a good idea,
then this will do the correct thing.
I'll get the append timestamp again.
And I'm back in my local copy.
So that should be enough to at least give you the basics
of how to access a workshare enabled project
and how to identify one when you're in it,
or when you're looking through a file full of folders.
If you want to learn more about worksharing,
we have a few other courses here
in the library that I can direct you to.
As a user of worksharing projects,
then everything you need to know
is probably in the worksharing users course.
If you're going to go a little further
and you want to learn how to set up central models
and manage central models,
then we've got the worksharing management course.
And if your firm is using cloud based worksharing,
then we've got the BIM 360 design course here,
which we'll get into more detail
on how to actually work with cloud based worksharing.