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Revit Create New Local Checkbox Grey Out?

Currently I am on a project with 10-15 people working on the model at the same time.  As a good practice, I will browse to the Central Model and create a new Local everyday, this ensures me working with the latest and greatest copy of local file.  Until one day, I noticed the Create New Local Checkbox was grey out, which prohibited me from creating a new local.  Interesting!  Why is this happening?

Before I reveal the answer to this mystery, let me tell you one thing you MUST do when you work with a large team.  Always open Revit Worksharing Monitor.  This program tells you who is syncing at the moment, who is in the central model (Oops! By Accident) and when did you last Sync your file.

Without knowing why I can’t create a new local, I hooped around my coworkers workstation to see if they have the same problem or is it just me… how unlucky.  It turns out the Create New Local for this project is also grey out in other workstation.  Now what?  Remember I mentioned about the Worksharing Monitor?  I checked my coworker’s Worksharing Monitor and noticed one of my team member was syncing at that moment (Worksharing Monitor only activate when you are in the project, since I haven’t opened the project yet, my Worksharing Monitor is blank).  Once the project finished syncing, the create local check box reappears!  AH HA!  Mystery solved!

This brings up another problem.  When your team member is syncing, the create local checkbox is grey out, however, the “Open” button is still available.  If you did not pay attention and click open, Revit will open the Central model without you realizing.  Oops!  Now you are working in the Central Model and your team is experiencing slow down when syncing.  Hopefully, one of your team member will see that you are in Central and send you a friendly message.

Good Practice for Larger Project:

  1. Use Worksharing Monitor.
  2. See someone is syncing, wait until he/she finished before you start syncing.
  3. See anyone have the Central file opened, please notify him/her to exit out the file.
  4. Save often!  Save often!  Large project tend to crash more easily.  Losing several hours of work is no fun.

What is your experience with large Revit project? Please share your lessons learn with us.

One Comment

  1. I’ve also encountered 2 different cases when Create new local was grey out.
    1. when my pc ran out of space to store the local file.
    2. when 1 of the co-worker didn’t map to rvt file with the same directory address. (eg. the server name was shortened to a shorter address, while the rest of the team were using the long directory address.

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