What are some of the advantages of using BIM over traditional CAD tools?

BIM is a model-based tool that keeps your documents coordinated in a single file. As a modeling tool, representational drawings such as plan and section are by-products of modeling, not separately managed drawing files. BIM is also well suited for making early design decisions and iterating in the design, because you can run analysis early and frequently.

How can your work process be affected by the adoption of BIM?

BIM changes the way projects are managed and worked on. You'll find that teams must communicate on a regular basis when working on a shared BIM model. This encourages members of the team to take active responsibility for their parts of the model and understand the impact that design changes have on other parts of the model. Using BIM also means you have to shed some old habits and expectations and be willing to change the way you think about producing construction documents. Moving from a drafting-centric workflow to a model-based workflow can be jolting at first, but once you take the plunge, you're unlikely to look back.

What are Revit elements, and how are they managed graphically?

Anything you can select in the view is a Revit element. By using a fixed category structure, Revit lets you quickly identify elements, control their visibility and graphics, and generate reports based on this information. The data is highly structured, but you have tremendous liberty when it comes to the representation of that data.

How do you change the graphics of a category for all views? What if you need to change the graphics for only one view?

Use the Object Styles dialog box to set up and edit the graphics for all elements in the model. This establishes a default behavior for all views. To change the graphics on a per-view basis, use the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog box, which you can access from the context menu when elements are selected or by pressing the VG keyboard shortcut. The sooner you embrace this concept and start exploring the opportunities it presents, the better. If you can't get your drawing to look just right, chances are you haven't dug deep enough.

Knowing how to navigate views in Revit is essential to completing work. What are some of the ways to open views in Revit?

You can open views from the Project Browser by double-clicking any view. In addition, you can double-click view tag symbols directly (level heads, section heads, elevation tags, and callout bubbles) to open the view.

You need to change the scale of a plan view from ⅛″ to ¼″. How do you do this with Revit?

Using either the View Properties option on the view's context menu or the view controls at bottom of the view, change the scale. The annotations and hatch patterns will update automatically. You can change the scale of any view at any time.

Selecting elements in the model happens all the time. What are some of the capabilities that the Revit user interface provides when you select elements?

Any time an element is selected, you'll notice that a few things change in the user interface. First, the element changes color, indicating that it's selected. Second, if you select a model element, you get temporary dimensions to help you position the element. Third, icons appear for graphic controls such as drag grips, check boxes, and flip arrows. And finally, the contextual ribbon tabs and sometimes the Options bar updates with element-specific tools. All these features help keep the user interface out of your way until you need it.

You need to make some major changes to a floor plan, moving the bathroom 20' down a corridor. How might you do this with Revit?

Box-select all the walls, fixtures, and doors that are part of the bathroom. Use the Filter tool to make sure you have the right categories selected. Then, select the Move tool in the toolbar. Click anywhere in the model, and move the mouse in the direction you need to move the bathroom. Type 20′. The whole set of elements then moves 20′.

In a section view, you notice that the walls and floors aren't cleaning up neatly—you're seeing lines overlap. What tool could you use to try to clean that up?

For quick join cleanups, use the Join Geometry tool. Activate the tool from the Modify tab, and then select the elements you want to join. With each click of the mouse, you see the overlapping lines disappear, and your drawings start to clean up immediately.

Your firm has some deeply established graphic conventions that were defined in AutoCAD. How would you go about matching these graphics and setting up a Revit template?

Using object styles to customize how elements appear in both projection and cut, you can get model and annotation categories to match the line weight, color, and pattern of those used in AutoCAD.

You need to create dimensions, text, and annotations that match your office standards. How do you do this with Revit?

Make new types of system families for text and dimensions. With these families, you can control font, color, and size. For tags, open an existing tag and customize its graphics to suit your needs. Be sure to add parametric labels to make your tags smart and associative. This will save you huge amounts of time later.

Most offices have several title blocks with lots of information embedded in them. How would you add multiple title blocks to your project template file?

Make your own title blocks as parametric families, and then load them into the template using the Load family button on the Insert tab. With smart labels, you need to define these only once in the Family Editor; they will adapt to whatever project you load the title block into.

How do you add/remove wall, floor, and roof types to your template?

Start with an existing template, and draw at least once all the walls, floors, and roofs you're likely to need in your own projects. Then, purge unused wall, floor, and roof types from the file using the Purge Unused tool available in the Project Settings panel of the Manage tab. That way, all unused types will be removed from the template. If you need to add types, duplicate a type, name it, and make changes to properties as needed. When you're done, save your file as a new Revit template (RTE file).

