Revit 2016 - Collaboration for Revit 2016 is Available

The 2016 version of C4R (Collaboration for Revit) is available now.

Click this to download or click the image for an overview

You'll need to visit your Subscription page to access the download to install it. Look at the Services page and it should be listed among whatever services you are entitled to. If you don't see it then you'll have to sort out your A360 account first.

This is the video they offer at the online help documentation site to explain how to initiate a project with C4R

Shared Coordinates and Collaboration for Revit

I've not written anything about Collaboration for Revit (aka C4R) yet. It's a recent development that puts a project in the cloud to give a project team access to the project data regardless where they are.

When it comes to Shared Coordinates, the Publish Coordinates tool is disabled. Acquire Coordinates does work.

As I understand the issue, Publish Coordinates is the only time that Revit has to be able to write changes to a linked file. The current A360 and C4R infrastructure doesn't support allowing that to happen...yet. They do understand it is something we want and need to do.

Regardless I'd still use Acquire Coordinates on a source survey file within a Master Site file, as usual. Then I'd link any building files and position them on the site, just like I'd normally do. To cope with the loss of Publish Coordinates I'd put location markers (a unique family for example) that allow me to figure out how to link and align Master Site in each building correctly afterward.

As I just mentioned, in each Building file I'd link the Master Site model and move, rotate and elevate it as required. Then I can use Acquire Coordinates and pick Master Site. This will pull the correct Shared Coordinates into the building model. I'd repeat that for each building.

I'd do the little building position dance in Master Site even though I could probably figure out how to do the reverse (position Master Site in each Building) somehow. I'd find it a little easier to work out each building's relationship to the Master Site model this way, seeing them all together at the same time in Master Site. I think it provides for better context.

When other trades get going they just need to link the Architecture model using Auto - Origin to Origin and then use Acquire Coordinates, picking the Architecture model. It's a cascading nested understanding of the survey coordinates, using Acquire Coordinates all the way down.

SMEP-Models - AC from - A-Model - AC from - Master Site - AC from - Site Survey

When they return their files to the architect they just need to be linked using Auto - Origin to Origin too. Technically if they do use Acquire Coordinates using By Shared Coordinates would work but if they didn't Auto - Origin to Origin is reliable...as long as they understand it is important that they start out using Auto - Origin to Origin themselves, when they link the architecture model.

Be Careful Creating a Central File in 2015

A thread at Autodesk's Revit User Community Forum caught my attention yesterday. It seemed as though the culprit was something I've written about before, that user's were accessing the project via different shared resource paths. After digging in a bit deeper it turns out the issue, or at least an issue, is that Revit 2015 is more sensitive to how we navigate to the a shared resource.

This is what happens when I browse to a shared folder via My Computer and click on the Drive letter S:

This is what I expected to see (disregard the project name, I was experimenting with being logged in and out of A360 too):

A clue or warning you can watch for is what Revit displays at the top of the Save As dialog.

If you see the drive letter in the description then you'll likely end up with that as your path. I believe you should only see the folder the central file will be in if you are mapped correctly.

It is my habit to always use Synchronize and Modify Settings before closing the Central File, after creating it. As such I can see what the path that Revit captured is. When I notice that it is wrong, like the first image above, I can fix it, get the correct UNC path recognized instead by taking these steps (see the image that follows too):

• Close the Central File (after noticing the wrong path reference)
• Create a local file (before any other users start to work)
• Use Synchronize with Central
• Click Browse and click Browse again in the next dialog box that opens
• Select the Central File by browsing to it via the shared resource path instead, type it in directly if necessary.
• Click Open
• Click OK (the correct UNC path should appear now)
• Click OK (The path is fixed)

If you are creating a central file be very careful about how you browse to the project folder. Verify you have the correct path established before letting users begin working on the project.

Our Revit Username and Signing into A360

When Autodesk began introducing Autodesk 360 based tools and services they provided us with a place to sign in to our account within Revit too. We can sign in via the Info Bar.

Regarding using worksets, when we are using Revit 2014 we can sign in to our A360 account and it leaves our current Revit username alone. When we are using Revit 2015 logging into A360 will attempt to change our username to match our A360 username. If we are already working in a Local File with a different username we'll get this warning message and signing in to A360 fails.

If we are working on a project that doesn't use Worksets we will be able to sign into A360 but it will change our username in the process.

If we attempt to open an existing Local File later we'll encounter this warning.

If we intend to work on a project, that uses worksets (as many of us do), then we need to make sure we've already logged into A360 before we create/open our Local File to avoid this issue. In Revit 2015 we can sign into A360 via the Options Dialog too.

I'm making a habit of checking my username before starting any work AND logging into A360 first if I intend to use it. That's the tricky part, will I and when? How many people this affects right now compared is another question. The concept of Autodesk 360 poses EyeTee with an interesting problem, creating and managing separate user (other than their own domain) accounts at Autodesk.