topic Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv in Collaboration with other software

Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/server.

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:00:28 GMT

Hi.
Do any of you guys have satellite offices?

We're having a heck of a time trying to work on this big house we're doing here. We need alot of people working on it, but we cannot figure out how to do this efficiently.

Does any one use team work over the internet- or through a server.

We have an inner office server at my office, and all of us here use it and work off it.
But our Bedford, NY office doesn't work directly from our server, they copy their work from it and put it back on, cause the server's physical location is here in Lake Placid.
Seems to me the internet connection is not fast enough for them to work from our server, alot of lagging and crashing.

What we have been doing is copying and pasting work from the bedford model to my model and vice versa.

Things can get lost, and alot of stuff has to be done more than once, for instance- our solid element operations get lost through this copying and pasting. Dimensions are hard to deal with.

I guess I am hoping someone will say "Yes, of course you can use teamwork and stream it online" or something! This is a month now we have been trying to do this this way.

Any advice appreciated, Thank YOu!

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

TomWaltz — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:10:21 GMT

We have several offices scattered around the globe. I suspect the difference is that we have a very fast connection between the offices. Signing in from one office to another is definitely slower than if you were in the same office, but it's tolerable. What kind of connections speeds are you dealing with?

Also remember, Teamwork only really handles up to 5 or 6 people in a PLP at one time. More than that and Archicad bogs down really badly. Are you overcrowding your model?

You might also be better off to divide the building into multiple files and hotlink them together (similar to the Graphisoft Big Building White Paper)

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:29:19 GMT

I will find what kind of connection speed we have, but I guess I am wondering HOW you are signing into your other offices?

is it a software thing.

When Bedford signs into to Lake Placid to get our files they sign into our server, which is one solo computer. They use VNC Viewer, so they actually have control of it until they are done.

So, how are you guys doing it?
Extra computers in the office, is it a software thing?

We have used Go To My PC, and Log Me In, so that we can log into other computers in each office, and it is also helpful for when Bedford has a question regarding ArchiCAD and it is hard sometimes to explain your question so I would just log into their computers from Lake Placid and we can walk through it togther.

I think Go To My PC was pretty fast, but, still they would need be logging into a computer here , and we really only have two extra computer stations, and they are not allways empty.

I guess when I said we have alot of people working on this project, only four of us are wokring on the model in ArchiCAD the rest are hand drafters.

So four people would proabably be our max capacity.

So- thank you, and when you sign into otehr offices all teh time and it is quite speedy- you are also using team work?

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

TomWaltz — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:38:44 GMT

Because we have a secure connection between the offices, it's just a matter of mapping some folder on a remote file server like \\remoteOffice\\files\\projects\ to a drive in Windows (we use M by convention, but it doesn't much matter as long as everyone uses the same letter) Once you have the drive mapped, you can sign into the PLP like it was local.

There's no extra computers sitting around because everyone is connecting directly to the file server and working with a Teamwork file.

The trick is getting the connection between the offices. A fast, secure connection costs!

You could to the remote graphics thing, but it's kind of a pain. There's a really bad latency the whole time you are working and a lot of the smart cursors don't display right. GoToMyPC or other products are OK for tech support but I would never recommend them as a production method.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:46:27 GMT

I agree that the methods I mention ar enot practical for this stuff either.
And yes handy for tech support.

OK, so I will be giving my "tech" guy a call and see what he thinks about hooking us up and costs.

I don't see how the cost could be more than the big guy here is willing to afford.

After all it is practically necessary, and we did just bu one of those 3D printers.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:15:48 GMT

How about using Filezilla?...
I've never tried to use it with team work, but I use it to synchronize my partners remote libraries with mine on the server (an old pc that I use as a server)...
The process is done by an amazing freeware application called syncback that updates all the files every hour during the day...
The process is secure and relatively quick with a band width of 2mbits.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Greg Kmethy — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:20:12 GMT

Jesikuh123 wrote:

What we have been doing is copying and pasting work from the bedford model to my model and vice versa.

Instead of copying and pasting it is certainly more efficient that someone manages the send and receives in your main office. This person would sign in in the name of each team mate, save a local draft (.plc or .pca), send out this file to the remote office, where teammates work with it, then they send back the drafts at the end of the day, and the chap sends and receives all the drafts in the central file again.

This is more secure then doing the actual send and receive over the internet, if you do not have a reliable (probably a leased line) connection between your offices.

Alternatively, you should use hotlinked modules to split up the project.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Brad Elliott — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:32:49 GMT

I agree with Gergely. That is how we dealt with it here.

Put one person in charge of sending out and receiving the files from the home office. They sign in with the name of the person the file is going to and then email or ftp them the draft file. At the end of the day or when the parceled out file is needed the file is sent back to the home office person and a send and receive is done. If you have been efficient with your divisions you can frequently resend the updated file without ever having to log out.

This does not have to be daily. We have had people performing firecode @ zoning drawings and they kept that draft for the several days required to finish the drawings before sending them back. Same with some of our interiors work.

If the file gets too big for easy emailing create a folder on your server so the files can be dropped and removed from there.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Anonymous — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:16:35 GMT

Hi Guys.
We are trying this teamwork between to offices.
Our other office has our main file and they are sending me a draft file to work on.

I am wondering if after they save out a draft for me do they sign out of my name? Or do they need to leave it open?

If they do sign out how do we send a receive changes when I send the file back to them?