What are type catalogs used for?

A type catalog is a tool that lets you easily and quickly create many types of a family that have different dimensions and sizes. The type catalog is a text file connected with a Revit family. This text file can store many definitions of family types. It is imperative that the type catalog have the same name and be located in the same folder as the family for which it defines additional types; otherwise there will be no association between them and the type catalog will fail. When you load a family with an associated type catalog, you can selectively load types from the catalog.

How would you set up a new view template for plan views where the surface pattern of floors is turned off?

You can turn off categories and patterns and override the graphics for any view, and store these settings in a view template so they can be applied to many views. First, open the View Templates dialog box by clicking the View Templates button on the View tab and then clicking on the View Template Settings option. Duplicate an existing plan-view template type, and give it unique name. Next, click the V/G Overrides Model, which takes you to the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog box for that view. Scroll down to the Floors category, and click the Surface Pattern Override button. Deselect the Visible option, and click OK twice to get back to the View Templates dialog box. You can now apply this view template to your plan views by right-clicking the view name in the Project Browser and using the Apply View Template feature.

Tools such as Alias Design Studio, Rhinoceros, 3ds Max, Maya, SketchUp, and AutoCAD 2010 allow you to create free-form shapes with relative ease. How does Revit let you take advantage of such shapes?

In Revit you can import shapes into the project and family environments and reuse them intelligently in a parametric setting. You can also create shapes from scratch in Revit.

Revit uses a 2D sketch-based approach to modeling. What modeling elements in Revit use this 2D sketch principle to generate their form?

Every model element in Revit has at least one 2D sketch in it. Even walls, while not made initially using a Sketch mode, have a sketch that can be edited. All 3D content is composed of combinations of forms that all derive from 2D sketches.

In order to sketch a form, the form must reside on a work plane. How do you define and visualize the work plane in Revit?

To see the active work plane in a view, click the Show (work plane) button in the Work Plane panel of the Home tab. Right above it is the Set (work plane) tool, which allows you to change the work plane by choosing an existing level, or by clicking on an existing model face.

There are many unique design elements in any project. Know when to use the appropriate modeling tools at the right times. What tool in Revit might you use to model the following elements?

While there is no right tool in Revit for a given task, some tend to work better than others:

Having learned the basics of Revit's form-making tools, how would you build this faucet designed by Philippe Starck?

Start a new generic model family. In the family, use revolves, sweeps, and blends to create the faucet. In this example you would model the base as a revolve, the spout a sweep, and the toggle switch as a blend.

In some cases, a form uses multiple sketch lines to generate its form. What form-making tools in Revit use more than one set of 2D sketches to generate the form?

Sweeps have a profile sketch and a path sketch. Revolves have a profile sketch and an axis line. Blends have two sketches: one for the base and one for the top.

To make more complex forms, both solids and voids can be used. Think of a case where using voids as a subtractive element makes sense.

If you create an extrusion in plan form, and then need to edit it in elevation, a void is a perfect match. With the void, you can carve the top of the extrusion to give it a unique shape.

You need to explore a design idea early on, in 3D, using abstract forms. How would you do this with Revit?

Revit lets you import a site DWG file and begin building a 3D massing study of the surroundings using the lines from the CAD import. Then, using the massing tools, you can model your conceptual composition. Using design options, you can make a few different proposals. With mass and floor schedules, you can measure what you've done and test against the local regulations as well as program requirements.

You've imported a 2D site plan, and now you need to start building a massing study model in the project. How would you approach this with Revit?

Once a final design is selected, you can use the Building Maker concept to quickly turn the mass model into a BIM model that contains walls, floors, roofs, and other architectural elements. In the early stage of this conversion, you can keep the dependency with the mass model so that if you decide to make changes you can use the Remake functionality to update the converted building accordingly. The idea is simple—you move from mass to a final building seamlessly, without data loss.

You have made a form and want to edit it further. What tools can you use to make changes to the form?

When a form is selected, check the Modify Form panel on the Ribbon. From here you can use the X-Ray tool to see into your form and make edits. Also experiment with using the Add Edge and Add Profile tools.

Conceptual modeling is used early in the design process to explore the building shape and building program. How do you approach schematic design using Revit and perform feasibility studies?

Revit lets you import a site DWG file and begin building a 3D massing study of the surroundings using the lines from the CAD import. Then, using the in-place massing tools, you can model your conceptual composition. Using design options, you can make a few different proposals. With mass and floor schedules, you can measure what you've done and test the fit to the local regulations as well as the program.

