Revit Worksharing Setup for Small Firms

When your firm was one or two people, sharing a Revit model was easy. But the moment two people need to work on the same model at the same time, you hit a wall — and that wall has a solution built right into Revit, if you set it up correctly.

Only one person can have it open, or you end up emailing copies back and forth and losing track of who has the latest one. That is a solvable problem. It is called worksharing, and you do not need to be a big firm to use it. You just need to set it up correctly, because a sloppy setup causes more problems than no setup at all.

The short version: Revit worksharing lets several people work on one model at the same time. You keep one main file, called the central file, on a shared location. Each person works on their own copy, called a local file, on their own computer, and syncs their changes back to the central file. Here is how to set it up the right way.

What worksharing is, in plain English

Picture a single master copy of your project. Everyone needs to add to it, but if all of you grab the one copy at once, you trip over each other. Worksharing fixes that with two simple ideas.

• The central file is the master. It holds the whole project and everyone’s combined work. It lives in one shared spot. Nobody works in it directly.
• The local file is your personal copy on your own computer. You do your work here, fast, because it is right on your hard drive. When you are ready, you “Synchronize with Central.” Revit sends only your changes up and pulls everyone else’s down.

Everyone works at the same time on the same project, but nobody overwrites anybody, and nobody is stuck waiting for the file to be free.

Here is what worksharing is not. It is not emailing copies around. It is not one person locking the file all afternoon.

Step 1: Pick where the central file lives

Your first decision is where to keep the central file. For a small firm, there are two main choices.

• On your office network (a server or NAS). If your whole team works in one office with a solid wired network, keeping the central file on a network location is a great fit. It is fast, it is under your control, and it does not depend on the internet.
• In the cloud (BIM 360 or Autodesk Construction Cloud). If your team works from more than one office, or people work from home a lot, cloud worksharing can make more sense, because everyone reaches the same model over the internet.

For most small firms in one office, the network option is simpler and faster. Pick based on how your team actually works, not on what sounds fancy. If everyone is under one roof, start with the network.

Step 2: Set up the central file the right way

Once you know where it lives, here is how to create the central file without setting traps for yourself later.

Use a mapped drive with the same letter for everyone. This is the single most important setup tip, and it is the one people miss. Map the shared folder to the same drive letter on every computer, like making it the S: drive for everyone. That way Revit sees the same simple path on every machine. If you skip this, Revit can record the full ugly network path and people end up unable to find or open the file.

Enable worksharing, then save it as the central file. In Revit, you turn on worksharing and save the file to that shared drive. That becomes your central file. From that moment, nobody opens it directly.

Have everyone set their username in Revit. Each person’s Revit should have their own username set. This lets the team see who is working on what, and lets people ask each other to release elements when needed. Without it, you cannot tell who has what.

Step 3: Everyone makes a local file (the right way)

This is the step people get wrong, and it is the cause of a lot of grief. Each person needs their own local copy, and the right way to make it is to let Revit create a fresh one for you.

When you open the central file, choose the option to “Create New Local.” Revit makes you a personal copy on your own computer, linked back to central. Do not just copy and paste the central file in Windows to make your local. That sounds like the same thing, but it is not, and it leads to broken links and confusion. Always let Revit make the local file with “Create New Local.”

The daily routine for each person looks like this:

• Open Revit, open the central file, and let it make a new local copy.
• Work all day on your local copy.
• Synchronize with central regularly to share your work and get everyone else’s.
• Make a fresh local copy each day, so you always start from a clean, current copy

Step 4: Build good team habits

The setup gets you started. The habits keep it healthy. These matter just as much as the technical steps.

Sync often, in small bites. Do not work all day and sync once at the end. Small, frequent syncs are faster and far less likely to cause a problem. Wrap up a section of work and sync. A quick sync now beats a giant risky one later.

Save local, then sync. Saving your local file is just for you. Syncing shares it with the team. Get in the habit of doing both.

Do not fight over the same element. If two people try to change the very same wall at the same time, Revit makes one of you wait and ask permission. That is normal. Just communicate.

Close Revit properly. Let syncs finish. Do not force-quit or yank a laptop off the network mid-sync. A half-finished sync is how central files get corrupted.

Keep everyone on the same Revit version. Mixed versions in one model cause errors and corruption. The whole team should be on the same version and the same updates.

Why the setup matters so much for small firms

A big firm has an IT department and a BIM manager watching all of this. A small firm usually does not. So when the worksharing setup is sloppy, there is nobody whose job it is to catch it, and small problems quietly grow into corrupt files and lost work.

The setup matters more for small firms, because you do not have a safety net of staff to clean up the mess. Getting worksharing right from the start is how a small firm punches above its weight. Being proactive here saves real pain. The reactive version is a corrupt central file on a deadline and a team standing around while someone tries to rebuild it. The proactive version is a clean setup and good habits that just keep working.

A quick setup checklist

Run through this before you go live:

1. Pick the location: network for one-office teams, cloud for spread-out teams.
2. Map the shared folder to the same drive letter on every computer.
3. Enable worksharing and save the central file to that location.
4. Everyone sets their Revit username.
5. Each person uses “Create New Local” to make their own copy. Never copy-paste in Windows.
6. Sync often, save local, close properly.
7. Keep everyone on the same Revit version.
8. Back up the central file so a bad day is recoverable.

We set this up so it just works

Getting Revit worksharing right — the central file, the mapped drives, the network behind it, and the backup protecting it — is exactly the kind of thing we handle for small architecture and engineering firms around Knoxville. We take pride in setups that quietly work, so your team can focus on the design, not on fighting the file.

If your firm is growing past the “one person in the model at a time” stage, give us a call. We will set your worksharing up right the first time, so you do not learn these lessons the hard way.

Sources: Peer Software (Best Practices for Revit Worksharing); Autodesk (Best Practices for Cloud Worksharing in Revit); BIM Associates (Create a local file from a central model); Micrographics (Central Model vs. Cloud Model).