Revit Worksharing on Wide Area Networks

We have been using this solution (GlobalSCAPE WAFS) to work between our remote office for a while now with our non-Revit files and it has been working great. I just received word today that their solution now works with Autodesk Revit Worksharing. This is great news and hope that it works as advertised. If you have been looking for a solution to work with Revit files over your WAN this is defiantly one worth checking out.

Hopefully we will have this rolled out to our Revit projects soon. I expect that you will be able to read more about this in the days to come. For now you can read below for the most current information available.

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If you collaborate on projects across multiple locations, WAFS file sharing can now be used on Revit projects. No matter how many locations you have or how far apart they are, Revit Worksharing performance can be improved by up to 10x.

Some key benefits include…
Instant access to remote files with minimal bandwidth consumption
File coherence with real-time file locking, file release, and synchronization
Continuous back-up at the central server
Instant access to newly created files anywhere on the WAN
Secure encryption keeps your sensitive data safe
Completely transparent to end-users, no training required
Easy installation, browser-based management, and firewall friendly (tunnel through HTTP/S)

You can view a flash demo:
http://www.globalscape.com/wafs/Revit_Video_Skin.html

or read more detailed information from our website product page:
http://www.globalscape.com/wafs/revit.aspx

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Inconsistent naming for the Paste Aligned tools

I noticed the other day that the Paste Aligned drop-down in Revit Structure has a case of " I don't know what I want to be called". Should I be called"Select Levels" or "Select Levels by Name" or should I be called"Pick Level Graphics" or "Pick Level"?

If you look at the drop-down selection from using the tool in the Modify contextual tab your list will look as follows:

• Select Levels
• Select Views
• Current View
• Same Place
• Pick Level Graphics

If you look at the drop-down selection from using the tool in the Modify tab your list will look as follows:

• Select Levels by Name
• Select Views
• Current View
• Same Place
• Pick Level

I personally like "Select Levels by Name" and "Pick Level Graphics" because that is what you are doing. Regardless of what they are called, all methods of placement appear to do the same thing. I am sure in a future version The Factory will decide on which names to go with.

New Filter Categories added in 2010

I believe that it was in Revit Structure 2009 that the "Level" category was added to the filters tool when creating a "Define Criteria" filter. We used this to auto hide those additional levels that we created to reference geometry to. These additional levels usually were not required to be displayed in our views. What we did was created a "Define Criteria" filter that was set to find any Level whose Type name contained "Hide in View". This filter was then applied to our view templates where its visibility was set to be turned off in the Visibility/Graphics Overrides, within the Filter tab.


I have been waiting for the "Section" category to be added as well, and with Revit Structure 2010 my wish has come true. Callouts, Elevations, and the Section category have been added. We can now do the same thing with our working sections. These are a section type that we create for working in the model. These sections will never be put on a sheet and will not plot as long as check the "Hide unreferenced view tags" checkbox in the Print Setup options. That was all great, but users were starting to work around them with other annotation and text as if they were going to plot when they would not. Below shows our working sections showing up in a documentation view.

Here is the filter we created to keep them removed: (the Filter tool can be found on the View Ribbon tab in the Graphics panel)

If a working section needs to become a Project Section you just have to switch its Type and it reappears beause it no longer meets the criteria of the fitler. You can filter by whatever criteria works for you.

The 2009 work around was to set our working views one scale above our documentation views. Working sections were only to be cut in a working view. This way the sections "Hide at scales coarser than" instant parameter was set such that it would not display in a view whose scale was coarser than the working view. This worked pretty good as long as the users were following the rules. I like the filter method much better.

Thank you Factory for this addition. It's these little things that can make certain task go just a little bit smoother.