Revit over WAN

Collaborating with Revit over WAN

Having experienced workflow issues when working with Revit over WAN, multi-disciplinary AEC firm C&S turned to Panzura, whose global file locking technology transformed its collaborative process.

by Greg Corke

Like many multi-disciplinary AEC or twelve minutes or even twenty-eight latency than other CAD applications was firms, C&S faces the familiar minutes to open. And the same for ‘sync down to the way it is architected. challenge of needing to provide to central’. It was taking 35 to 45 mins to Revit is designed to support collaboraits distributed design teams with sync a Revit file that was about 300MB to tive workflows. Rather than just locking seamless access to project data. 400MB. And that’s if you had no errors out an entire file, which is how a lot of

With engineers and architects spread along the way.” CAD software works, Revit allows multiacross 14 US offices, from New York to These delays not only had a massive ple users to work on the same file concurCalifornia, C&S needs the flexibility to impact on user productivity but, as design- rently by only ‘locking’ parts of the deploy any part of its workforce on proj- ers were syncing less and, out of frustra- model, as Eric Wing, BIM Services ects as and when required, regardless of tion, sometimes copying files to be worked Manager, explains: “If I go in and start geographic location. on locally, version control and data con- editing a wall, I own that wall and I own

C&S’s story starts in 2004 when it flicts became a big issue. everything that is affecting that wall — decided to consolidate all of its file C&S’s initial reaction was to throw such as the windows and the doors. servers at its Syracuse, New “If another user comes in and York headquarters. It invested in fast MPLS connections and Riverbed Steelhead accelerators to optimise its Wide ‘‘ [The Panzura solution] gave us central data store, so there was one one decides they are going to change a door in the wall that I own, Revit gives them errors — saying ‘Eric Wing’ owns this Area Network [WAN] between authoritative copy of the data and element. offices. everyone could work on it “When you create a central Opening DWG, DGN and other CAD files worked fine for a while but the company start’’ model workflow you have a local model which is on your C drive,” he explains. “Revit then ed to experience bottlenecks when it more bandwidth at the problem. However, pings back and forth between the local implemented modern database-driven as the issue got worse the further the model and the central model to see who CAD tools including Autodesk Revit and users were from the data, it turned out owns an element.” AutoCAD Civil 3D. the poor performance was due to high Mr Wing calls Revit a ‘chatty’ applica-

“The folks that had local access [in latency (response time). Over LAN, laten- tion and it is this constant communication Syracuse] were opening files in 30 secs or cy is typically around 1ms, but increases between all Revit sessions and the central maybe a minute,” recalls Eric Quinn, significantly with distance. From New model that causes slowdowns on high director of IT, about C&S’s experiences York to California, for example, it was as latency connections. with Revit. “But, for the folks that were much as 68ms. To address this problem Mr Quinn sitting in San Diego, California, those C&S was to find out later that the reason looked at a number of different technoloexact same files were taking six minutes Revit was much more affected by poor gies, including dedicated AEC project

Eric Wing, C&S BIM Services Manager, working in Revit and NavisWorks

management tools, but he admits that C&S did not want to have to spend time and money training staff on new software.

Additionally, the company wanted a solution that would fully support every type of data used on a project, including office documents and the files produced by the many different CAD and BIM applications used by its expansive design and engineering team. Importantly, C&S also wanted to be able to lock files in real time to improve version control.

“We needed real time file locking because in the AEC environment when people are trying to get a project together, there’ll be thirty or forty people working on a project and you never know what they’re trying to open,” explains Mr Wing.

“They could be trying to open the same file and if they are in three or four different offices there’ll be no way to keep it straight as to what’s the latest version and who’s doing what on a file.”

Mr Quinn’s search led him to Panzura which, at the time, was not at all focused on the AEC market, but did offer the real time file locking capabilities he desired.

The idea behind Panzura’s ‘global locking file system’ is simple. In essence, master data is stored in the cloud and is automatically cached on dedicated Panzura file servers that are located at each regional office. This means data is always local to the users, removing issues caused by latency.

“It gave us one central data store, so there was one authoritative copy of the data and everyone could work on it,” says Mr Quinn. “We also didn’t have to split up our data based on the fact that it was a Revit model, a Word document or a PDF. It all goes in one place. Our projects were able to stay together.”