You have the basic massing nailed down, and now you need to study more details such as wall and window fenestrations. How do you approach this with Revit?

Load your mass into a project and use the Model by Face tools to start applying standard components to your model, such as walls, floors, and roofs.

How can you reuse conceptual models created in other modeling applications and turn them into a measurable and documentable building in Revit?

Revit allows you to import models from AutoCAD, SketchUp, Rhino, Maya, 3ds Max, and Inventor. You import early concept studies into a mass element and then apply real components (walls, roofs, floors, and so on) to its faces.

Change your massing model to explore design alternatives.

Edit your mass in place or as loadable family and then update your model with new shape. Update the Model by Face objects to match the new design. Look to the contextual tab for tools specific to this workflow.

What are design options in Revit?

Design options allow you to explore alternatives to your current design direction. By creating option sets from the Design Options dialog box, you can make an unlimited number of variations to your design theme. These can be controlled with the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog box, which lets you see the options in any number of view types: plans, elevations, sections, perspectives, schedules, and so on.

You've explored a number of design options for an entry scheme. Your client has selected one, and you need to incorporate it into the rest of the model and remove the unwanted alternates.

In the Design Options dialog box, select the desired option and click the Make Primary button. Doing so pushes that option into all your views in the project as the default option. Now, select the option set and click the Accept Primary button. Each of your other unwanted options is eliminated, and your primary option is incorporated into the design.

You need to look at some seating layout options for an auditorium space based on different-sized seating and show the seating counts.

Using design options and a Revit auditorium seat family, you can create two design options for the layout: one for seating 20″ wide and one for seating 24″ wide. Once these are laid out in their respective design options, you can create a schedule to count the seating based on size. By creating a seating schedule and then duplicating it, you can change the Visibility/Graphics Overrides options of the second schedule to count the second design option. In the following views, the two schemes have 276 and 234 seats, respectively.

You found a ceiling-mounted lighting fixture that you want to use in your existing project, but you can't find a Revit family for it in any libraries or online communities. How would you start?

Knowing that you need to build a lighting fixture from scratch, begin by opening the Lighting Fixture ceiling based.rft template file. This will ensure that the family is hosted by ceilings and will thus move and stay connected with the ceiling in which the light is placed.

Look carefully at how the fixture is built, and consider what Revit form-making tools are best suited for building it. Proceed to build the family, and assign it materials and any dimensional parameters using reference planes and labeled dimensions. When you think you're done, save the file with a unique name, load it into your project, and place it. Remember, if you need to make edits, the process is simple: select the family, and then click the Edit Family button in the Family panel of the contextual Modify tab. You'll be taken directly into the Family Editor, where you can tweak the design. Clicking the Load into Project button reloads the family into your project and updates all instances of the type with your changes.

Building components are often composed of a series of subcomponents that form an overall assembly. Think of some common examples and what strategies you could use to build such content in Revit.

Consider an office workstation. Typically, a workstation is made of modular components: the desk surface, vertical partitions, file cabinets, bookshelves, and a chair. You could load these elements into a project and manually manage all the parts, maybe even using groups to do so. A more efficient and easier-to-manage method is to nest various parts into one family. Starting with a blank Furniture Systems family template, you could load the desk, partitions, cabinets, and chair into one family. By making each nested family a shared family, you can tag and schedule all the elements.

You can use dimensional relationships to tie the size of one object to the size of another. How do you do this in the context of a family?

Using the Family Types dialog box, you can add new parameters and then create formulas that tie the value of one or more parameters to any other parameter. Using a conventional mathematical formula, you can create families that are extremely flexible and dynamic.

A design calls for a horizontal soldier course in a brick wall every 12″ on the façade. Using Revit, how would you build this into a wall element?

Create a new wall type and add integrated wall sweeps into the wall definition. Each wall sweep can have a material assigned to it, so you just need to define the correct size and materials to the sweep to get it to look correct. Place several instances at 12″ intervals. You can change the preview sample size of the wall to be any height in order to add additional sweeps above the default 20″.

You have a building project where you are still experimenting with a number of floors but have already defined the wall types for the foundation, typical floor, and the attic and have combined them in a stacked wall type. How do you define the stacked wall so that it will accommodate middle floors with varying heights?

Stacked wall types allow for one of the walls in the stacked wall to have a variable height. In this case, set the middle wall type as a variable height layer. Thus you will assure that the stacked wall updates correctly when floor to floor heights change.

