Using Teamwork as a standard practice.

[Anonymous]

We have decided to begin using teamwork as a standard practice on ALL projects. This decision has been based on the tremendous performance improvements I have seen in AC 8.1. There are now no significant delays in signing in, changing workspace, sending and receiving, etc. compared to opening and saving a solo project. The only added overhead is (obviously) the requirement to define the workspace.

The advantages we see are greater security against data loss (multiple backups & local drafts) and more administrative control of standards (having to sign in with with exclusive access to change attributes.

I am posting this both to provoke feedback and discussion as well as to promote the idea to others and respond to any questions people might have.

Any takers?

[KenMcN]

The main problem with V7 (Mac at least) relate to the need for Team Leader to have exclusive access to edit layer sets, quickviews, publisher etc. Good to hear this seems to have improved in V8.1 (see Ben's previous comment re layer sets at least).

In V7 if Team Leader signs in 'exclusively' and edits a publisher set, everyone else needs to delete their preference file for that project so they get the new version next time they sign in. If they don't they get warning when they open Publisher about "missing quickviews" and sets seem to have been deleted... Has this changed in V8.1 as well?
Kenny

[__archiben]

matthew

i'm still putting some notes together about teamwork issues and improvements! i will get around to posting it!

our biggest gripe mainly is its speed with large files, and troubles that may ensue because of this.

we have a 10/100 baseT network switch (which IMHO needs upgrading to a gigabit switch) and because of your comments about teamworking and sending and receiving changes being as fast as saving to a solo project, i wondered what you used?

thanks
~/archiben

[Anonymous]

We are using a 10/100 switch (nothing special) and our "wire management" consists of wrapping the spagetti around spinklers, bx and emt conduit overhead (this will impove at the new office). The improved network speed appeared somewhere in the post-beta period; release candidate 4, I think. Panther also seems to make a difference, but performance is good on the other machines in the office which are still on Jaguar.

Unrelated to teamwork: My current main project is very large and PlotMaker was VERY slow to open the layout book in it's entirety. I separated the project into the different buildings (11 residential, an office, an inn, and a bunch of detached garages) and now it's nice and snappy. When it's appropriate I definitely recommend breaking up the layout book (precludes using "Page <PAGE> of <TOTPAGE>" though ).

[Aussie John]

Matthew wrote:
(We insist that everyone save a local draft on sign-in, save often, send changes frequently and sign out when they leave. Nevertheless, people sometimes forget )

Matthew,
why do you insist they sign out of a local draft? this seem contrary to one of there concepts of a local draft-ie autonomy

Un the other hand, maybe your workspaces are changing every day

[Anonymous]

It depends on the project, sometimes it's ok to stay signed in but there are too many times that it can be a problem. On my main current project we are frequently switching between 14 different teamwork files and it is annoying to find that someone forgot to sign out and have to either sign in as admin to force them out or find the PLC if there is the possibilty of unsent changes.

It's not a really big deal, but I do find that it keeps things flowing smoother, and since sign-in and sign-out are so quick now there is no real downside.

Naturally, when some needs to take the work with them out of the office, that is a different matter.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
- Speed issues. These have largely disappeared with 8.1 AFAIK.

It might be better, but it is still noticably slower than opening a solo project -- at least in our office.

[Anonymous]

Jay wrote:
It might be better, but it is still noticably slower than opening a solo project -- at least in our office.

Maybe it's better on Macs for now. I haven't tried it on my PC lately (just using it for AutoCAD as my Mac is faster). I have noticed speed differentials in network and file performance between the two platforms over the years. Sometimes Macs have been faster other times PCs.

[Anonymous]

Now that you can use layer combos as a way to sign in, I see team-working being much more efficient than in days past as this allows different members to create the different documents on the same stories etc. simultaneously.
Yet, I still see no advantage to the single user using this function I've tried the different schemes in the past and found it to be more of a hassle than it was worth.

MHO

[Anonymous]

Regarding Ben Frost's post, my biggest question with the standardized Teamwork approach is library loading. As of yet, I have been unable to find a way to have a standard set of libraries on our CAD file server and duplicates of them distributed to all of our ArchiCAD users with the hope that team members could load the local copies of the libraries. I may be thick about this, but satellites seem to need/want to read the parent library if it is available on the network so any time savings is out the window. I can't confess to having beat my head against the wall exhaustively on this, but I'd love to have a Teamwork project that used local libraries and only updated them from the parent across the network at the team member's request.

[Anonymous]

We have been loading all our libraries from the server. This was seriously tedious in 8.0 but has bee pretty snappy in 8.1. Older projects can still be tedious (those started before my new strict behavioral standards went into effect) when you have to load the 6.5, 7.0, 8.1 and various 3rd party libraries in addition to the office standard library. New projects in our office now load just the office standards, the project library, and (sometimes) the ArchiCAD 8.1(US) library.

To bring the older projects' performance up to snuff, we make an archive, unbundle the project library, and throw out all the duplicates to make the new project library.

I did find under 8.0 that the cache library (nee satellite library) was horribly slow. This was a shock to me because I had often used this feature to speed up the loading process in versions 7.0 and earlier. Library loading has always varied - sometimes wildly. If I recall correctly version 6.0 loaded libraries quickly on PC's but much slower on Macs (over the same network) but in 6.5 the Macs were loading them so fast that the dialogs barely flashed on the screen while the PCs were actually slower than they hed been before. I haven't tried the cache libraries in 8.1 because the network loading is working fine for us now and 8.0 was SO SLOW that I am reluctant to spend the time to test it now.

For related thoughts on this subject see my new addition to the wish list (which I am about to write) about consolidating the project file types (.pln, .pla, & .plp).