Sharing Projects Between Offices

[Anonymous]

We have offices in four states: Utah, Idaho, Texas, and Maryland. All projects originate from our Utah office and are then distributed to the others for the CD stage. The offices are connected to each other via T1 lines. Our current policy is that when a non-Utah office gets a project, they take whatever files already exist in Utah and move them to their own servers.

There has been some discussion about keeping the projects on the Utah server and having the other offices work on the files through the T1 lines. Although I like the idea of having all the data in one place, it seems to me that this would consume our bandwidth.

Is anybody else dealing with this scenario? What are your thoughts?

[Anonymous]

The upside is that ArchiCAD doesn't place any demand on the network except when it is opening/saving/sending-receiving files and loading libraries. Once the file is opened or signed into you can work at local speeds. Also the good news about AC10 is that file sizes are much smaller.

On the other hand, as fast as a T1 is, it is a far cry from gigabit ethernet and I know that many (myself included) prefer to work on the fastest network available.

The only way to know for sure is to do a trial run, see how it works, and whether the advantages are worth the trouble.

Another way to approach this would be to use file sync software to keep the home office files up to date once they are handed off to the regional folks.

[Anonymous]

Jay,

We have been working through this problem by using a Windows Remote Desktop connection to a workstation on in the other office over our WAN.

Except for the slow screen refresh, it works great, because all the processing and traffic occurs in the other office.

You can use any Windows XP computer to do this. We have a "RenderBoxx" (http://www.boxxtech.com/) which is a blade type computer that mounts in a server rack.

[Aussie John]

A someone who spent a day trying to get the remote office VPN (virtual Private Network) working I'd vote for local version. Since having the file in Utah is really a filing exercise I would set up a system to backup to the Utah Office at end of day