How To Create Central File In Revit 2017

Keeping the Revit central file healthy is critical to keeping the project running smoothly and to avoid causing file corruption. Below are best practices that need to be done routinely on the central file to keep it clean. Routinely is going to depend on how active the project is. The more active the project is, the more often it should be maintained.

1. Have all users synchronize and save to central, make sure all worksets are relinquished, close the local files

2. Have one user Open the Central file. From the Open dialog box, clear the check box Create New Local, place a check in the boxes for Detach from Central and Audit (you will see a warning like below)

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3. Select the Yes button from the Audit Warning dialog box and then click the Open button

4. You will see the following Detach Model from Central dialog box, select Detach and preserve worksets

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5. This Step is Highly Recommended: Through windows explorer, Create a folder named project name ARCHIVE_DATE and make a copy of the Central file to place in the archive folder and move the back up folder into the newly created archive folder. When you create the new central over the top of the existing one it will be recreated.

6. In Revit, go to the application menu R17
click on Save as, Project and name it the same as the original Central file name and in the original location.

a.If you select options you will notice that Make this a Central Model after save and Compact are greyed out and pre-checked.

7. After the file is properly saved, go to the Manage tab on the ribbon, click on the Purge Unused tool, and from the dialog box delete all or specify the items you want to delete then select OK

8. Review and fix warnings, which can be found on the Manage tab.

a. If the icon is grayed out, you have no warnings in your project, if the Warnings icon is not grayed out, you have items that may need to be fixed in the model.

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b. To fix the Warnings, select the Warning icon.

c. In the Warnings dialog box, expand the warnings to review and resolve.

9. Check to make sure that items are on the correct worksets

a. I find the easiest way to do this is to go to a 3d view with everything visible and then turn off all but one workset. For example, if I have the furniture workset on, and I see interior partitions, I know they need to be moved to the appropriate workset. Depending on how large your model is you may want to duplicate the 3d view and limit what you see with section boxes.

10. Make sure worksets that do not need to be visible by default are set properly in the worksets dialog box

11. Delete unnecessary views

12. Verify that cad files are linked rather than inserted into the model (preferably current view only)

13. On the Manage tab, Additional Settings, select Linestyles and if there are cad linestyles in there, delete if possible.

14. Synchronize and modify settings

a. Check everything that can be checked including compact. You can add a comment if you like, this shows up in History under comments.

b. After the save is complete, close the project

This Step is CRITICAL: Before having users create new local files make sure they delete or archive/rename their old local files and their back up folder (we don't want to risk pulling bad data from the old back up folder into our newly cleaned project!)

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