It's important that you think of your project holistically when dividing it into worksets. Technically speaking, you don't need any more than the initial default worksets because Revit manages ownership of elements on a per-element basis and relinquishes elements automatically when you save your changes to the central file. However, you might want to divide up the model into worksets for some of the reasons we described earlier. Some good examples of typical worksets are Shell, Core, Exterior Skin, First Floor Interior Partitions, Second Floor Interior Partitions, Roof, and so on. You may also want to create another workset named Entourage for rendered-only elements (not for documentation).

Divide your project into worksets that relate to the roles and responsibilities of people working on the project. By default, you don't need more than two to three worksets per person on a project. When making new worksets, remember the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe dictum, "Less is more."

For our Foundations project, we have divided the model into four worksets, shown in Figure 24.7: Interiors, Shared Levels and Grids, Shell and Core, and Site.

Figure 24.7. Workset organization.

Notice that Workset1 has been renamed. That title is not descriptive enough to be of ongoing use, so it can be modified once all the model elements have been moved to relevant worksets. The worksets we've set up demonstrate how a typical breakdown might occur in a project of this size, but it's by no means limited to this scheme. Depending on how you structure work in your office, the worksets might be quite different.

Once you are in a workset environment, you can see or change an object's workset by accessing its element properties. At the bottom of the Element Properties dialog box, you can see which workset an object or group of objects belongs to, and you can change what workset the element belongs to (see Figure 24.8). Note that you can move elements to other worksets only if you own the elements. You do not need to own the entire workset to do this—just the individual elements.

Additionally, you can tell what workset an object belongs to by hovering your cursor over the object and waiting for the tooltip to appear. This tooltip will give you a host of information about the object in question. In our example, the workset is Shell and Core, the element is also part of the Walls category, the name of the family is Basic Wall, and the family type is A3 - 4¾″:

Figure 24.8. Change the workset an element belongs to by selecting a different workset using element properties.

Once the worksets are created, there are some simple steps for moving elements quickly to other worksets. As mentioned, the easiest way to move the bulk of the objects is to not move them at all but simply rename Workset1. After that, it is easiest to move elements in a subtractive method from a 3D view. The following exercise will walk you through moving elements to their new worksets using a subtractive method to locate model geometry. Note that this should be done while one person is still the solitary owner of all the worksets.

At any point in this process, you can check your work by opening the Workset tab in the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog box and clearing all of the boxes but one to see what is in each workset. Figure 24.10 shows the Interiors workset with all of the interior elements. As you can see, this is a great way to manage visibility without using the object categories.

Figure 24.10. The Interior workset.

Now that you've turned on worksharing, you need to set up the central file to be used by more than one person. To do this, first you create a central file located on your network; then you create the local files. To create the central file, choose the Application Menu

Figure 24.11. Creating a central file.

The reason for the new name is twofold. First, it gives you a backup of your original, pre-workset file. Backups never hurt. Second, Revit sometimes does not like to have a new file saved over an active file or a file of the same name. It can cause file corruption.

Now that the central file has been created, you need to create the local files that you will work from.

Figure 24.12. Opening the local file for the first time.

Once you click OK, you are set and ready to begin working in a worksharing environment.

Now that you're in a worksharing environment, every element added to the file belongs to a workset. Try to keep model elements in a workset other than Shared Levels and Grids because these worksets may be locked down at some point to avoid accidental movement of key datums. To make sure you're placing elements in the proper workset, check the Collaborate tab to see what the active workset is. All newly created elements will be assigned to the workset shown in this box. Remember, you don't have to be the owner of this workset in order for to be able to add new elements to it, nor does the workset need to be editable.

A helpful toggle on the Collaborate tab is the Gray Inactive Workset button. It grays out all elements that aren't in the active workset, helping you identify which elements in the workset are active. This is a temporary view state and will not affect any print output.

Once you begin working in a worksharing environment, you need to know how to save your work and be able to share it with others. There are three ways to save your work when you're using a workshared file:

Revit will remind you regularly to save your work. In a worksharing environment, you will see a dialog box reminding you to save locally, and another one reminding you to synchronize the central file. You can dismiss these reminders from time to time, but remember that it's always a good time to save (and not lose) your work. It's also important to remember that although Revit provides automatic reminders to save your work, it will not autosave.