You've got to add a doorway to a storefront façade you've made. How would you go about doing this?

Load a curtain wall door panel and then swap out a glazed panel with the door. Remember—you cannot use standard door families with curtain walls.

When would you use a Roof by Extrusion method?

The Roof by Extrusion method for creating roofs is great for barrel vaults, sawtooths, or any roof with an arc profile.

In the early design phases of a project, you are exploring a variety of roof forms for your building. Create the base building form and explore different roof options and shapes. How would you go about exploring a variety of roof shapes?

Create a roof using the Roof by Footprint tool. Then by editing the roof, modify the slope on the various roof edges (at times setting some of the options to 0) to explore different roof shapes.

You are working on a flat roof retail project, but the roof is not really flat and will need to drain. Using Revit roof tools, how would you go about modeling this?

Start by creating a flat roof, and then select it. Use the shape modification tools to add ridges and low points to the roof. By selecting points, you will get temporary dimension controls to accurately set the height and get correct slopes for drainage.

You've found some nice-looking railing panels and balusters while scouring the Web for interesting rail designs. How do you go about building the railing in Revit?

Start by figuring out what is baluster and what is rail. For the rails, you'll need to make custom profile families and use those when you define the rails in the system. For the balusters, use the baluster family templates as a starting point and break the system down into Revit-centric constructs: extrusions, blends, revolves, and sweeps. Once you have the baluster made, load it into your project, create a new railing type, set up the baluster spacing, and establish the rail pattern.

You want to make a railing where the balusters are glass panels with fixed width. You wish to make a railing that contains the maximum number of those panels and you wish them to be spread symmetrically. How do you do that?

In the Edit Baluster placement dialog box, under Main Pattern, set Justify to Center and Excess Length Fill to None. Justify Center will assure spreading a full number of patterns from the center toward the two ends of the railing, and the Excess Length set to None will assure that no pattern is truncated and only a full number of patterns find their place in the length of the railing.

After designing the stair railing, you notice that there is a gap between the rails following the stair flight and the horizontal rail on the landing. What options do you have to resolve this situation?

Using the options under the Angled joints in the Type Properties dialog box of the railing, you can choose to add horizontal/vertical connectors that fill the gap or leave the gap as is by choosing No connector.

You've been asked to show the effect of your building's shadow on its surrounding site during the winter solstice. How would you do this with Revit?

Use a site-plan view, and enable shadows from the View Control bar. Set the Sun and Shadows Settings to the correct date, time, and place. Remember to set the correct place, because this affects how shadows are calculated.

Your latest design is all the rage, and you've been asked to publish the plans and sections in a magazine. How do you make these?

Turn off all the clutter in the view by selecting unwanted categories and elements and hiding them in the view. Then, give the walls, columns, roof, and floors a bold solid fill hatch override when cut. This will make the drawings jump off the printed page.

You need to give your elevation view more variation in line weight to convey depth beyond the default line styles established in the Object Styles dialog box. How do you do this?

Use the Linework tool to apply heavier lines to element edges in the foreground. Use element overrides to apply halftone or thin line weights to elements in the background.

Create a new perspective view showcasing a critical design feature. Use the Rendering dialog, lighting, and the materials dialog to complete the rendering.

Using the Camera tool on the View tab, you can quickly create a perspective from a view to describe the design intent of the project. Using the tools described in this chapter, create a quick rendering to analyze the design further.

You've been asked to produce an exterior rendering of a building. Can you do this in Revit? Can you tweak the results in Photoshop?

Set up some dramatic exterior camera shots, and assign photorealistic materials supplied in the new Render Appearance Library. Add RPC entourage such as trees, cars, and people. Render the view, and then export the image so it can be touched up in Photoshop. Send the image to the print shop, and get the rendering up on the billboard!

You want to create a compelling animation showing an entry approach to the building. How would you do that with Revit?

Start with a plan view and choose the Walkthrough tool from the View tab. Draw your path, and then adjust the camera at each keyframe to get the desired look and feel.

You've modeled your project in Revit and assigned materials, and now want to make an animation sequence with 3ds Max. What should you do?

Use the new option to export the model to FBX. This will create a file that can be opened directly with 3ds Max 2009 or later, where you can take advantage of animation tools. To do so, go to the Application Menu, and choose Export

Establish your preliminary design, and then create area plans so you can keep up to date with space sizes, allocations, and your project program.

Use the tools for figuring gross area and rentable area to establish these baseline plans.

Schedules have a multitude of uses and value at all levels of the project. Explore a variety of schedules to optimize your workflow and maximize what you can get from the model.

