Ability to edit workgroup referenced files

[Christiaan]

Currently you can only edit workgroup referenced files by opening those particular files separately. This is probably the single greatest barrier to working effectively as a group on one project, as you're always either asking someone to do an edit for you or asking them to close the drawing so you can open it and make the edit yourself.

I'm assuming this is not a trivial matter, but were it pulled off in a robust and intuitive manner our ability to work together as a group on projects would go through the roof.

I've heard this requested before in various venues but I thought I'd get it on the forum.

[Petri]

Normally, files can't be shared in this way. With the VW structure, for example, suppose you and Petri are working together on a project and you both have the document open. Petri changes door A, while you're working on window B. He saves his changes, but that doesn't affect the file you have loaded into your workstation's RAM - so when you save your changes, his are overwritten and his work is lost

Not necessarily. I am an Archangel and Christiaan is just a humble Serafim. Alternatively, I was there first so what I say, goes.

[islandmon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_linking_and_embedding

At the time many in the industry felt that the Publish and Subscribe concept was the "next big thing". Apple and Microsoft were not the only two companies trying to introduce such a system; most major software vendors attempted to introduce similar systems, and unsurprisingly NeXTSTEP included a powerful and very easy-to-implement version. However it did not take long to notice that users could find few real-world uses for the system. Further it was sometimes confusing to use; if the document included live links it was no longer possible to simply copy it to a floppy disk (for instance), the clipping file had to be copied as well. Eventually most vendors simply abandoned the concept, while Microsoft re-positioned theirs as an internet browser plugin system known as ActiveX.

[Christiaan]

I don't have time for people like you. You know so little that's it not even funny.

When I was a kid I had a little girl say something like that to me once. I think you might have a crush on me.

[Christiaan]

A few links for those interested in collaborative CAD:

Enabling REVIT Worksets:

http://revitrocks.blogspot.com/2006/04/enabling-revit-worksets.html

"Worksets help organize your project and act as a security guard on who can edit what. You can see it all but you are only allowed to edit certain objects."

BIM There, Done That

http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=380006

"Also, ideally, you'll also need to facilitate real-time communication between team members. In a shared model (Teamwork in ArchiCAD, Worksets in Revit), many people can be working in a model simultaneously. Inevitably, you'll need to work on something that is already in use by someone else."

Policing BIM Town

http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=383418

"Working in the building information model requires a whole new set of rules and regulations"

"Fast Track" Is No Sweat with ArchiCAD

http://www.hk-resources.com/PDF%20Docume...%20ArchiCAD.htm

"After more than a year using ArchiCAD, Dowds credits ArchiCAD's TeamWork functionality with dramatically increasing their productivity ... What Dowds missed about manual drafting was the ability to look at the work that was being done on drawing boards, and review it on the spot. "Computer drafting generally doesn't work so well. You can't look at somebody's computer and understand what they are doing because a lot of the pertinent information is not showing on the screen."

"But with TeamWork, Dowds is able to see what his colleagues are working on, as he has the ability to be in the same file at the same time. He also finds himself much more involved in the drafting process, because he is able to easily 'get in and get out.' "I feel like I am in control of the drawings again."

[P Retondo]

this is an interesting thread, and your comments about archicad are correct, and i think revit works the same way. they are both database programs, and users have their own copies of the database while the main copy stays on the server. using the marquee tool you can window an area of the building and sign out those objects and no one else can edit those objects until you send&receive. i'm not exactly sure how ac does it, but it's really cool. if vw ever got something like this it would make it a much better competitor with ac and revit.

Grace, I see the advantages of the system, but having done only a little work in ArchiCAD and none in Revit, I'm not totally familiar with how the system might work. As far as I know a database file is still a file, and I'd be very curious to know whether the "database" in this instance is actually a pseudo-file that references multiple files, or whether there is actually technology that allows this kind of system to work with a single file. The description you give of different users having "their own copies" while the "main copy stays on the server" is true of any file used by any program on any workstation in a server-based environment - in other words, you can make the exact same statement regarding .mcd files.

Regardless of the details, VectorWorks has to go there or it will never be able to compete in the kind of market Christiaan's office represents. The flexibility and power of such a system are just too superior to WGR. You could reconstruct the same functionality in today's VW by having dozens of files all linked via WGR into a master project file, but administering the complexity would be nearly impossible, (even for an Archangel?).

[Christiaan]

The description you give of different users having "their own copies" while the "main copy stays on the server" is true of any file used by any program on any workstation in a server-based environment - in other words, you can make the exact same statement regarding .mcd files.

Not sure what you mean here Pete. I work directly off a server in VW, and when I save a file I produce network traffic, because the file is situated on the server, not my local volume. When you save a file while using ArchCAD TeamWork you don't produce any network traffic because the file is very much on your local volume. Only at the point of synchronisation with the master file is any network traffic produced.

[P Retondo]

When you save a file while using ArchCAD TeamWork you don't produce any network traffic because the file is very much on your local volume. Only at the point of synchronisation with the master file is any network traffic produced.

Christiaan, are you sure about that? When I was working in ArchiCAD the local file was in RAM only, not saved even temporarily to the local hard drive. But I wasn't using the teamwork aspect of the program.

[Christiaan]

Yeah, see this page:

http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/teamwork/

"... A satellite of the project is then created on the team member's computer, eliminating dependence on a live network. At any time - by network - team members can send changes to the master project and receive changes that others have made. Team members can send and receive single elements, and can add notes and mark up elements in each other's workspace."

