Working from Home

This question comes up all the time during training sessions. Some firms cut it off at the knees, "No work at home, sorry". They don't allow employees to take work (at least computer files and such) home at all. You still take your brain with you (hopefully) so it's not like you can't be thinking your way through a problem eh? You'll just have to commit it to digital in the office.

First question I ask, "Is anybody else involved?" Usually the answer is, "Yeah, probably, maybe..?"

There are a couple solo options, meaning if you go home and want to work AND there are other people involved you can't leave until they ALL finish and you have to be the first one back in the office in the morning. Everybody else needs to be aware you intend to work on the project this way.

If more than one of you want to do this on the same evening...skip to the end for the Remote Desktop option.

Brute Force Technique (aka - "It's my world, you're just living in it")

Heading Home
Copy the file and any necessary linked models and go home
Open the project file using Detach from Central
Save the file using a new name
Fix any broken links
Work till you drop - copy the file(s) to flash drive

Heading to Work
Copy the file to your flash drive
At the office open the project file using Detach from Central
Save the file using the original central file name
Fix any broken links
Work till you drop and go home

Keep in mind that if anyone else does this too, on the same evening, the first one that gets into the office and creates the new central file wins, the other loses. You'll be stuck trying to copy/paste your changes into the project.

Slightly Less Brute Force Technique
You can also do essentially the same thing with your local file if you wait until everyone else uses SwC and leaves.
In your local file open the Workset dialog
Check all the workset types so they are all listed above
Select them all and make them editable
You'll own all the worksets which means nobody will be able to do anything until you return. (This means you can just take your local file home and work "at risk" because the central file can't be found but nobody else can borrow a workset anyway, you've got them all.)
Return to the office in the morning
Put your local back in place
Use SwC to relinquish all the worksets and update the central file.

Same warning stands, only one of you can do this and get back to the office and succeed with SwC, the second place user will get a unhappy message that Revit can't reconcile changes.

The Multi-User from Home Scenario
The better way to do this is to use Remote Desktop and leave your office computer on when you leave. Use Remote Desktop to run Revit on your office computer from your home computer. This lets you leave everything at the office except for you. Performance may vary but it is usually workable if you have a wired connection to the internet. It really depends on how your house and office are connected to the internet but only keyboard and mouse clicks are passed back and forth along with screen data.

Remote desktop (or something similar- computer access/sharing tool) takes a bit more EyeTee savvy...

Design Review

I'm writing about both the process and the software. Autodesk has been shipping Design Review along with the rest of its products for many years now (though its name has varied some). Ask the average AutoCAD user or Revit user if they know what it is or if they've used it and the answer all too often is, "What's that?" This is the PC version's icon.

There is an iPad compatible version of Design Review too. Here's the sample house project file open on my iPad.

Awareness is one hurdle, not insurmountable, perhaps easier to resolve than a couple others, willingness to use it and the practical issues of reviewing full size paper versus on screen review. Obviously there is some reluctance to review drawings on screen, on the computer. It isn't limited to so-called Luddites who don't like computers either. I've encountered drawings coming off the plotter only to see some obvious typo or other problem that we clearly missed on screen for days, weeks or even months. The size of the typical monitor makes it hard to compete with a full size print in hand. Even with very large screens there is some perception of not seeing everything.

The Document review process with design review looks roughly like this:

• Revit team exports sheets to DWF
• Open each sheet DWF file in DR
• Add markups and comments
• Save the file

• Revit team imports sheet markup files
• Deal with markups and comments
• Add responses if necessary
• Save their work in Revit which updates the DWF file too.

• Reviewer can open the DWF and see the action taken on their markups and comments.

The document reviewer can open the DWF sheet files and check progress on picking up changes.

The DWF files just need to stay in the same folder while the team is resolving the markups.
Once the markups are all resolved the links can be removed and the files archived and the process can repeat for the next review cycle.

To make the review process easier and more like paper we really need to use the largest screen that we can manage. I'd love to see something like the screens they show off in the renewed Hawaii Five-0! If you'd like to make something like that a reality in your office have a look at PEAU Productions (thanks to Scott at Clark Construction for the link). Check out this VIDEO from their You Tube postings. Based on what I've seen on the site you can have a pretty darn big multi-touch experience for under $2K.

While I'm encouraging you/us to reconsider how we go about reviewing projects and documents, I do have to temper this post a bit, the process isn't perfect. But then again what process is?

It is necessary to avoid opening and/or editing DWF files while they are linked into Revit for responding to the markups. We are supposed to be able to check on progress but in practice we often run into permission issues between Design Review and Revit's work sharing process.

Coincidentally, as I was working on this post I saw that David Baldacchino wrote a post yesterday that describes some flaws and frustrations that you may encounter if you choose to give this process a shot. I wish his comments weren't valid. I suspect if we saw more active use of Design Review we'd see greater emphasis placed on streamlining the workflow more.

You might also consider Bluebeam PDF Revu CAD as a more robust plot/markup/review tool. It (Bluebeam) does not permit the linking into Revit that Design Review does so that relationship is still stronger even if a bit quirky.

I encourage us to all move closer to the data, as close as possible to minimize the chance or missing things as well as reducing inefficiency. For people comfortable with Revit much can be done directly in the software to manage this. For those that are not, then Design Review offers a path than can help keep it digital and more closely connected to the model and data.