Here is a list of schedules you might try:

Many developers and facilities managers use BOMA calculations for figuring rentable area, gross area, and R/U (rentable/usable) ratios. Establishing area plans and schedules can help you find these numbers much quicker than a legacy CAD system would have allowed.

Establish the schedules as part of your default templates, and as you create your area plans, the schedules will dynamically fill. Also, become familiar with the typical methods of calculating space. These are some of the formulas you can also incorporate in your default templates:

BIM is also a computational database that can report information about the virtual building. The important thing about a sustainable approach is to know which questions to ask and to ask them at the right time. What is a strategy for doing this?

Come up with your sustainable goals early on in the project process and revisit them regularly to make sure you stay on track.

How can you use the tools within Revit to produce still and animated solar studies from interior and exterior views in order to understand shading and the sun's effect on the building and space?

Use the Graphic Display Options dialog box to set the global location of the project. Next, establish a time of day to view the effects of the sun. Create key interior and exterior views of the project and apply these sun settings to the new views. To see the effects of the sun at that time throughout the year, animate the solar study for each week throughout the year.

Tracking recycled material usage is key to LEED credits and sustainability. Create a material schedule that tracks recycled content volume for concrete.

Create a schedule for the concrete in the building. Using a custom calculated field, apply your percentage of recycled content by building a formula to multiply the percentage of recycled content by the volume of concrete in the model. As you build and refine the design and the model, this value will dynamically update.

Make your designs more sustainable by using the model geometry for daylighting analysis

Set the model up from the beginning of the design process to have the proper reflectivity for your surfaces. Adding these values to your materials helps ensure more accurate daylighting results.

Once the model has been largely built, you need to start adding information about rooms and finishes. What tools would you use?

Once the rooms in the project are roughly defined by walls, you can use the Room tool to add room elements to your project. After these are defined, use the schedule key in combination with a room finish schedule to quickly create finish values for each room that are easy to control and define.

Tags are used to report information about an element. How do tags work in Revit so that they always report accurate and consistent information about the elements they tag?

Elements defined in Revit such as walls, doors, and rooms all have parameters. These parameters can be used to drive information into tags by adding labels to the tag families. If you change the parameter value, the tag will update automatically. Likewise, by editing the value in the tag, you are affecting the element.

It is important to understand the relationships between elements and materials in Revit early. How does this help streamline the process of keynoting your project when you reach the documentation phase?

If this is your first project in Revit, discuss the keynoting strategy used within your office and see how easily that transitions into Revit. Set up your keynotes and schedules for those notes long before you need to document the project. This will ensure that when the time comes to begin laying out your sheets, you can do it with a minimum amount of disruption to your workflow.

If this is not your first project in Revit, begin embedding notes into your project template, building from the experiences of past projects.

You added a custom parameter to your door and window elements and wish to schedule and tag it such that each window or door tag displays the information about the hardware set. The schedule works well, but your tags seem to be unable to find the hardware set parameter. What is wrong?

To be able to display a custom parameter in a tag, that parameter needs to be created as a shared parameter. Create a shared parameter as a .txt file, and assign it to the tag family as well as in the project environment (to the Door and Window category) to achieve the desired result.

You will need to add notes in every stage of design to communicate your design intent on a project. How do you create and modify the notes to ensure accuracy throughout all the sheets in the set?

Use the Keynote tool on the Annotate tab to insert element, material, and user notes. As these notes are all tied to a single file and are not modifiable within the project, they will always be identical. To modify the notes, simply use the linked text file found under the Tag flyout and choose Keynote Settings.

Think of a scenario in your own practice where elements repeat and how you might use Revit groups to solve the problem.

A hotel room in a multistory tower is a good example of where groups could come in handy. You can draw the walls, add the bathroom and all the fixtures for one unit, and then group them in what will be a typical hotel room. Once they're grouped, you can place instances of the group throughout the model to fill out the design. From there on out, any change to any group will propagate to the other group instances.

Describe a fundamental benefit of using groups.

When you make a group of elements and then duplicate it many times, it is important to maintain consistent and predictable results. Using groups, you are guaranteed that a change to one instance will propagate to all other instances in the model. At the same time, Revit recognizes that some group instances might have to be slightly different from the rest and that it must be flexible enough to support slight differences without the necessity of creating a separate new group.

Using a link paradigm means that the BIM model now depends on links to external files. Even so, the links can be scheduled, dimensioned to, and graphically altered. Despite that, there are still some limitations. What are they?

