Work Offsite and Offline

When working on a workshared project, you can work remotely, provided you have high-speed network access to the central model, or you can transfer your local model to someone with network access.

Danger: Working offline can put your project at risk. Your local model can become incompatible with the central model, preventing you from synchronizing with central. The central model itself remains safe.

To work offsite or offline

1. Make the necessary worksets editable while still at the office and connected to the network. See Make Worksets Editable.
2. Be sure to save your local copy of the central model before you close it; otherwise, your changes to workset editability are not saved in the local copy when you take it offline.
3. Work on the project offsite as you would in the office. You can modify elements in editable worksets, and you can create new elements in any workset.

Editing Elements You Do Not Own Offline

To modify elements in a workset you do not own, you can specify the status of the workset as Editable. This is known as Editable at Risk and should be avoided whenever possible.

If another team member synchronizes changes to any of the same elements that you have changed, you cannot synchronize any of your changes with the central model. All your changes in all worksets are lost.

If you make a workset Editable at Risk, it is recommended that you:

1. Ask a team member, who is in the office and has access to the central model, to start a session of Revit and specify your name as the User Name. See Options.
2. Ask the team member to open the central model, check out all the worksets that you have at risk, close the file, and reset the User Name to their name. It is not necessary to synchronize with the central model.

This procedure prevents other team members from making the workset editable and changing the same elements. If someone else has checked out that workset or has borrowed elements in it, there is no way to assure that there will not be a conflict.

Rendering Workshared Projects Offline

Danger: Rendering offline is generally not recommended.

If you render the model offline, you will likely change material assignments and other project settings. To change project settings, you need to check out some of the Project Standards worksets. If you make these worksets editable while you are still connected to the central model, other team members working on the project cannot change the Project Standards worksets that you are changing. Instead, if you make the worksets Editable at Risk after going offline, you risk losing all your changes.

Working with Models using Server-Based Worksharing while Offline is not Recommended

You can continue working if the central server becomes unavailable. If you are not connected to the network, in general, you can work with your local copies of models the way you normally do. However, you are not able to synchronize with the central model or interact with the server while in a disconnected state. Note that data loss may occur if you reconnect and synchronize with central at a later time.

Danger: Data loss may occur if you reconnect and synchronize with central at a later date.

For instructions on disconnecting from Revit Server, see Shutting Down a Revit Server Host for Maintenance.

Note: While working offline in a server-based model, if you try to synchronize with central, reload, or relinquish ownership of worksets, an error dialog displays.