topic teamwork in archicad in Modeling

teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:21:21 GMT

how do your company work in team in archicad?

use its teamwork tool? or use your own method? and what is your layering system?

and beside, when we work on a complex shopping arcade, the file become so heavy and slow, then we switch to other software instead of archicad.

actually, we hope we can finish a whole project by using archicad, but we can not stand the pain when using archicad sometimes. we believe in archicad, but for our experience, we just can't control archicad well.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:04:35 GMT

any of you work in team in your company?

i hope u may share your experience to me.

i really hope that i can use archicad to run through the whole project.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:17:13 GMT

we use teamwork (as i'm sure others on here do too) but it would be too much to try and explain it all to you via this forum.
may i suggest you read through the reference guide and perhaps contact your local reseller for training on this (and other issues) - trust me, you will find it useful.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Ignacio Azpiazu — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:32:38 GMT

xristina wrote:
read through the reference guide and perhaps contact your local reseller for training

Or maybe even call a national or international guru for a few days to help in your setup --if you have a large project running, the investment will pay for itself within the first month.

Also, depending on the project you might be able to avoid Teamwork if you break up the project into layout, site model, building, and module publishing (units, building components) files, so that at any given time you are working on a relatively small file, and other people can jump in to help on other relatively small files without sign-ins and workspace conflicts. I have recently worked on a 500+ room hotel remodel project with 53 room types, and am now working on a 800 unit residential development on 6 towers and a 12-story office building; on all of them all drawings and schedules are model-based, in the hotel we had the furniture and equipment to the interior designer's drawings, in the residential and office projects we are modeling and scheduling the envelope with extreme detail. At no point have those projects needed more than 2 people working in parallel (most of the time it has been only 1), and we are more than happily doing everything without Teamwork.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Erika Epstein — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:35:08 GMT

Angus,
Your firm should hire someone to help. Linc Ellis here on this forum is based in Australia and travels the world doing this kind of work. Contact him.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:17:59 GMT

Erika wrote:
Angus,
Your firm should hire someone to help. Linc Ellis here on this forum is based in Australia and travels the world doing this kind of work. Contact him.

Username Link

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:48:48 GMT

Ignacio wrote:
xristina wrote:
read through the reference guide and perhaps contact your local reseller for training
Or maybe even call a national or international guru for a few days to help in your setup --if you have a large project running, the investment will pay for itself within the first month.

Also, depending on the project you might be able to avoid Teamwork if you break up the project into layout, site model, building, and module publishing (units, building components) files, so that at any given time you are working on a relatively small file, and other people can jump in to help on other relatively small files without sign-ins and workspace conflicts. I have recently worked on a 500+ room hotel remodel project with 53 room types, and am now working on a 800 unit residential development on 6 towers and a 12-story office building; on all of them all drawings and schedules are model-based, in the hotel we had the furniture and equipment to the interior designer's drawings, in the residential and office projects we are modeling and scheduling the envelope with extreme detail. At no point have those projects needed more than 2 people working in parallel (most of the time it has been only 1), and we are more than happily doing everything without Teamwork.

it sounds that archicad can go through the whole project, but it is just difficult to set rules between people.

that mean, we have to figure out the rules.

however, if not use teamwork, the model cannot communicate each other which lost the meaning of using archicad (in my point of view, archicad give me a feeling that less separated file, less error, drawings will also updated)

Re: teamwork in archicad

Ignacio Azpiazu — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:58:35 GMT

Sorry for that post, Angus, it may only have added to your confusion. I strongly suggest you don't try to 'figure out the rules' without learning the basics --which you can do in a few months by going through the manuals and a few years of AC-Talk, or in a few days by getting a good project setup and support from a consultant.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:23:51 GMT

thanks ignacio , i will use the teamwork tool again, and when i have more specific problem, i will ask again.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Link — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:51:01 GMT

s2art wrote:
Erika wrote:
Angus,
Your firm should hire someone to help. Linc Ellis here on this forum is based in Australia and travels the world doing this kind of work. Contact him.
Username Link

And I've never been to Hong Kong, but always wanted to!:-)

There's definitely a lot to know about Teamwork! One good trick is to use it for alternative design options as I explained here.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:26:05 GMT

Username Link
And I've never been to Hong Kong, but always wanted to!:-)

There's definitely a lot to know about Teamwork! One good trick is to use it for alternative design options as I explained here.

Cheers,
Link.

thanks link

if i need your help, i will send a pm to you, or maybe you send me a pm for your contact and the charge for this service

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:21:50 GMT

Erika wrote:
Angus,
Your firm should hire someone to help. Linc Ellis here on this forum is based in Australia and travels the world doing this kind of work. Contact him.

I am essentially a 1 to 2 person office and have tried to decipher teamworks off and on for awhile now. I finally got through the whole administrator, team leader and team mate set up, only to discover my current layer set up doesn't seem to work well with teamwork.

I think with more work I can figure this out, but really why does it have to be so non intuitive and difficult? I read the manual and the help section and they are minimal to say the least. If someone knows where I can go to get a concise, straightforward tutorial on teamwork. please let me know.

