Sharing Archicad file across offices on PC and MAC platforms

[Anonymous]

Just thought I would ask the CAD managers out there a question.

Our small firm is about to embark on a new project . For this project we are going to start working collaboratively with another architecture firm that uses archicad on a mac. We use archicad on a PC.

The project is a multistorey building and the work is to be divided up accordingly. We will taking care of the external facade and base building work with some interiors and the other architects will be documenting some of the interiors including internal partitions and some plant areas.

We are both located in different cities and want to know the best way of setting up and managing the archicad project to cope with revisions and to limit the amount of duplicate work done by each firm. Ideally we both want to work on either sole project archicad files or teamwork files.

We will be using version 10. I see that there are two options:

Option 1. A reasonable Option
We would each have a local teamwork file into which we put each others updated archived pln's as hotlinked files. This may be a process that happens weekly. The project is then compiled into plotmaker at one end. I was wondering if the libraries may give us problems as managing a series of libraries that are constantly being added to and changing could get confusing.

Option 2. A very optimistic option!
We would set up a VPN and have a teamwork file on this remote server which we both sign into and divide up the project across the VPN network. This set-up could become problematic when the teamwork file crashes. The process of recovery across a VPN network may not be as straight forward. I have also read that it can be bandwidth intensive.

I would be interested in getting some feedback from the forum on the best way forward. Or if anyone has ever tried to work in this manner and has advice they would like to share.


Anti

[Aussie John]

Setup a teamwork file at one end and send out a .plc fle to the other office.
Email back and forth when need to update.

You could try the VPN option but still having a .plc file. Updates would be slow so could be done at the end of the day.

I havent done any cross platform work for a about three years but at that time didnt appear to be any issue

[Anonymous]

The first option sounds like it may be the best fit for your situation. The update could easily be much more often than weekly. File sync software could do it automatically every night, and be run manually for on the spot updates. Since it would happen in the background and only copy files when they are changed, you could even set this to check for updates as often as you like. The overhead would be very low.

[Anonymous]

We did some cross platform work recently and I found that external drawings on layouts were a bit problematic. You get the "On Mac" or "On PC" missing drawing message depending what OS you're using when the external drawings were placed. If some are placed on each OS then you end up in a viscious circle of drawings missing. If you fix them on one OS then you can't fix them on the other OS, too.

The PLP was created on the PC. If the PLC was created on the PC and then copied to the Mac it wouldn't work. I forget now exactly what happened, crash, missing drawings or something, but it just didn't work. The user had to sign-in on the Mac to make the PLC and then it worked fine.

It's too bad AC doesn't know how to resolve paths between the different OSes so things like this don't happen.

[Anonymous]

Eric wrote:
It's too bad AC doesn't know how to resolve paths between the different OSes so things like this don't happen.

All it would take is to enable us to define relative paths; like "look in the same folder as the project file and any subdirectories therein."

It doesn't seem as though it should be that hard to do.