In order for Panzura to better understand AEC workflows and, in particular, how Revit functioned, it sent a team of engineers to C&S, who then set to work on optimising the Panzura system. It took some time to refine, admits Mr Quinn, but he is now confident C&S has just about eliminated any issues with latency. The Panzura solution With the Panzura solution ‘authoritative’ data is stored in the cloud and cached in each location on a Panzura controller, which is essentially a bespoke file server with an array of fast solid state drives (SSDs).

All the data in the cloud is completely encrypted, so there is no worry about security, as Mr Quinn explains, “It’s just bits and bytes that no one else would be able to read without a Panzura controller and our security certificate and all that.”

When someone tries to open a copy of a file, the cache looks back at the cloud to check if there is anything else it needs. It will then pull down the delta — what it needs to complete the latest copy of the file. Users then open the model over fast LAN. This means the experience is always local, says Quinn.

Writing data is also fast. “When someone saves the model, or any type of file to Panzura, they only see the file save time as what’s going back to the local controller — the local server,” explains Mr Quinn. “And then, after that, the Panzura box pushes the data back up to the cloud and that can happen over a number of minutes, whatever it needs.

“If it’s a very large file it could take a little more time, but it only pushes the data it needs to push in order to upload the changes and not the entire file.”

While C&S used to suffer from file sync and version control issues, Quinn points out that there are now no conflicts. “While the data in the authoritative copy is technically in the cloud the controllers constantly talk to each other to know who has what and what’s going on,” he says.

Mr Wing acknowledges that the system can slow down a little as Revit projects move towards the latter stages and there are more concurrent users working on the same model. “If everyone is ‘syncing with central’ at the same time there’s obviously going to be some latency,” he says, adding that in the past, it was dur-

The Panzura controller is essentially a bespoke file server with an array of fast solid state drives (SSDs)

ing these sync with central ‘collisions’ “Say there was a fire in one of our offic- desktop and they’re on board — immedithat there would often be corruption. es, it’s easy to say, OK, we’re going to send ately,” says Mr Quinn. Revit, MicroStation “[With the Panzura solution] I haven’t a bunch of people to another office but and Civil 3D are all set up on the same virseen that in years,” he says. what we don’t have is computers. [With tual desktop ‘instance’.

Panzura has transformed the workflow Panzura] we’ve got all of our stuff, all of Mr Quinn says the user experience is efficiency of C&S’s distributed design our data, email, backed up in the cloud. good. “If you talked to a CAD operator teams, but Mr Quinn also notes how it “[With Skybridge] we can just start fir- they might see a possible slow down with has benefitted data backup and disaster ing up virtual desktops and get them to their cursor on VDI but it’s definitely recovery. our users right away so we would not lose comparable to a decent workstation.”

C&S stores its data in the cloud on any time. We would lose a few hours but To date, C&S has only deployed Amazon S3, which includes real time back we wouldn’t have to wait a few days and Panzura technology within its organisaup as standard. For an added level tion but is excited by the possibilof assurance it also takes periodic snapshots. “I like to tell people, if every one ‘‘ “We can build out a SkyBridge ity of collaborating with external partners in the future. Technically speaking, it would simply be a of our offices burst into flames virtual desktop and they [the users] case of the partner getting a right now, I could go home and log into our data store,” says Mr Quinn. “I have access in real time outside of our office.” are on board — immediately ’’ Panzura box and both firms creating the appropriate project structure. “We’ve talked about it, we know

This is where SkyBridge comes into play, then start configuring PCs and all that.” it’s available. We’ve even written it into a Panzura’s new cloud-based Virtual This ability to fire up new virtual desk- proposal or two but we didn’t end up going Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution that tops on demand also gives C&S flexibility that direction,” says Quinn. uses Citrix technology to stream pixels to a in how it rolls out CAD-capable worksta- “But we would like to because we thin client that sits on the designer’s desk. tions to its designers and engineers. think it’s a very powerful solution that

SkyBridge allows firms to serve up 3D Bandwidth and latency permitting, would take away a lot of the collaboraCAD-capable virtual desktops on demand users can now get fast access to CAD on tion issues. without having to get involved in the com- site, at home, or at small satellite offices, “We really could do a lot of good things plexities or the expense of an in-house where investment in a dedicated Panzura with Panzura by having other groups to VDI solution. As the virtual desktops are controller can not be justified due to the work with but we haven’t had that created in the cloud, close to the data, small number of users. opportunity yet.” everything is fast, explains Mr Quinn. “We can build out a SkyBridge virtual ■ panzura.com