Copying and monitoring elements - Revit Tutorial

We're starting a new chapter now in our Revit Architecture certified professional preparation course. And we're going to be looking at collaboration within Revit Architecture, and cover some of the topics that may be covered in your professional exam. Now you'll notice at the top of the screen there, I've got Project 1 open. And what we've got, is we've got a linked Revit file linked in to Project 1. So Project 1 is the host project, and the linked file, if I hover over it here, you'll see, is the RevitSampleProject.rvt file. Now that's the Revit sample project rvt file that you can download from the website and use as the exercise files for this particular video. Now if I jump into the insert tab here on the ribbon, you'll see there's the link Revit command that I used to link the Revit sample project through. Just link it through and use auto origin to origin as the sort of coordinate setting. It doesn't matter too much about the coordinate setting, as long as it's a linked file into Project1. So you start up Revit, start up a blank project, and link RevitSampleProject through. If I go to manage links, you'll see there's the RevitSampleProject.rvt file and it's a linked Revit file, it's linked through to the blank project that you started with. I'm not going to make any changes there, so I'll click on cancel. Now if I zoom out a bit, you can see that this is quite a big linked file and if hover over it, there it is there, you can see it's an rvt linked file. Now when you're collaborating with Revit projects, it may be that you're working in Revit Architecture but you've linked ... Poor example, a Revit structure model coming in from the structural contractor. Now the good thing is, is you can copy and monitor elements from the structural model, the linked model into your host model, which is your Project1, as you can see at the top of the screen. So if I go to the collaborate tab on the ribbon like so, and go over here to the coordinate panel, there's a copy monitor pull down there. Click on it and you want to select link. So I'm going to select the linked file like so. Soon as I click on that linked file, you can see there that I've now got the option to copy/monitor coordination settings all on the contextual copy monitor tab on the ribbon. I'm going to go to copy there, and you can see that I can copy and monitor multiple elements. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to zoom in and I'm just going to select this wall, and you'll see the little copy/monitor symbol, and this wall, there's the copy/monitor symbol as well. Now what I've down there, is I've copied them both into the host project, Project1. So if I now click on finish, what'll happen is I've now got two elements in my host project. If I just hit escape a couple of times, you'll notice now there's the linked file. If I zoom out a bit, there's the linked file. So I can see it there. If I go to insert now, and go to manage links, I'll select my RevitSampleProject, and I'm going to unload it briefly. It'll say that you can't use the undo/redo buttons after unloading a link, that's okay, I'll just OK that, and then I'll OK the dialogue box. So you can see now, there's the two copied elements that I've brought in, like so. They're right there. So you can see I've copied those two elements from the linked file into the host file. So I'll go back to manage links now, I'll select RevitSampleProject again, and I'll just reload that back up, and you can see it's been upgraded. Now you may get a little upgrade like this because the exercise files are all saved back to Revit Architecture 2014 for you. So this will take a few minutes just to upgrade and load the link document up. The trick is, once you've saved all these exercise files, just make sure that you save them to your version of Revit. It saves this little upgrade load link coming in. It takes a few seconds to do. So as you can see, that's all done. Little Windows wheel going round there, everything is sorting itself out. Now that will happen occasionally, just be aware of that when you load up a project that is older than your particular version of Revit. Don't panic when you see that dialogue box. Not a problem, it's just upgrading the file. If you look down at the status bar at the bottom of the screen there, you can see it's currently at 73%, and it'll just take a little while to upgrade, and then all you've got to do is click on OK, and there it is back again like so. The trick is, once you've done that little upgrade, just make sure that you save your Revit project, then it's saved to your version of Revit. Bear in mind that the exercise files are all Revit Architecture 2014, so they will upgrade when you load them up. So, we've got those files all set up properly now, and we've got those elements copied across into the host project. Let's go back to the collaborate tab, and let's say that I want to run something like a coordination review. Now I can monitor these elements as well. So a coordination review, if I select link like so, and I select the linked file, you'll see that at the moment with the coordination review, there's nothing there because we haven't changed anything. However, if you did change something and then ran a coordination review, where you're monitoring those elements as well as copying them, you can make changes. So if I just OK that for the moment, there's nothing there. What I can do is zoom in on these copied elements, so there's one there, like so. So that's a basic wall at the moment in the properties. Let's change that to a different wall type. Let's go for that one there. So I've changed that and now what'll happen is I can check that when I go back to collaborate here, like so. And if I run a coordination review now and select the link, what'll happen is it should show the changes. Now it won't show the changes, because I haven't actually saved the file. So if I save the file, what will happen is it will actually show me those changes in the coordination review. But because I haven't saved any changes, it won't show anything yet. Now I'm not going to bore you just by saving a file and opening it up again, but that's how copy and monitor work when you're collaborating in Revit Architecture.