In the world of the Internet, I definitely waited too long for a BILT NA 2017 recap. Here’s my summary: I went, I talked, I learned a lot, it was awesome. Seriously, it’s a fantastic conference if you have any interest in technology and the design and construction of buildings.
I am a nerd at heart, and I am one of those nerds that isn’t exactly “at home” in social situations. But I really have to say that one of the best things about BILT is meeting the people and hearing all their great new ideas.
One of those people I got to meet was Amber Young, an engineer at Affiliated Engineers. We’d bump into each other every so often and as happens, the conversation would turn to Revit… you know… like happens EVERYWHERE.
So, I don’t remember exactly what led to this particular point, but we got to talking about Worksets. I am not a fan of them, especially when used for visibility control. They aren’t layers, and they are one of the most “manual” things in Revit. It’s like a folder that you dump elements into, and that’s not what I want to use to group things in my model; I want to use the data INSIDE the elements. So, I always push for a very limited amount of Worksets, but follow the usual lines… maybe make worksets per geographic areas, maybe do an interior vs exterior, maybe have one for FFE, etc.
Amber kind of blew my mind when she dropped this on me: she said they only have ONE WORKSET in their models these days.
One workset?! I was stunned at the gusto of it. Then my mind clicked into a list of a million questions, but unfortunately, we parted almost immediately, heading to different sessions…
- Literally just ONE workset?
- Do you merge Shared Levels and Grids?
- Surely, you must have a workset for links, or DWGs?
- Do you just leave it named “Workset1” (because that is kind of a cool rallying cry)?
I love the beauty of this idea, and I love that someone is trying it out, but I do need my questions answered! Is anyone out there doing this? Who else has been brave enough to throw of the shackles of worksets and cry “no more will I be a locked down to a manual system of organization inside my database!”?
If you are doing this, I’d love to hear from you. I need to know more.
