Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Revit link not looking to local assigned location - looking across WAN (2010)

avrjjoe

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Joined: Tue, Sep 16, 2008
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Hi,

I have a Revit 2010 project to which our office has linked another office's Architectural model. Both offices have the same project folder tree. Within our project folders, we have a folder marked "Mirror" that we can use for mapping linked files locally instead of mapping them across a network to an office that is in another state. We have "mirror folders" set up where the CAD/BIM managers synch the 2 offices networks with read only copies of the other offices' work to be placed in those designated project Mirror Folders. The file name always stays the same, but gets overwritten with each synch to provide the latest model of that office's work. I selected this file on our local server to be our linked reference, and it shows that address under "Local Alias", but the "saved path" is the local network address hundreds of miles away in the other office. Needless to say, this makes both the opening of the project and saving to central take forever due to the reloading of the linked file over a slow WAN. Are we missing a vital detail as to how to keep Revit focused on the local copy of the other office's work? Is it because the copy saves its original location internally and redirects Revit to the original source upon opening? Should we rely less on the automation of synching the folders, and actually open the copy file at each synch to set it as a local central file somehow?Any solutions or insight would be a huge help. Thanks!-Joe

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rkitect

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Joined: Thu, Dec 16, 2004
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I may not be getting your question totally but it may be worth it to try setting all links in the host model to Relative instead of Absolute.  This should make it so that when you synch, the host is looking for the local copy since it's not looking for the link at the absolute path (which if I read correctly is pathed to the copy in the other office).  You will both need to do this in order for this to be efficient.

In regards to the saved path, I think you can remove the saved path and force the model to look for the link in the new relative location.

A nice trick that we are using in this office that is somewhat unrelated to WAN but related to linked model management; we have placed each of our linked models in their own workset.  This allows you to use the open dialogue to force revit to open a model with those links turned off.  We're not 100% sure if this forces Revit to open the nodel without loading those links, but it does reduce open time SIGNIFICANTLY when it is not trying to load the graphics for those models.  I would give this a shot and see if that helps.

Keep us updated, and may the Revit force be with you!

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avrjjoe

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Joined: Tue, Sep 16, 2008
14 Posts

Thanks, rkitect

I have enclosed a PDF of a screen capture showing the link information. It is set to relative already, but I am drawing a blank on remembering how to clear the saved path. The other office's model behaves the same was as far as when they reference our model it loads from our original on out server instead of the copy that is on their server (which they pointed to when originally setting up the link). Like AutoCAD, I figured there had to be a way for Revit to look locally before looking outside of the project folders. Is the setting of the saved path an option in the insertion of the link, or is there a way to do it afterwards?

Edited on: Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 11:41:06 AM

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lunchtrayrider

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avrjjoe

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The only thing that we can think to do is that every time we synch the servers, we must first save a copy of the originals, and open these new files and detach them from central. We're going to try this before the synch and see if it solves the problem. If not, we'll try to do it after the synch and see if doing it from our end sets the file's internal "identity" as on our server.

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lunchtrayrider

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