- In this video, I want to talk about file formats,
and specifically how we can upgrade projects within BIM 360.
So if you've been using Revit for a while,
then you no doubt aware
that Revit is not backward compatible.
So what I mean by that is,
there's no way to take a Revit file in the current version
and save it down to a prior version of the software.
Now, you can always take a prior version file
and open it in a newer version,
that will upgrade it at the time you open it,
and then if you save it,
that will permanently upgrade it to that current version.
And then, of course,
there's no way to save it back.
You always want to do that very carefully.
And when you're working in BIM 360,
you want to coordinate your efforts very carefully
with all of your team members to make sure
that everybody therefore is on the same version of Revit
because you really can't work together
if people are trying to work in different versions of Revit.
And in fact, they won't be able
to access files at all in BIM 360 unless
they're on the same version.
Now, that's what I want to show you first here
is what that looks like
from the point of view of Revit.
So the first thing I want to show you is
where I am in BIM 360 here,
so I'm logged in as myself,
I've got my LinkedIn Learning account selected here,
and you can see that, that gives me access to five projects,
which are listed here
and I currently have the KinetEco project selected.
The KinetEco project contains in its architecture folder,
these three Revit files.
And those are all linked together.
Now, just keep that in mind.
I have three Revit files in my architecture folder here,
and I have access to five separate projects
here in my account.
Okay, so now I'm going to switch over to Revit
to show you the next piece.
So I'm here in Revit.
And for this particular video,
I'm actually working in the prior release of Revit.
I'm working in Revit 2020.
At the time of this recording the feature
that I want to show you is not yet available for Revit 2021.
Now it will be shortly in a few months time,
so by the time you're watching this,
it may very well be available.
But at the time I was recording,
I'm going to be demonstrating this in 2020.
But the functionality will work
the same regardless of which version you're choosing.
And you'll see what I mean in a few moments here.
Alright, so the only thing
that's different here on this screen in Revit 2020,
is instead of my account selector being up here
at the top of the screen,
it's over here on the left.
So you can see here
that I'm in my LinkedIn Learning account.
But notice that there are only two projects visible
here instead of five.
So what does that mean?
Well, one of the ways that a BIM 360 project ensures
that you won't have anyone working in the wrong version
of Revit is that when you access files from Revit,
it will only show you projects
that have files in the same version as you.
So what this is telling me is that Hansel and Petal
and Nadia's garden are both in Revit 2020
It's that simple.
Now, how does a project get to
that version in the first place?
When you first create a project in BIM 360,
it doesn't have a version yet.
So I could go to those folders
and browse them here
from any version of Revit 2019, 2020, 2021.
And they would all show those empty folders.
The minute I save a Revit project file
in one of those folders,
that sets the version for the project,
and then from that point on,
any other version is excluded.
So all this tells me is that at some point,
a Revit 2020 file was saved in each of these folders.
Okay, so now that we understand
what we will see from Revit,
and how the version gets assigned,
now let's talk about
how I can get KinetEco available to me in Revit 2020.
So let's say we've decided
that we want to upgrade the KinetEco project to Revit 2020.
It's not on the list here.
How do we get there.
So we're going to go back to the web portal.
So here I am back where we left off,
and I'm in the Document Management module.
I'm logged in as myself,
and I have admin rights to this project.
So from the module picker,
you need to be able to have access
to Project Admin to do the next step.
So if you're not an admin on the project,
you'll need to have someone else perform this process.
I'll go to Project Admin.
And you should see Document Management highlighted
right here and you'll see these tabs across the top
an activity tab,
advanced settings reviews,
and this is the one we want Revit cloud model upgrade.
So I'll select that.
And BIM 360 will take a few moments
to scan the project looking
for eligible Revit projects to upgrade.
So it may take a few moments, but after it does,
it will tell you the current release in this case 2019
and then the available release or releases
that you could upgrade it to, in this case 2020.
So in my case, I just have the one choice.
But again, depending on when you perform this step,
you may have other choices there.
So your choices are to either go ahead and upgrade it,
or to perform a test upgrade first.
Now, if you do a test upgrade,
that can be sometimes a nice thing to do
if you've got lots of files or a really big project,
and you just want to make sure
that you catch any errors before they occur.
So they can maybe be a little bit safer.
So when you click on that,
it will tell you that team members can continue working
but the project admin's functions will be ceased until
the test is done.
And then you click here to go ahead.
So I'm going to cancel that
because I've already done a test upgrade.
So let me just show you what that looks like.
Now after you start the process,
you should get an email that looks something like this
that tells you that the process has begun
and then after some time, you will get a second email
that looks something like this
that says that the process is complete
and that the project has been successfully upgraded.
There is a review button here,
which would open up the Document Management module
and save a report within that module
that you could review.
I'll just go ahead and close this email.
And then back on the Revit cloud model upgrade tab
in the Project Admin, you should see a message here
that says that the cloud model upgrade is now complete.
And then you'll get another opportunity
to download a detailed report right here.
Okay, so now what I want to do is switch back over to Revit.
So I'm here in Revit 2020 again,
and in Revit 2021.
the refresh button is up here in the corner,
but here in 2020,
it's down here this large button on the left hand side.
So I'm going to click to refresh that.
And now you can see
that the KinetEco project is included here
because all of its files were upgraded
to the 2020 format.
So if I browse into that location,
and then project files, and then architecture,
you will see each of the three model files
that we looked at previously, are all listed in here.
And you could open up any one of these
that you needed to work on.
Now notice that the building site
and the admin building are Workshared cloud models,
but the tower was actually just a cloud model.
So I wanted to show you
that the upgrade process works equally well
on Workshare enabled cloud models
and non-Workshare enabled cloud models.
And then if I go back one step here in project files,
there are no Revit files in this folder.
But this is the folder that got created to store
that report that you can optionally review as well.
So that will be in your Document Management folder,
and it will contain some log files.
So the cloud upgrade process in BIM 360 makes it,
exceedingly simple to upgrade a project
to the newest release of Revit.
And when we compare that
to what we used to have to do
before that feature was available,
it is significantly improved.
In previous versions,
you would literally have to download each
of those Revit models individually,
upgrade them individually
and then recreate the project basically
from scratch by reuploading all of those files again.
So it was an enormous amount of work.
And this new feature largely eliminates
all of that tedious work and makes it virtually foolproof.