[Christiaan]

Another link.

The Virtual Building Concept

http://www.3dcadco.com/flash/products/p_virtualbuilding.htm

"Unlike antiquated drawing sharing techniques like Reference files and XREFS, developed over 20 years ago, ArchiCAD?s TeamWork functionality allows a building?s responsibilities to be divided just as a real project is divided."

[P Retondo]

Christiaan, got all that, it still doesn't tell us how this is done technically. A key clue would be whether, in your words, there is "network traffic" when the ArchiCAD workstation user saves his or her work ("saves," not "updates"). Do you have first hand info about this? If, when the user saves the file it goes back to the server, then that tells us that the workstation's version exists in RAM, not on a local disk. In that case what I say above should be correct, about how with VectorWorks it would be possible to cobble together the same system using WGR (not that anyone would want to do that!).

Of course we're just digressing here, but I find these kinds of facts interesting when I think about where VectorWorks might be going in the future. To my thinking, when we advocate for a feature it's important to have some idea how fundamentally different the technology behind it might be. I'll talk to a friend of mine who does SQL programming, he might be able to educate me about these things - I only know about "ordinary" files and C++ procedures.

[Christiaan]

The network traffic I mention above is to do with updating the master, not saving the file. I've been reading some of the threads on the ArchiCAD forum and you can actually sign out parts of the project, shut down your laptop, go home with it and then come back in the next day and synchronise your changes with the master.

I'll talk to a friend of mine who does SQL programming, he might be able to educate me about these things - I only know about "ordinary" files and C++ procedures.

Keep us posted Pete. I'd be interested to know what he says.

[eric.rktek]

Christiaan & Pete,

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in. We are switching the bulk of our design and documentation work from VW to Revit. We have gone through several training classes, and feel that Revit has the power to effective handle BIM for project documentation. Part of this decision was influenced by one member of our office that came from a firm that was the first in town to start using Revit several years ago. Teamwork on a project, as well as the additional power of the program were extremely important concerns for us. From everything we see, Revit does a really good job with both. We also had to consider that we are a primarily mac based office, and are running windows on Parallels desktop for a couple of the machines.

Revit handles teamwork by letting you divide a project up into worksets. These are totally definable by the user- interior, exterior, structure, west wing, east wing as examples. There is a Central Project file on a server. Each user has a child version of the file on their local computer. There is a "Save to Central" command that pushes your changes back to the Central file. It takes active management to coordinate who owns different areas of a project, but we see that as part of collaboration, and far better than any current options in VW.

I mentioned that we are going to use Revit for most of our work. We plan to continue to use VW for site planning, as it's tools are much better for presentation and layout than the current package in Revit.

[P Retondo]

NNA take note, here is a user since MiniCAD 4 who was unable to bring to the table a winnning case for VW versus Revit, despite the costs of changing over.

[Christiaan]

I asked David Harrison of Stree-Free.co.nz (who is doing a PhD entitled 'Building Digital Bridges' at Victoria Uni in Wellington, NZ) to comment on this subject, and here's his post:

http://www.stress-free.co.nz/cad_collaboration

[P Retondo]

Christiaan, thanks to you and David. It still remains a bit of a mystery to me how the "master/satellite" system is actually managed. I'm not aware that in writing to disk it is possible to write only selected portions of a file (I may be in error in this belief!).

In the updating process, does software on the server take master and satellite into one file, sort each object for permission and time stamp, then integrate into one file to overwrite the original? Or what? These are the questions that I'm curious about.

[Christiaan]

In the updating process, does software on the server take master and satellite into one file, sort each object for permission and time stamp, then integrate into one file to overwrite the original? Or what? These are the questions that I'm curious about.

Me too.

[David Harrison]

Hi Christiaan (and others),

I have posted a follow up to the CAD Collaboration article that goes into a little more (generic) detail about the satellite approach. At the end of the day I am afraid the complexity (or brute force simplicity) of the synchronisation process is specific to the application:

http://www.stress-free.co.nz/following_up_on_cad_collaboration

David

[Christiaan]

Thanks David, much appreciated.

[P Retondo]

David, thanks, but I'm still mystified. Every object in the file has an identifier (tag), so I guess it would be possible to assign permissions to each. But what if two different users each create new objects, and their programs assign the same identifier in their separate satellite files? Okay, there can be user-specific prefixes or suffixes. But what about subtleties like "forward" and "back" in overlapping graphics, changes to resources like textures and symbols, and on and on. Plus, where does the program that coordinates all of this reside - on the server? Doubt that. Does the user's version do all the work, and what if two users are updating at one time?

Seems like a huge ball of potential pitfalls and difficulties (but that's what software developers are for!). I'd be very curious to know how Revit and ArchiCAD do it, exactly, and how reliable the functionality is.

[P Retondo]

Sorry, the correct term for the object identifier is "handle," in ACAD parlance.

[AndiACD]

i know it's different world, but CGI/Film teams(sorry, armies of modellers, animators and renderers) work together on projects with software that seems to allow them to get a project finished in a time scale that results in a reasonably seamless product so it must be plausible for an application to allow more than 1 person to work at the same time on a file without stamping on others toes and upsetting everybody whilst they're doing it.

C4D has a networking option that is supposed to allow it, but i haven't needed this for some years now . . . . .

Correct me if i'm wrong.