The fact that I’m posting about it means that it probably isn’t really that easy, right? There are a few challenging pieces of the puzzle that all need to come together to get C4R or Collaboration for Revit working on a real project. I just went through this process with a mechanical firm so it is all pretty fresh in my mind.

Firstly, note that A360 Team has been rebranded as BIM 360 Team and will be migrated, more details at this post.

Secondly, Autodesk really wants your whole team (like everyone, every consultant, every Revit link) on Collaboration for Revit. However, out in the real world it is just happening bit-by-bit, and in the meantime some hacks and workarounds can make the process a little bit easier.

A Quick Overview
Ok, so Collaboration for Revit runs on top of BIM 360 Team. What this means is that you need to have an active BIM 360 Team license if you wish to run projects. Then, you need a Collaboration for Revit license for each Revit user who will be connecting to that BIM 360 Team site. You still with me? This also means that persons outside of your firm may connect to your projects, provided they have their own Collaboration for Revit entitlement applied to their Autodesk account.

Once you have the BIM 360 Team license, and the Collaboration for Revit licenses, you then need to “Assign” the Collaboration for Revit licenses out to the users (using their Autodesk login details).

Finally, you need to actually do some stuff, like:

  • make a BIM 360 Team project,
  • invite the users,
  • initiate Revit models, and
  • get the links working.

Its a lot to take in, so you can see that the blog title is actually a half-joke 🙂 However, we were able to get all this up and running in about 4 hours for one firm, so you can too. Hopefully.

Something that will help
Given that there are a lot of moving pieces, I turned to my favourite research and documentation tool, OneNote. I have created a public notebook that you can view at this link:
Revit Collaboration Public Help

helpdoc.png

Basically all of the steps involved in getting the licensing setup, inviting users, installing the addin, and initiating models onto Collaboration for Revit are in the notebook linked above. I will continue to update and add to this over time.

Any Questions?
Just comment to this post and I will endeavour to answer your question in the notebook, or point you toward the answer.

Now, here are a few other bits and pieces that may be useful, if the notebook doesn’t answer your questions…

new help documentation:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Revit-CAR/files/GUID-5A7EA270-AE79-447B-B12C-4C6B59D2F894-htm.html

moving models to folders:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Collaboration-for-Revit-How-to-use-and-access-subfolders-on-A360-Team.html

You can move projects from A360 Free to a paid BIM360 Team hub by using the Transfer function:

transfer.png

Taking models offline and replacing later:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/a360-collaboration-for-revit/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/how-to-work-c4r-when-others-are-not-using-it.html

using local linked files
http://www.revitforum.org/worksharing-revit-server-c4r/28351-c4r-updating-links-6.html

Download links:
Collaboration for Revit 2017
Collaboration for Revit 2016

Collaboration for Revit 2015

Recent chat with Autodesk

If you view a lot of IFC files in Tekla BIMsight, you may find that the cache or storage folder fills up quite quickly. If this is in its default location of \%localappdata%\Tekla\Tekla BIMsight\ then you could use up valuable space on your SSD.

We can easily move this folder using symbolic links. In the script below, we:

  • check the default directory exists, and if so rename it
  • make a symbolic link to a new target directory, in this case I have used E:\TeklaBimSight
  • make the new directory if necessary
  • copy existing contents to the new directory

To use the script:

  1. Close Tekla BIMsight
  2. Copy text from the script into Notepad and save as CMD. Modify the target directory to your preference
  3. Save the script with CMD extension
  4. Right click and Run As Administrator
  5. Open BIMsight and confirm all is working ok
  6. Optional: delete the bimsight.old directory to cleanup
if exist "%localappdata%\Tekla\Tekla BIMsight" rename "%localappdata%\Tekla\Tekla BIMsight" bimsight.old
mklink /d "%localappdata%\Tekla\Tekla BIMsight" E:\TeklaBimSight
if not exist E:\TeklaBimSight MD E:\TeklaBimSight
robocopy /mir %localappdata%\Teklabimsight.old E:\TeklaBimSight\

BIMSIGHT.png