Anyone have recent experience with using Revit Links... as well Mstn's Ref files?
Haven't looked at Revit's Links for a while. They were seen to be quite crude compared to Mstn's Ref Files.
The pain points were:
1. Need to set up Worksets to host the Links, The load settings for each Workset is a file-centric and applies to all users, who inherit the settings when they generate the local file to work on. The recommendation is for the users to use the Worksets and not use the Manage Links dialog directly. I understand that there is now a "Unload for me" setting that allow a user to save a setting for a Workset between sessions. Still, I can see this becoming very restrictive when the user has to deal with many different tasks. What is your experience with this?
After generating the Worksets, the user then selects and assign elements to the corresponding worksets. After this has been set up, activating a Workset would automatically place all new elements into that Workset. Pretty much like normal file-based working in Mstn or ACAD. But, as the team grows, more and more Worksets would need to be created to keep contention when Synching-to-Central to a minimum. I suppose that this is a minor annoyance, that can be corrected by AD in future.
More annoying is the loss of the ability just to attach/overlay in external files for checking or tracing over, especially DWG's etc. Visibility of the CAD elements is also not very flexible. Assigning visibility to the "Current View Only" overrides the Worksets tools ability to un/load the linked model on demand. This makes the files more prone to slow load times due to users leaving the CAD file visible in a View. or having to flip the visibility on every time you need to print?
Does beg the question whether Revit is really the right tool if a lot of traditional formats CAD like DWG needs to be integrated. Would be good to hear from anyone who is currently working with Revit.
2. 3d DWG has issues being cut in Revit's views. I think that there is something called DWG Sync. Anyone use this?
3. Revit's centralised 'everything synched' database approach seems very inflexible, compared to the dumb 'federated' CAD-like approach that Mstn takes. With Revit, the Worksets are like little containers that encapuslate the external info. In this way, it isn't dissimilar to Mstn. But, each view in Revit is also a Workset (one user at a time) that is stuck in the same central file.
Again, this seems like a step back compared to the free and easy way ACAD and Mstn allow any external files to be attached. Ref files allow the Mstn / Aecosim user to wrap multiple 'contexts' around his model. The architect might have a model for say walls or floors etc. If he needs to coordinate his model with information from the surveyor, he would just ref attach the survey info in, without worrying about impacting all the other views in the file or loading times. If he needs to check the sub-contractors fabrication model or shop drawing submission, he would just ref attach this info in. The attachment settings can be saved as a Saved View or as the Ref attachment settings in a separate model in the file. The Sheet model and any other 'group models' for clash detection, quantities etc would also be unaffected.
Or do Revit users generate separate Central models as task-specific 'containers' and 'activate' a Workset in the project Central model... so as to be able to work in context better. Of course, I don't think that Revit allows the user to load a particular Workset only in Linked model?
