CONTROLLING VISIBILITY AND WORKSETS | 65

Undo, Undo,…Undo!
We tend to rely on the good old Undo button to clean up our messes, but beware: the Undo func-
tion will have no effect on workset ownership or borrowing of elements. Once you own a workset
or borrow an element, it is yours until you release it. Additionally, should you delete objects such
as views or families from the Project Browser without fi rst making their workset editable, the
Undo history is reset. Just as you would when opening and unloading a linked fi le, you should take
extreme care when deleting anything.

Controlling Visibility and Worksets

One of the key advantages to using Revit for project design is that it enables you to visualize the
model. You can also use visibility settings to define how your views will appear on construction
documents. With the model divided into worksets that denote the engineering systems, you can
harness this power to help you design more efficiently by using working views. A working view
is one that may show more or less model information than would be represented on a construc-
tion document.
The first feature of visibility control is simply turning items on or off. This applies not only
to model categories but also to worksets. When worksharing has been enabled in a project, an
additional tab, Worksets, appears in the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog box, as shown in
Figure 3.23.

Figure 3.23
Visibility/Graphic
Overrides dialog
box
66 | CHAPTER 3 WORKSETS AND WORKSHARING

This tab of the dialog box provides a list of the User-Created worksets in the project and
enables you to set the visibility behavior of the worksets in the current view.

There are three options for workset visibility in a view:

◆ When you hide a workset, none of the items assigned to that workset are visible in the view,
even if the categories of the individual items are set to Visible. The visibility settings for the
workset take precedence over the settings for model categories.
◆ The Use Global Setting option means that the visibility of the workset is determined by the
Visible In All Views setting established when the workset was created or the status of that
setting in the Worksets dialog box. The status is shown in parentheses.
◆ The Show option is an override of Use Global Setting, which could be set to Not Visible.
Using Show displays the elements assigned to this workset regardless of what the global
setting requires. If an element does not appear, other factors (such as filters, design options,
or individual graphic overrides) may be determining visibility.

When setting up your project worksets, it is important to consider this functionality.

Thinking about what types of systems or groups of model components might need to be turned
on or off will help you determine what worksets to create. Doing so early will save time from
having to do it later, when the model contains many components that would have to be modi-
fied, and will make controlling visibility easier from the start.
Although this workflow is a valid one, consider that in any office you may have a mixture of
workset-enabled projects and others that just come in the standard file format. Some users may
even be using the Revit LT version of the platform, where worksharing cannot be enabled and
the MEP features, although visible, are not meant to be edited. While worksets can be added to
view templates, they cannot be added into your project-template file because worksets cannot
exist in a project template. This means that you cannot create a standard view template to carry
through all your projects. The alternative would be to use filters that can be applied in the tem-
plate file and can cover most, if not all, of your needs for view control.
Another way to control a workset’s visibility is to determine whether the workset will be
opened when the project is opened. In the Open dialog box, you can click the arrow button next
to the Open button to access options indicating which worksets to open with the file. Figure 3.24
shows the options.
Selecting the All option will open all the User-Created worksets when the file opens. This
does not mean that all the worksets will be visible in every view; it just means that the worksets
are open, or loaded into the project. Selecting the Editable option will open (load) all worksets
that are editable (owned) by you. If another user has ownership of a workset, it will not be
opened with this option. The Last Viewed option is the default.
 CONTROLLING VISIBILITY AND WORKSETS | 67

Figure 3.24
Workset options
in the Open dialog
box

File Links on the Recent Files Screen

Whatever option you choose from the Open dialog box will be applied to the thumbnail link of the
fi le on the Recent Files screen. Using the link opens your fi le with the Last Viewed workset settings
applied. However, as with using Windows Explorer to open a fi le, using the Recent Files screen is
not a recommended workflow with workset projects; it is a best practice to always use the Open
dialog box. You could be opening an old local fi le or even the central fi le itself—both of which can
cause problems, not just for yourself, but also for everyone else on your project team.

The final option for opening (loading) worksets in a file is the Specify option. This option
allows you to choose which worksets will be open when the file is opened. Selecting Specify
opens the dialog box shown in Figure 3.25, where you can choose the worksets to open.
Specify is a powerful option because it can greatly improve the file-opening time and overall
performance of your model. If you need to work on a system in the model and do not need to
see other systems, you can choose not to open their respective worksets, decreasing the amount
of time for view regeneration and limiting the number of behind-the-scenes calculations that
are occurring when you work on your design. If you decide later that you want to see the items
on a workset that you did not open when you opened the file, you can open the workset via the
Worksets dialog box. When you open the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog box for a view,
unopened worksets will appear in the list with an asterisk next to them, as shown in Figure 3.26.
So if you are not seeing a workset that is set to be visible, you can quickly see that it is not visible
because it is not open.
68 | CHAPTER 3 WORKSETS AND WORKSHARING

