When you decide to share a project for team members to work on simultaneously, you need to decide how to share the project. Based on the project’s complexity and size, and the geographic locations of the team, you can use either the file-based or server-based method of worksharing.
- With file-based worksharing, the central model is stored in a file at a network location that all team members can access.
- With server-based worksharing, central models are stored on one or more Revit Servers. Team members access the models using local Revit Server Accelerators that improve performance when communicating across a wide area network (WAN).
Aside from the different location for storing the central model, the workflow for both methods is nearly identical.
When a project team is working on a local area network (LAN), file-based worksharing provides sufficient performance and is the best approach. File-based worksharing does not require installation of the Revit Server application.
Revit Server enables server-based worksharing, in which geographically dispersed project teams can collaborate on the same model across a WAN. As shown below, multiple team members in multiple local sites use Revit Server Accelerators to connect to one or more Revit Servers across a WAN.
Server-based worksharing across a WAN