New to TeamWork: Checking understanding of methods

[Anonymous]

Hey y'all... Most of the discussion about TeamWork I'm seeing took place a couple versions ago. I'm wondering if subsequent versions have changed TW much, and if similar best practices still apply....

We're a VERY small office, and only occasionally do we need to work on a single project simultaneously.

If a project is set up as a TeamWork file, should the lead continue to stay signed in to the project, working on the draft file (plc) and updating the Master (plp) daily? And when someone else needs to work on it, does the lead send and receive, sign out, allow the teammate to sign in, and then re-sign-in? Is the previous draft file then "broken" from the Master?

Or, should we sign in/out daily, and not use the draft files?

I'd found some discussion about this yesterday and it didn't make sense, but now that we've set things up and tested them I understand what it was about, but now I can't find the thread.

How does your (small) office handle sign in/out, draft files, and archiving?

Thanks....

[Anonymous]

Basic methods:

1. Everyone signs in and out as needed to work on the project, and ALWAYS send and receive and sign out at the end of the day.

2. Sometimes the Team Leader has to sign in with exclusive access to edit attributes, etc.

3. EVERYONE should "Save As..." to a PLC (local draft) to their own workstation. This is just a precautionary measure to ensure data safety. It also allows you to save work without committing the changes to the shared file (which isn't done until "Send and Receive Changes" is selected from the teamwork menu).

4. It is easy to switch back and forth between teamwork and solo methods. Just select "Share this Project" to go into teamwork and "Save As..." a solo project to revert to a single operator. However this does require good, old fashioned communication (with a dose of proper file management protocols). I have seen cases where someone neglected to tell their teammates that they were working solo, and they signed into the old teamwork file and proceeded to work.

HTH

[Anonymous]

Hi Jocelyn,

The way I've been using teamwork at our office is as follows:

- there are a series of PLN's. Structure, Cores, 2 Upper Floors, 2 lower floors, and a mechanical area. These are, more or less, broken out according to the roles team members have (so that someone can co-ordinate structure, someone else can co-ordinate mechanical, and a third person can be working the plans). This lets everyone work independently of each other while keeping an eye on things (each PLN has hotlinks to everyone else's)
- these all link into a master teamwork file. Inside of this teamwork file are all the "drawings" - so sections, elevations, layouts, etc are here, and working on a drawing is a matter of signing into that specific worksheet/layout. This file also exports into DWG, so that all the hotlinked module PLNs end up as blocks in the autocad file, for consultants to deal with as they wish.
- all consultant drawings for co-ordination end up as placed drawings, so that the PLP doesn't have a mess of layers and linetypes.

- we back up, at minimum, once a week. archiving is done by copying out the file into an Archive folder and dating it, so that we can return to a different scheme if necessary.

This is all a sort of stumbling mess at the moment, as the whole team lacks a true "guru" and there's no structure/standard/template in the office for working on a project like this. So far we've had minimal headaches (compared to other projects I've seen), and the biggest hurdle we face is the fact that some of us are on a mac, and some are on a PC.

[Anonymous]

guitarchitect wrote:
Hi Jocelyn,

The way I've been using teamwork at our office is as follows:

- there are a series of PLN's. Structure, Cores, 2 Upper Floors, 2 lower floors, and a mechanical area. These are, more or less, broken out according to the roles team members have (so that someone can co-ordinate structure, someone else can co-ordinate mechanical, and a third person can be working the plans). This lets everyone work independently of each other while keeping an eye on things (each PLN has hotlinks to everyone else's)
- these all link into a master teamwork file. Inside of this teamwork file are all the "drawings" - so sections, elevations, layouts, etc are here, and working on a drawing is a matter of signing into that specific worksheet/layout. This file also exports into DWG, so that all the hotlinked module PLNs end up as blocks in the autocad file, for consultants to deal with as they wish.
- all consultant drawings for co-ordination end up as placed drawings, so that the PLP doesn't have a mess of layers and linetypes.

- we back up, at minimum, once a week. archiving is done by copying out the file into an Archive folder and dating it, so that we can return to a different scheme if necessary.

This is all a sort of stumbling mess at the moment, as the whole team lacks a true "guru" and there's no structure/standard/template in the office for working on a project like this. So far we've had minimal headaches (compared to other projects I've seen), and the biggest hurdle we face is the fact that some of us are on a mac, and some are on a PC.

Sounds like you have developed a clever workflow that takes advantage of Teamwork's strengths while avoiding some of it's pitfalls. It is similar to what I have been doing on some large construction coordination models - though we have avoided teamwork altogether as we have no need of publishing 2D documents. Of course not all firms' workflows could be made to conform to you method. Consider yourself lucky.

In any case it's likely that this will all change now with AC13 and TW2.