About the Revision Management...

[Anonymous]

I'm near the end of designing a residential house, we're finalizing the drawings and making comparisons.

So far I haven't tried out the Revision Management feature in ArchiCAD 18.
I've gone through some of the tutorials, I understand the work flow a bit now ( creating an issue, linking changes etc.), but I would like to know, is it possible to, for example, to revert to a previous version of the model or 'revision'? It seems that revisions only affect layouts and not the actual model... or maybe I'm wrong.

I'm thinking of something that works similar to Window's Restore Point, is that how things work here?

If someone can break it to me I'd be really happy.

Thanks!

[Laszlo Nagy]

No, it is not possible.
If you want to have restore points you need to save the Project File under another name at regular intervals.
The Renovation Filter works with "Changes". You can define Changes in the Change Manager. You can either select elements and assign them to Changes or you can place a Change Marker.
ARCHICAD will track whether those elements assigned to Changes or Change Marker appear on Layouts and will create a new Revision on Layouts they do appear.

But those revisions and change markers cannot revert the model back to an earlier state. There is no such connection there.

[Anonymous]

Oh I see, so basically this feature save the fuss of figuring out which layout has been affected by new changes, this way one won't end up re-printing layouts that haven't altered.

Thanks for clearing things up for me.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Yes, and the smart thing about it is that the numbering of Revisions happens on a per-Layout basis. This way all Layouts can display independent data about what Changes affected them and a given Layouts does not have to be included in a certain Issue if no Changes issued in that Issue affected that given Layout. The per-Layout Revision numbering will reflect that.
It is probably a good idea to watch the complete Revision Management playlist on Youtube because it covers all aspects of this solution:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnXY6vLUwlWVakX9gE_4eau0ClfPX1z8b

[Da3dalus]

I still have some concerns about the functionality of the Change/Revision Management. We've been starting to use it, but run into some issues:

1. I understand the Change > Revision > Issue workflow allows for any number of different revision numbering schemes. However, for most firms, they are the same thing. It seems that Revision and Issue can sync up the same number, but Changes are not linked, and can get out of sync. We're experimenting with a different numbering system for changes (like Chg-01), but I'm having a hard time explaining to people why we would use that. A "simple mode" would be helpful, where they are all the same.

2. It automatically sets the revision date as the point when the Issue is closed, with no way to override it. We typically set a revision date so it matches that of our consultants. It amy be a week or two before a revision on a big project is fully coordinated. I've handled this by creating a new variable in the Revision Scheme, but this often gets confused and missed.

3. The scheduling of Changes, especially in sheet Indexes, is limited. For instance, I would like to show the date and Revision number of each sheet in a set on the Index... some Clients even require it. Date is not yet an available parameter, and besides, I would want to use my "dummy date" variable from item #2. It would be even better if we could have a table showing every Revision that affected each sheet. For now, we often use Excel for that.

4. When custom variables are added to a Layout Scheme or a Revision Scheme, they do not appear to be available via Autotext. This would be extremely helpful to show critical progress or status information on the title block.

5. It is really nice to be able to filter the Navigator Layout Book to show only those sheets that are affected by the current Revision. The same thing would be great in the Publisher. You can choose to Publish only those Revised Layouts, but you can't filter them out.

6. In each Revision/Issue, there is a cool option to show only proviso revision back to a point you choose. Our standard in the past has been to remove the clouds and leave the delta symbol, so it's clear that a change occurred, but it isn't a mess of clouds. This is not an option, and it requires going back through each Layout and turning off clouds manually.

Overall, I really like the Change Tool, and the Change Manager is an interesting tool that could be used in a few workflows. I just hope Graphisoft keeps developing and refining the whole function, as it is a little convoluted at this point.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Chuck,

I will forward your remarks and suggestions to the Graphisoft developers.

[Jeff Kogut]

Especially this:

Da3dalus wrote:
...

2. It automatically sets the revision date as the point when the Issue is closed, with no way to override it. We typically set a revision date so it matches that of our consultants. It amy be a week or two before a revision on a big project is fully coordinated. I've handled this by creating a new variable in the Revision Scheme, but this often gets confused and missed.
....

Bumping this since it seems it has been 2.5 years. Has there been any improvement on this since, has someone figured out how to change the date? I'm just about to do some manual text to get the right date.

I think the other points from Da3dalus are good as well. It seems like this dumb/hidden tool needs to be more the the Organizer in order to assign Changes to Issues.

User experience 0/10
Ease of use 0/10
Need of usable tool 8/10