Layout book size

[Paolo Pi]

Hi all,

We want to set a standard in our office for setting up a proper File Structure and Documentation strategy according to the size and complexity of the project.

According to the Archicad Collaboration Guide (which is unfortunately not very up to date), there are 3 main concepts:

- Single file concept (Solo or Teamwork): for small- to medium-sized projects
     one single file that contains the model and the layout book

- Master file model: for larger files

     one or more model files and a separate file for documentation, where the layouts are populated with views imported directly from the model file(s)

- Use of PMK drawings: for larger files

     one or more model files and a separate file for documentation, where the layouts are populated with PMK drawings saved from the model file(s)

I have a few questions:

1 - are these concepts still valid or is there a more recent Collaboration Guide I could check?

2- I used the Master file method in the past (with Archicad 20) and always had some problems updating the layouts in the Documentation file. I read on this forum that other people had similar issues. Do you have any experience with more recent Archicad versions? Is it a valid method or is it better to use the PMK files instead?

3- I have been asked to give some directions to help decide which of the 3 strategies to follow. I know there are many factors to consider, but if you need to give numbers, which would you suggest? I was thinking about:
          approximate size of the layout book (number of layouts)? (ex. more than 200 (?) layouts, then is better to split the Documentation and the Model file)
          square meters of the project and complexity (easy to split into units)?

          anything else?

thanks 

[Laszlo Nagy]

Those three concepts are still valid.

I think the following article may be of help as it talks a lot about performance:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Project-data-BIM/How-to-Optimize-Your-Project-Performance/ta-p/3...

You can review what size projects you did in the past and what their performance was and based on that you can decide which option you should choose. So, if you had a project that had performance issues in the past and this project will be similar, then it may be a good idea to use a separate documentation PLN file. If performance is still not good enough, you could go for the PMK option as well, and so on.