Teamwork "Layout" File Takes Forever to Update Layouts

[BenATA]

Hi All, 

I would appreciate your wisdom on this subject:

Our office is working on a new school project that consists of 6 buildings. Each building is modelled in an individual .pln file that is accessed through BIMcloud as a Service. All layouts are linked to a "Layout" file which is also stored on BIMcloud as a service. From this file we manage revisions, issues and publish all layouts. We have approx. 1000 drawings across 150 layouts. 

The issue we have is that updating all these layouts takes 3+ hours to complete, and as such has to be done overnight. If there is an issue then the updating the process needs to be started again, often during work hours - which we really want to avoid. 

Has anyone had a similar issue and if so how did you solve it? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. 

Thanks in Advance

Ben

AC23-25

MacOS Big Sur

[ryejuan]

Do you use one file to export all your drawings?

[BenATA]

No, we export from each hotlink.  So we export from 6 different files and collate them all in the layout file. 

[ryejuan]

If you're doing a a few sheets I think it would work but you guys are doing 1000 sheets.

Have you tried setting up the layouts for each of the 6 files and exporting it within them rather than placing everything in one file? 🤔

[Gerry Leonor]

so what's the file setup here? You mentioned hotlinked files.

is the file setup similar to which of the 2 below?:

setup 1:

or setup 2:

if it's setup 2, External drawings will take alot longer to load only because every time you update a drawing, it has to:

1. open the source Model file
2. update the drawing
3. close the source Model file

if you're updating one drawing from multiple Model files, it will repeat the 3 steps above for each drawing. that takes time. sure you can open all 6 model files at once to skip stels 1 & 3, but no-one else gets to work on those files.

If your file setup is closer to Setup 2, my suggestion is to use PMK exports from each of the Model files. all your saved views will be exported as PMK files. these will still be brought into the Layout files as "External Drawings", but the updating will be instantaneous, as it avoids steps 1 & 3.

note of caution: this may cause issues with Linked Markers. you might want to do some tests prior to permanently switching to the PMK method.

[BenATA]

Hi @ryejuan, just to clarify, we only have 150 sheets (layouts) that are composed of 1000 drawings. About 25 sheets (layouts) per model. 

[BenATA]

Thanks @Gerry Leonor - this is helpful, and a suggestion I was considering but exactly as you mentioned I'm worried about the linked markers (and of course the time involved with replacing all linked drawings with .pmk files.) Do you know if it is possible to relink a drawing to a .pmk file without having to reorganise or crop the drawing?

[Gerry Leonor]

i would do a test -- but from memory, the cropped area should be OK. i don't think it moves the model around. if it does, you'll have to consider that & if the change of the system will be better/faster compared to sticking to the current setup.

do a test for each drawing type if you can -- Plan, section / elev, detail, 3D doc.

[ryejuan]

@Gerry Leonor which method are you using? setup 1 or setup 2?

[BenATA]

@ryejuan @Gerry Leonor Setup 2