BIM Tools Weekly

- [Instructor] I've been lucky lately, because I've been using Collaboration for Revit. I say that here, 'cause it has its own Worksharing Monitor that's pretty awesome. Not that this Worksharing Monitor isn't really cool. Again, I like to pick on these add-ins that have made the cut and are in the new Revit interface for 2018. Let's take a look. The first thing I'm going to do is violate any standard that I've ever put out there and I'm going to jump right into the central model. Under Projects I'm going to go Open, I'm going to find a Workshared model and uncheck Create New Local, I'm a violator.

I'm going to click Open. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with people that I know were in the central model and said they weren't. Well, now we can watch 'em. If we go to Add-Ins and we can launch the WSM, Worksharing Monitor. It takes a second to load in. I love that it's red. I'm working in the central model, not good. Let's take a look at a few things. I'm going to go to Options, I like to keep the Worksharing Monitor on top of other applications.

The Desktop Alert stays until I close it. Under Central File Access Display a Desktop Alert, you turn them all on. Editing Requests, I like to turn them all on. Notifications, yeah, let's see it. Not everyone wants all these turned on, but if you're a BIM manager and you're in the project, yeah, that's your gig. Turn all this stuff on, so you can see what people are doing. Hit OK. We can go to System Performance, which is kind of nice. In the past it used to be the Worksharing Monitor actually slowed your computer down, so it doesn't do that now, but we can at least monitor CPU usage.

I'm going to close out of here. And, of course, there's always Help. I'm going to synchronize. I'm going to hit OK. Now it says that I'm syncing, and I'm working in central. Your changes to the central file have been saved successfully, awesome. I'm going to minimize this, I'm going to close out of this model, and I'm going to open a model the right way. Create New Local, go to Open, Overwrite, and I can close out of here.

Now my Worksharing Monitor has been minimized, but if I open it up, there it's not red, I like it. Again, we have all the same options, doesn't matter if we're in the central or not. I'm going to change this back to here, I think that's a little better. Click OK and there I am. And, of course, Editing Requests and Notifications. No one's told me to do anything yet, so I'm good to go. And as we can see, I'm working in the local.

And if I synchronize now, bam. It's nice to have these alerts, it's also really nice to see who's in and out of your models. Now your users know you're watching them. Always watching.