Figure 3.25
The Opening
Worksets dialog
box

Figure 3.26
Unopened
worksets will
appear in the list
with an asterisk
next to them in
the Visibility/Graphic
Overrides dialog box

One way to use this functionality for improved performance is to create a workset for each
Revit file that you will link into your project. This gives you the option of not opening the work-
set of a linked file without having to unload the linked file.
 ENHANCING COMMUNICATION | 69

Enhancing Communication
In previous versions of Revit MEP, users actually had to talk to each other when someone wanted
control of a workset or borrowed object—well, really! Seriously, though, this can and did lead to
some strange work practices. Picture this: 10 people on a project team sitting at small desks in a
small office, working on the same model . . . and the only mode of communication was email!
Users can stay in their comfort bubbles, and Revit now provides a “heads up” notification
when an editing request has been made. In Figure 3.27, user simon.whitbread wants ownership
of a selection of objects but cannot have it until users JOHN.DOE and larry.lamb relinquish con-
trol, so simon.whitbread places a request.

Figure 3.27
Workset place
request

After the request has been made, a notification message, shown in Figure 3.28, pops up at
both JOHN.DOE’s and larry.lamb’s workstations.

Figure 3.28
Editing Request
Received messages

If the user ignores the notification, the status bar will show a highlighted request and indi-
cate the number of requests (Figure 3.29).
70 | CHAPTER 3 WORKSETS AND WORKSHARING

Figure 3.29 Number of editing

Status bar indicating requests received
requests

When the user clicks this message, the Editing Requests dialog box is displayed, as shown
in Figure 3.30. This shows all the pending requests between you and other users, the objects
involved, and, if necessary, whether synchronizing with the central file is required. This
requirement may be due to objects being changed, edited, or deleted rather than only that the
workset is owned.

Figure 3.30
Editing Requests
dialog box

And, of course, depending on the users’ workflow, they can either grant or deny access to
these objects. The varying results can be seen in Figure 3.31.

Figure 3.31
Results of request
actions

Editing request denied by Editing request granted by

user JOHN.DOE user larry.lamb
 USING REVIT SERVER | 71

As described in Chapter 1, “Exploring the User Interface,” you can turn on the worksharing
display that allows you to see the owners and/or worksets of all the objects in the view in
which you are working. This can be useful for general modeling or as an overview of the whole
building model. Figure 3.32 shows the display.

Figure 3.32
Worksharing
display

Using Revit Server

It would be possible to devote an entire chapter to configuring Revit Server, but this book is pri-
marily aimed at the user, rather than the installation side of things. So, with that said, what does
the user need to know about Revit Server?
In essence, the experience should be very similar to the file type of worksharing—you open a
central file from the Revit Server and Revit creates a local file that you work on and synchronize
your changes.
However, before you even get to opening a file, you should check that you are using an
accelerator. The main purpose of using Revit Server is so that geographically dispersed teams
can effectively work on the same project file. Now, given that Revit project files can be on the
large side (200–300 MB is not unusual), you don’t want Revit to upload and download all that
data every time you create a new local file—it just isn’t efficient. This is where the accelera-
tor comes in. The accelerator creates a cached copy of the central file, which is then accessed
by the other users who are connected to that accelerator. Even though you browse to the host
server—let’s say a Revit Server in Oklahoma—the majority of the data comes from your nearest
accelerator that has been configured to be London, giving you a better user experience. You can
find out more about your accelerator, if any exists, by clicking Manage Connection To A Revit
Accelerator, which you’ll find on the Collaborate tab, as shown in Figure 3.33.
72 | CHAPTER 3 WORKSETS AND WORKSHARING

Figure 3.33
Revit Server
Accelerator

If an accelerator is not set, you can type in its name or an IP address and your Revit Server
Accelerator is displayed, as you can see in Figure 3.34.

Figure 3.34
Your Revit Server
Accelerator is displayed
 USING REVIT SERVER | 73

When it comes to the creation of a local file, this is slightly different from the file type of
worksharing. You have to use the Open dialog box to browse to the Revit Server Network, as
shown in Figure 3.35.

Figure 3.35
Revit Server
Network

In Figure 3.35, we can see two Revit Servers; they are both host servers and accelerators,
meaning that teams from either location can work on each other’s files with relative ease. The
first time a file is opened from a server, the data is cached to the appropriate accelerator. For the
user, the experience should be almost identical to the file-based worksharing method.
In reality, this can sometimes make the performance seem a bit slower, as in some cases you
may be moving and synchronizing data across entire countries or continents.
Your BIM/Revit manager can track file usage and lock central files for periodic maintenance,
backing up, and transmittal from a web-based interface. Knowing the address of the server, you
can view your Revit Server Network, as shown in Figure 3.36. Expanding the folders, you are
able to view and perform administrative tasks to your central file, as shown in Figure 3.37.

Figure 3.36
Revit Server
Administrator