Each of the dialog boxes comes with three options: you can save/synchronize the project; save/synchronize the project and set reminder intervals (choosing this will bring up the Options dialog box); or you specify that you do not want to save/synchronize or set reminder intervals (this last option dismisses the reminders). However, if you want this dialog box to go away and be reminded again at the interval you've requested, just hit the cancel button.

The reminder time shown in the dialog box can be modified across the application using General

Borrowing is a critical technological concept in Revit. It allows users to fluidly transfer permission of objects without having to constantly save all their work to the central file and relinquish all worksets. By borrowing elements, team members can take ownership of some of the elements within a particular workset that belongs to someone else. This is typically used to modify only one or a few elements in a given workset without taking ownership of the entire workset. This is also valuable if you need to edit elements in a workset and someone else already owns it.

The key idea here is that you can borrow elements individually rather than by workset. If you need to work on an element that belongs to someone else, you'll be informed of that and given the option to send a notification asking to borrow it. The owner of the element can then grant permission for you to take ownership. This is referred to as relinquishing permission.

Let's look at this workflow in more detail.

Say you are happily working away on your model and realize that someone else is the owner of an element you need to modify. Should that occur, you will be presented with the dialog box shown in Figure 24.15. This will occur every time you are working in a model in which worksharing is enabled and you are attempting to edit an element that is already owned by someone else on the project.

Figure 24.15. Placing a request for permission.

You can click Cancel, which will undo any edits you have made to that element, or you can click Place Request to ask the other user to relinquish permission over the element in question. If you opt to place a request, you will see this dialog box:

It is important to note that the other user does not receive an explicit notification that you have placed the request. To make sure your colleague knows of your request, you'll need to call or instant message (IM) that person, and get them to grant the permissions. (You'll learn how to do this in just a bit.) If owning this element is critical to the task at hand, keep in mind that you will not be able to perform any more work in relation to that element until that other user grants you permission to borrow it. Once the other user has agreed to relinquish ownership, click the Check Now button to see if you do in fact own the element. Or, if you want to just keep working, click the Continue button. This will undo your last command and return you to the view to continue your work.

Once you've received notice from the other user that your request has been granted, click Check Now and you will receive the message shown here:

Clicking OK will apply your edits and you will then be the borrower of that element.

You can view the Worksets dialog box to see who owns which worksets and who is borrowing from a workset at any time, as shown in Figure 24.16.

Figure 24.16. Owning and borrowing worksets.

Clicking this button gives you the dialog box shown in Figure 24.17.

Figure 24.17. Editing Requests dialog box.

From here, you have a few options:

Once you are ready to grant permission, one of two things will happen. If you haven't made any changes that need to be saved, you can simply grant the permission and notify your teammate that you have done so, and then both of you can continue to work. If you have been editing the requested element, you'll need to save your changes to the central file before anything else can happen. Changes of this nature are specially flagged in the Editing Requests dialog box with an asterisk before the request. This indicates that the element has been modified and a Synchronize with Central command must be issued before permission can be granted (see Figure 24.18).

Figure 24.18. Editing requests for changed elements.

Trying to grant permission at this point will give you the dialog shown here:

To remedy this issue, close the dialog and perform a Synchronize with Central using one of the methods we discussed earlier. Keep in mind that if you choose Synchronize with Central from the Collaboration tab and uncheck the boxes for relinquishing permission, you will need to come back to the Editing Requests dialog box to grant permission for this element. Once you have saved to the central file and notified the other user, he or she can then click the Check Now button to continue to work.

The user who is requesting permission of the element will see this dialog box after clicking Check Now:

This means that the object the other user was trying to use has been edited. He or she has to choose Reload Latest or Synchronize with Central from the Collaborate tab and reload the most current copy of that object before it can be edited. Unfortunately, any modifications to this element will be lost because the element will be changed in the central file.

Depending on your role on a project, your schedule, or those annoying urges to eat and sleep, from time to time you might leave your desk and want to close Revit. Revit helps you do this by providing some directions for saving your work. It offers two options: