Worksharing and coordination

The model

Central model  (file server or Autodesk Construction Cloud)
      │
      │  Open with "Create New Local" ✓
      ▼
Your local file  (your own drive)
      │  work · Ctrl+S often
      │
      ├──  Synchronize with Central  ──→  push yours, pull everyone's
      └──  Reload Latest             ──→  pull only, don't push

Collaborate → Worksharing enables it. Then Save As to the shared location — that becomes the central. Enabling worksharing is one-way; do it on a copy the first time.

The non-negotiable rules

• Never open the central to work in it. Always tick Create New Local. Working in the central locks everyone out and risks the file.
• Make a fresh local each morning. Stale locals produce the strangest sync errors, and "make a new local" is the answer to most of them.
• Ctrl+S saves your local. It does not sync. Two different operations. People lose work assuming otherwise.
• Sync every 30–60 minutes. Long gaps mean big, conflict-prone syncs.
• Relinquish when you sync, and always before you leave. Elements you're still borrowing are elements nobody else can edit.
• On a file-based central, don't sync while someone else is mid-sync. ACC-hosted models queue properly; file-based ones are more fragile.
• Save your local before syncing. If the sync fails, your work is still safe locally.

Synchronize with Central

The dialog offers:

• Compact Central Model — rewrites it smaller. Slow. Do it on the last sync of the day, not every time.
• Relinquish: Project Standards, Family and Type, Borrowed Elements, View Worksets, User-Created Worksets — tick them all unless you have a reason not to.
• Save Local File before and after — leave on.
• Comment — it goes into the sync log. Use it; on a project with history, that log is genuinely useful.

Reload Latest (RL) pulls others' changes without pushing yours. Useful when you want to see what changed before committing your own work.

Worksets

A named group of elements. Two purposes:

1. Ownership — take a whole workset and nobody else can edit anything in it.
2. Performance — closing a workset unloads its elements from your session. On a large model this is the single biggest speed improvement available.

Manage in Collaborate → Worksets. Each workset has:

• Editable (Yes/No) — Yes means you own the whole thing. Use sparingly.
• Owner / Borrowers — who has it.
• Opened (Yes/No) — whether it's loaded in your session.
• Visible in all views — whether it shows by default. Per-view override in VV → Worksets.

Designing a workset scheme

A handful of meaningful worksets beats forty granular ones:

Shared Levels and Grids      (created automatically — leave it alone)
Workset1                     (rename this; don't leave it)
A-Shell
A-Interiors
A-Core          stairs, lifts, shafts
A-Site
A-FF&E
Z-Links         linked models each on their own workset ideally

Rules:

• New elements go into the active workset, shown in the status bar. Check it before you model, or you'll scatter elements and spend an afternoon fixing it with schedules.
• Put each linked model on its own workset so people can close links they don't need. This is the biggest single performance lever on a multi-discipline project.
• Worksets are not categories. Don't make a workset per element type — that's what categories, filters, and view templates are for.
• The Workset parameter is schedulable, so a schedule grouped by workset is how you audit and fix misassignments in bulk.

Element borrowing

You don't normally take whole worksets. You edit an element and Revit automatically borrows it. It's yours until you relinquish.

When you can't edit something:

• Revit names the owner and offers Place Request. They get a notification and can grant or deny.
• Collaborate → Editing Requests shows pending requests both ways.
• View → Worksharing Display → Owners colours every element by who has it. The fastest answer to "who's got this?"
• Other Worksharing Display modes: Checkout Status, Model Updates (what's changed in central since your last sync), and Individual Worksets.

Granting a request requires the granter to sync, so their changes to that element land before you get it.

Links

Insert → Link Revit. See coordinates for the positioning options — that dropdown is the whole ballgame.

Link, don't import

Link references an external file, owned and edited elsewhere; reload for updates. Import copies content in permanently, along with its line styles, layers, and text styles.

Import CAD once into a template and you inherit its junk forever. If you must bring CAD in, link it, and put it in a drafting view rather than a model view so it can't contaminate model space.

Managing links

Manage → Manage Links: reload, reload from a new path, unload, remove.

• Set path type to Relative so the project survives being moved.
• Unload rather than remove when you want it gone temporarily — removing loses the positioning and any Copy/Monitor relationships.
• A link's type properties include Reference Type: Attachment links carry through to models that link you; Overlay links don't. Overlay is the usual choice — Attachment causes nested links to appear unexpectedly in consultants' models.
• Phase mapping is a link type property: which of your phases correspond to theirs.
• Pin your links. Always.

Visibility of links

VV → Revit Links tab. Per-link, you choose:

• By Host View — the link obeys your view's settings.
• By Linked View — the link displays as one of its views, which is how you get a consultant's carefully-set-up graphics.
• Custom — per-category control over the link's content.

Worth knowing because "the link looks wrong in my view" is almost always this setting.

Copy/Monitor

Collaborate → Copy/Monitor → Select Link.

Copies levels, grids, columns, walls, floors, or MEP fixtures out of a link into your model and then watches the originals. When the structural engineer moves grid C, you get a warning that a monitored element changed.

• Copy creates a monitored duplicate in your model.
• Monitor links an element you already have to the linked original, without copying.
• Coordination Settings control what happens to each category and how names map.
• Collaborate → Coordination Review is where you triage: Postpone, Reject, Accept difference (accept the new position and keep monitoring), or Modify your element to match.

This is how disciplines stay coordinated on datums. Set it up once, early, on levels and grids at minimum.

Clash detection

In Revit: Collaborate → Interference Check → Run Interference Check. Pick two sets of categories (from the current model and/or a link), get a list you can select from, and export an HTML report.

It only finds hard clashes — actual geometric overlap — within the current model and its links. It's a useful self-check before a coordination meeting, not a coordination process.

In Navisworks: export .nwc from each discipline, federate, and use Clash Detective:

• Named clash tests pairing two selection sets, with a tolerance.
• Hard clash (geometry overlapping) vs. clearance clash (geometry inside a required clearance zone) vs. duplicate.
• Grouping clashes so 400 pipe-through-beam hits become 12 issues.
• Assignment and status tracking over time — New / Active / Reviewed / Approved / Resolved.
• Viewpoints saved per clash, exportable as BCF for round-tripping into other tools or ACC Issues.

Cloud worksharing

With BIM Collaborate Pro, the central model lives in Autodesk Construction Cloud instead of on a file server.

Differences worth knowing:

• Collaborate → Collaborate initiates cloud worksharing; the model is then opened from the Cloud Models area of the Revit home screen.
• Syncs queue properly, which removes the file-based "don't sync at the same time" fragility.
• Publish is a separate action from Sync: syncing updates the model for other Revit users; publishing updates the version that ACC's viewer, sheets, and downstream coordination see. People forget to publish and consultants review stale models.
• Revit 2026 optimized worksharing for WAN, which meaningfully reduced sync times for distributed teams.
• Local files still exist — they're cached under your user profile.

The coordination-meeting phrasebook