Repost: HOK BIM Solutions: Sync with Central Best Practices

Sync with Central Best Practices

Here’s a list of best practices David Ivey shared for synchronizing with central (SWC) in Revit:

Never leave for extended periods of time (i.e. Lunch, Meeting, Home) after hitting the Sync button.
Revit will often ask for something before the process is complete, and if this happens while you’re out, your team can be stuck with a central file that is ‘in use’, and be kept from saving/working.

Always use the Worksharing Monitor (WSM), and consult it before hitting the Sync button.
This will save you and your team time by not making Revit slowly wade through two or more concurrent SWC attempts. Wait for an opening in the WSM, and then sync. And yes, WSM will work in a Citrix Revit session.





Always use the Sync and Modify Settings command, so that you are presented with the dialogue to release borrowed and owned elements. 



Check all available boxes when syncing (with the exception of the Compact box), so that all objects and elements are returned to the central file.



Add comments in the field provided. These comments are helpful in tracking down problems that may occur from time-to-time in the model. Short, concise descriptions of work are all that is required. This is a problem solving tool, and not a means for assigning blame (as some believe).

Always save locally when prompted.  SWC when prompted when working alone, or after consulting the WSM on small team projects (2-5).  For larger projects, consult with your project’s BIM Coordinator.  On larger projects, there may be a SWC schedule to follow, usually set in 30-120 minute increments depending on project, team, and model size, or during deadlines.

Over-communication with your team is far better than poor communication. Utilize Jabber (or other instant messaging application), email, your phone, or your voice, and make sure you and your team are all on the same page.

Repost: HOK BIM Solutions - Phantom Keynotes

This is a really good post on keynote issues. If you are not already following, I recommend following the HOK BIM Solutions blog. They provide a lot of useful information.

Phantom Keynotes 2.0

I posted about this topic in the past (see Phantom Keynotes) and it seems that we keep finding issues with Keynote Legends reporting keynotes that don’t seem to exist in the view. I have also written a follow-up post (see More on Keynotes) to discuss other visibility issues and other problems related to this functionality and the current User Interaction shortfalls. Recently some Electrical users pointed me to additional instances of misreporting by Keynote Legends, so this post will summarize those findings. These can be reproduced in Revit 2015.

1. If the Annotation Crop Region is not enabled, keynotes attached to objects that lie outside the model crop region are still reported, which is completely unexpected. The result is the same whether you use Element Keynotes or User Keynotes. The expected behavior should be that if keynoted objects lie outside of the model crop region, those keynotes should not appear in the legend, regardless of whether the annotation crop region is enabled or disabled.
2. Another instance of Phantom Keynotes occurs with keynoted elements in close proximity to the view’s model crop region. This issue is exacerbated even more when the tags are far from the objects they are attached to. With the Annotation Crop Region enabled, the keynote still appears in the legend unless the boundary of the Annotation Crop region touches the edge of the keynote annotation. This is completely unexpected and the following series of images illustrate the problem:

 

If the Model and Annotation Crop Regions are adjusted such that both the model element and the keynote tag lie outside these boundaries, the legend will rightly not report that keynote:

However the Keynote Legend will still incorrectly report the keynote if only the model element is outside of the Model Crop Region, but the Keynote Tag is within the Annotation Crop Region (the legend is actually only concerned about the tag, not the model element):

 

Please be very careful when using this functionality and double check your work (don’t assume that the Keynote Legend will hide unrelated keynotes for you!). The only workaround at the moment is to pick the keynote tags that shouldn’t be listed in the legend and manually hide them in the view, which is a very ugly workaround. The following process needs to be followed for each view:

1. Select all instances of the keynote tag in the project;
2. Remove all keynote tags visible in the view from the selection;
3. Right-Click and Hide all instances in the view.

The desired and expected Keynote Legend filtering is as follows:

• If the keynoted model element is not visible in the view and as a consequence the tag is also not visible, do not report it;
• If the Keynote Tag is not visible because it is manually hidden in the view or because it touches or is outside the Annotation Crop Region, do not report it