One of the major limitations is how walls in a linked file interact with walls in the host file. For example, when a Revit link is used, none of the walls in the link will clean up with the host walls and rooms will not be calculated. Note that you can make the walls of a linked file room bounding using its type properties.

Know that links can reduce the overall file size and thus improve performance when working in Revit; imagine a scenario in which you would most certainly want to employ links over groups.

A campus layout master plan would be a great candidate for using links. By building a master site file and building each campus building as a separate file, you could then link them all together in the master file and have good performance in each of the separate files. This also keeps levels and grids from neighboring buildings from interfering with your workflow.

Keeping views hyperlinked together is a key benefit to using Revit. How do you draw simple, 2D details in Revit but still keep them parametrically linked to sheets?

By creating drafting views, you can use detail lines (found on the Drafting tab) to draft 2D details in from within Revit. These drafting views can then be placed on sheets, keeping all the same parametric values maintained by any other view created in Revit. You can also reference these drafting views with the Callout tool.

Your office has a huge repository of standard details. How do you reuse details drawn in CAD in a Revit project?

Make sure the CAD detail is free of extraneous information and then import it into a drafting view at a 1:1 scale. Reset the scale to the proper scale of the view and place the new drafting view in the appropriate sheet. When forming a new detail callout from a plan or section, check the box Reference Other View on the Options bar and select the CAD detail from the list. This will give the new detail a SIM (similar) annotation.

Detailing is a process of adding more granular layers of information and graphics to the model and view. What tools would you use to add 2D detail?

Create detail components for content that can be reused in other views. Add as much detail to the component as is applicable, including nesting components within one another. Use masking regions (also referred to as whiteout) to cover unneeded model geometry, taking care to balance proper modeling techniques with efficiency and productivity. Use filled regions to add additional levels of detail and materiality to the view. Use repeating details in lieu of copying or arraying simple 2D elements. Finish the detail by drafting necessary areas with detail lines.

Use a 3D axonometric detail to demonstrate constructability in a unique assembly condition.

Locate the new detail in a wall section or enlarged plan. Navigate to the default 3D view, and using the Orient to View option in the view cube right-click menu, orient the 3D view to match the desired detail. By orbiting the orientated view, you can begin adding annotations and dimensions to describe the construction of the assembly.

Create a detail by embedding it into a family so it can be expressed by simply modifying the detail level of a view.

Open the family in the Family Editor. By adding detail components to the family, you can begin building the corresponding detail (flashing, blocking, sealant, trim, etc.). Next, select these elements and modify their visibility to make them viewable only in specific conditions (in this case, the fine level of detail). Reinserting the family into the project allows you to control what is displayed in any view by modifying the view detail in each view.

Use details you created in your other Revit projects.

After finishing the detail or project, from the Application Menu choose Save As

Add revisions to your project that automatically get tracked on your sheet.

Use the Sheet Issues/Revisions dialog box (choose the Manage tab, then use Settings

You need to cloud a design change. How would you do this using Revit?

Draw clouds with the Revision Cloud tool. Next, tag your revision clouds with parametric tags. In turn, your title block will also be parametrically tied to each revision placed on the sheet.

How can you export your designs in a lightweight file format?

Export your sheets to Autodesk Design Review by opening the Application Menu, and choosing Export

How do you work in a single Revit file on a project team with more than one member in the file at a time?

Worksharing allows for multiple users in a Revit environment. Understanding and using worksharing is a vital part of any large-scale project where you will have more than one person doing the drawing. Worksharing will be the most successful when implemented in an organized, well-thought-out division of model assemblies. To set up worksets, first enable worksharing (Collaborate tab

Once you have enabled worksets to allow for multiple users, what's the best way to implement and use the file?

Set up a central file on your network. Each of your users makes new, local files from the central file on their local drives and works directly in these copies. These files are smart enough to be able to manage changes between all the members of the project team while updating the central file.

How can you translate the changes you've made in your local file to the central file on the network? How do you download changes from other team members to your local file?

Use the Save to Central command from the Application Menu. This will copy all of your changes up to the networked central file and download their changes to your local file. If you are simply looking for changes others have made to update your local copy (without posting your own changes), you can use the Reload Latest command located in the Synchronize panel of the Collaborate tab.

How do you edit an element in the model if someone has already taken permission of it in a worksharing environment?

By simply trying to edit the element, you can request permission for the object from another user on the team if permission is not readily available. They can similarly grant or deny you permission for any element they own by using the Editing Requests button on the Collaborate tab.