We used to use Teamwork on every job which involved more than one person. however, as much as I love the idea of the system, and as much as i would not want to go back to separate files, I find the lack of development in this area quite frustrating.
1) The need for exclusive access to change certain things needs to be eliminated. With people working on multiple drafts, people working at home, people on various scedules, etc... it's just too hard to get it!
2) Workspaces need to be "Saved" somehow. Quickviews, layer combinations, etc all come to the aid of workers managing all their layers and working environments during the drawing process, but there is nothing to make it manageable during sign-in. Inevitabely, people take more than they need to avoid having to do it again later, and they trip up the next person who needs the layers.
3) Typically, fixing annotations and typing schedules are tasks given to junior members of a team because they are straightforward tasks. In Teamwork... not so. If we want to generate the door schedule from the virtual building, we need to have that person edit the doors themsleves with the info, which means they need to have the walls, and they need to understand the calculate menu, and they need to understand how to export the info and format it, etc. VERY complicated for what should be a simple task. And worse, because they need the walls, no one else can get any plan work done. This is a ridiculous limitations. Similarly, if any notes are done through labels, the person needs the label layer and the layer of the original items (?!!!) once again making it impossible for someone else to carry on with related work)
4) Team leader is a necessary function, but it should be hot-swappable (i.e. I should be able to request "team leader" status from the current team leader and immediately get it if they say okay)
5) Graphisoft should be shot for the horror that was teamwork and quickviews. We will be paying for that debacle for years to come. It is criminal to have publisher, the only worthwhile upgrade in AC 7, be based on quickviews, when quickviews are computer specific. A single user would never notice this, but when several computers are working toghether, and changes to quickvies and publisher do not transfer from one computer to the next, mistakes are made. We have lost lots of time and money, and made many mistakes, because of a confused publisher updating our plotmaker documents improperly. Luckily, in AC 8 the system seems fixed, but I sure hope they never pull anything like that again.
I could go on... and I have (on the wishlists, and in discussions with the developpers), but it had been a while since I had vented on the subject.
just wanted Graphisoft to know that AC 7 was responsible for our firm going to Autocad. I tried to save it but failed.