Thanks,

Don Lee

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:46:08 GMT

Sooooooooo, does anyone have any suggestions for a 2 person office who (might) want to use teamworks? So far after a couple of attempts, I find teamwork not so easy to use and possibly not suited for a two person office.

With the economy going nowhere, I'm not too excited about hiring someone to come in just to set up teamwork. Besides, is it unreasonable for me to expect that it shouldn't be that hard?

Don Lee

Re: teamwork in archicad

Dennis Lee — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:28:11 GMT

This is not gonna help you w/ teamwork, but just to share my view:

I have a two person office as well, and I did TRY to work with teamwork to no avail. It just didn't make sense for me. Too many restrictions on who can do what and not, too much setup work involved for a small firm.

When I had it going briefly, it was a full sign in w/ full authority on one person - except maybe one drawing (one layer for all the notes for example in reflected ceiling plan) or one layout signed out to the other person.

After a while though, the sign-in out of whatever layer that other person needed to use with the confusion of multiplying plc files everywhere (not to mention the times when I had to make a new fill pattern or a composite or a linetype or even a layer! - everybody has to sign off, and team leader sign in with exclusive access to make any attribute) kind of became more of a hassle than dividing work project by project. I do project A in the morning while you do project B, then we switch, etc...

When there is only one project to work on with a urgent deadline, I just make a 'temporary' copy file for the other person to work on, and later imported the work into the master pln file manually. Also, another option is for that person to work on a separate file, and I bring it into the master file by hotlinking the other's mod file.

Anyway, if you are very disciplined, have a lot of passion for AC, and have TIME to play around, then I think you can eventually learn to do it without professional help. For me, for a two person office, the time invested to set up plus the efforts required to maintain that systematic organization with ever varying types and scales of projects (I think this is the key), does not seem more effective than the old fashioned / manual method I have resorted to.... for now.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:15:07 GMT

Hi Dennis:

Thank you for your detailed reply. I think I will just forego Teamwork for now and as you say do things "manually".

Don Lee

Re: teamwork in archicad

JaredBanks — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:19:04 GMT

Don Lee,

I'll throw my 2 cents into the ring. I've worked with teamwork on and off for about 2 years now, on projects with up to 5 or 6 people and more recently on projects with 2 people. I know I'm not using all the capabilities of teamwork, but I think my system works well for 2 people in the residential firm I work at. I doubt this would work as well for larger groups.

1) team members sit next to each other (or very close by) to facilitate communication and every morning discuss what the tasks are for the day. Knowing what everyone is going to do really makes things so much easier.
2) Have two layer combinations for sign-in and splitting up work.
I call mine --interiors-- and --exteriors-- so they appear at the top of the list. And yeah, they basically split the layers between interiors and exteriors (with interiors also having electrical layers and exteriors having all the structural layers plus whatever else can be cleanly divided into one or the other).
3) If the work can't be cut by layers for the day, we'll slice the building either by stories or in half with a marquee.
4) Then have at it.

If you need to make changes to things not in your space, write them down to change later, or go over and change them on the other machine. It's faster to stop the other person for 3 minutes than to sign in and out, etc. I find that someone can invariably get the model with exclusive access either at the end of the day or at the beginning (or at lunch if there's a crunch). This all goes back to the better you can plan out the work in realistically doable chunks the easier teamwork will become. If teamwork becomes first come, first serve, what are you working on these days? then you'll be in a world of hurt.

Oh, one last thing. Anyone can sign in as the team leader, but if one of the people is in charge of the overall file (not necessarily the person in charge of the project), that'll help keep things clean, organized, and humming along. Hope that helps.

If anyone has strong disagreements or recommendations with this process let me know, because I'm always interested in doing things more efficiently. And I am/will be teaching this process to the other 16 ArchiCAD users at my firm so I'd rather not have to reteach too much!!!

plan plan plan work work work

Re: teamwork in archicad

Link — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:36:08 GMT

Sounds very realistic to me. The Teamwork specific layer combinations are a big help IME.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: teamwork in archicad

JaredBanks — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:40:36 GMT

I originally used teamwork without layer combinations for sign-in and it was a hassle every day fighting over layers, yelling at people (or wanting to yell at people) for not paying attention and taking too many layers or the wrong layers or layers they didn't need...

The five, ten, fifteen minutes it takes to set up the combos at the beginning of the project are completely worth it (and then once they're in the template file... priceless). And on a larger team I would imagine the benefits increase.

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:25:35 GMT

JaredBanks wrote:
I originally used teamwork without layer combinations for sign-in and it was a hassle every day fighting over layers, yelling at people (or wanting to yell at people) for not paying attention and taking too many layers or the wrong layers or layers they didn't need...

The five, ten, fifteen minutes it takes to set up the combos at the beginning of the project are completely worth it (and then once they're in the template file... priceless). And on a larger team I would imagine the benefits increase.

Hey thanks for the info Jared, I'll give it a try!

Don Lee

Re: teamwork in archicad

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:56:06 GMT

Hey all,
Most, if not all of our projects are done in Teamwork.
Project set up is CRITICAL
and shouting at people only breaks down the lines of communication.
Once you find out what you can and can not do Teamwork can be quite handy.
Our teams range anywhere between 2 to too many people

Give it a go