Help understanding the logic of BIMSERVER

[Anonymous]

Hi,
We have been long time users of Archicad. We use BIMSERVER to manage and store all our projects (regardless of size).

But we are finding the process of migrating projects from previous versions of Archicad to be extremely slow and cumbersome. We end up creating numerous projects only to find that the current version of Archicad and Bimserver are updated which leaves us with two choices.
1. Keep all previous versions of AC on the computer and jump between AC17, 18, 19 & 20 depending on which project we are working on or
2. Try and migrate every project, which is far to time consuming to the current BIMSERVER

Neither of the process's above seem very efficient, considering all projects should be accessible for 6 years.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

I was surprised to learn that the BIMserver should be thought of as volatile storage - that is to say it should house only currently active projects.

This was a description made by a senior Graphisoft consultant here in North America.

Prior to this - I, like you - thought it should be the repository of all the projects in an office.

[Andre_Steynberg]

This was also our situation a few months ago.

Most projects were done and kept on the BIM Server but it just became a mess of different versions of Archicad (running multiple versions of BIM Server is a no no) and it just didn't look and feel organized.

So with the move over to AC20 I migrated everything up to 20 (5 years of projects) and kicked off all the non-active projects of the BIM Server by saving them as a PLN and archive file.

This way the project gets saved with all library items intact and everything is saved safe and sound on our file server & cloud backup.

The migrating and saving part was a gargantuan pain in the butt but it was bad housekeeping on our side as well, I think there is a guide or post on the sort of best practices to archive projects, Ill post it when I find it

[schagemann]

Hers is our approach...

1. only have active projects on the bimserver;
2. archive non active projects into the regular project folder on the file server;
3. have a good backup system in place, we only do one or two PLN copies via the bimserver backup per day / project, then clone the bimserver to another HDD overnight;
4. do not do modular bimservers, I.e. one bimserver per virtual machine / physical server (in our case mac minis);
5. only migrate projects when a real benefit (performance or feature wise) is to be had;
6. skip underdeveloped / marketing versions of ARCHICAD, e.g. AC19;

...hope this helps.