It seems the main file would not recognize me as signed on anymore so it would not accept my changes?

Also if we have to leave it open is some one down there supposed to have all of the teamwork files signed out and left open on a computer so we remain signed in with the main file?

That seem like it would slow the computer down a lot.

Any advice would be great, Thanks!

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

owen — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:56:16 GMT

[Edit] Please excuse any mixed up Ys, Zs, etc ... typing on a damn German Apple Wireless keyboard at the moment.

At my old office we had the same issue working on a major project with a team of around 10 split between two cities .. we had a business grade connection and VPN set up but it was not fast enough for direct sign-ins remotely. We would simply Sign In to the Teamwork files as each of the team members in the remote office, sent them a Draft of this session and then we would Sign Out when they returned the file. You MUST NOT sign the remote teammates out while they are still working in their Draft copy as the Sign In IDs will not match and you won't be able to Send & Receive their changes when they return the files.

Of course being able to Sign In directly from the remote office would be nice but (at least in Australia) a business-grade connection of the speed Tom's office sounds like it has is going to cost you thousands of dollars per month and up. A justifiable expense for a large firms with manz staff in multiple locations, but for small and medium sized firms it is an overhead most cannot afford.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Anonymous — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:52:19 GMT

Owen-
So while the other office still has me signed in I would send my draft file back to them and they would overwrite the draft file that they had and send a receive changes?

how can we over write the old draft file with my new one if it is still open down there?

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

owen — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:56:25 GMT

Jesikuh123 wrote:
Owen-
So while the other office still has me signed in I would send my draft file back to them and they would overwrite the draft file that they had and send a receive changes?

how can we over write the old draft file with my new one if it is still open down there?

Your first sentence is correct ... not quite sure i follow the second though so i will just run through the process step-by-step:

1. Main Office (A) signs in as Other Office (B) and designates a workspace.
2. A then saves a Teamwork Draft. Good practice is to append the file name with the Teammate initials e.g 'ProjectX.plp' becomes a 'ProjectX OS.plc'
3. A then closes the Teamwork Draft (not sign out) and sends the saved file to B.
4. B opens the Teamwork Draft and does their thing
5. When B is finished they save the Draft, close the file (not sign out) and send the file back to A.
6. A then opens the received Teamwork Draft, Sends & Receives changes and can then Sign Out of the Draft or redefine the Workspace (and repeat, etc)

hope that helps

cheers,

os

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Link — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:14:12 GMT

Every draft is given a unique ID. When they sign you in, that draft is given an ID of (say) 1. If they send that file to you and you send it back and they send & receive with it, AC still recognizes that ID as 1. This is because you haven't saved the file as another draft, you just dealt with that one file.

Having said that, you can make copies of the draft, either in the OS or by File>Save As, and the new file(s) will have a new ID. IF you try sending and receiving with those new files, AC will give a warning that the ID is different, but will still let you send and receive with them. This means that you can have multiple drafts, (perhaps with multiple design aletrnatives?), and send and receive from any of those drafts that you choose!

All of this only works if they don't sign you out of the PLP in the meantime - you must stay 'signed in', as far as AC is concerned.

Hope that is clear - it's an underused feature that I've mentioned on AC-Talk many times before.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

owen — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:31:39 GMT

Yes in case i didn't make it clear enough, as Link says NOT SIGNING OUT OF THE TEAMWORK DRAFT is the key ... i would recommend really brushing up on your Teamwork training before trying to use it to work with remote offices - perhaps get together in the same office to run through it so everyone is on the same page and then run some test before you try to do it on a live project. Its really fairly simple once you get to know it, but things can go horribly wrong in Teamwork if people don't know how the whole process works.

And the Drafts-as-Design-Options tip Link is talking about is a very useful one indeed

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Karl Ottenstein — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:53:57 GMT

And, just to clarify further, since I've noticed in my travels that people find this confusing: being "signed in" is not like, say, being logged into your bank's web site to view your account.

When you are 'signed in' to a PLP, there is NO active network connection between the file and you. You could 'sign in' from your laptop, save a draft, and then take the laptop on a trip for a week, come back, plug it in and do a send/receive.

The 'sign in' only has to do with letting the PLP know that someone (you) has reserved parts of the file for use and to record the number/etc (mentioned by Link) so that when a S/R is done later, ArchiCAD knows what to do with it.

The PLP keeps track of the 'sign ins' (really 'workspace reservations'). Signing out not only releases the workspace to other users ... but it also clears the PLP's knowledge of the ID assigned to the draft. So, after the signout, you cannot do a send/receive with the draft.

I'm sure I'm still not clear...dinner time on Friday!

But, another comment is that many people think they need to sign out at the end of each day, or before lunch, or whatever. Not so. You can stay signed in for weeks (although that would be a little odd)....because, again, the 'sign in' is NOT a network connection. It is merely a database operation that stores some info in the PLP, and allocates a draft file to you. I think if the command was "Reserve Workspace" rather than "Sign In", things might be a little less confusing?

Cheers,
Karl

Re: Satellite office + Team work or copy paste/internet/serv

Anonymous — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:34:41 GMT

OK, so the office with the main file does not need to keep my teamwork open down there, they do a save as for a draft and then close it, but not sign out.
Then I send it back to them, they over write the draft they gave me with the one I am sending back ot them, then open it and send a receive.

I think I get it now, Thanks for your help.