What is the difference between a Revit Central Model and a Local copy?

The Central Model is the master file that lives on the server (or in Autodesk Construction Cloud) and represents the definitive state of the project. Team members never work directly in the Central Model. Instead, each user creates a Local copy on their own workstation — a personal version of the model linked to the central. Users work in their local copy, accumulating changes, then Synchronize with Central to push their changes to the master file and receive changes from all other team members. The local copy is regenerated from the central each time a new local is created.

How often should you Synchronize with Central in Revit?

Every 30 to 60 minutes during active modeling sessions. This is both Autodesk's official recommendation and the industry standard. Syncing frequently limits the maximum data loss from a workstation crash, reduces the complexity of merge operations at each sync, and keeps team members from being blocked waiting for element ownership to be released. Teams that sync only at the end of the day consistently experience more conflicts, longer sync times, and more data loss incidents than teams that sync hourly.

What are Revit Worksets and why do they matter for performance?

Worksets are named partitions of the Revit model — each element belongs to exactly one workset. They serve two purposes. For access control, each team member makes their relevant worksets editable while others cannot modify those elements without an Editing Request. For performance, users can choose which worksets to load into their local session — a mechanical engineer can close the furniture and site worksets, dramatically reducing the active model size and improving Revit's speed on large projects. Poorly managed worksets (too few, or poorly named) are one of the most common causes of slow Revit model performance on large team projects.

What happens if two Revit users try to edit the same element at the same time?

The first user to open the element for editing claims ownership — Revit locks that element in their local session. The second user who tries to edit the same element receives a message that the element is owned by the first user and is offered the option to submit an Editing Request. The first user can grant or deny that request. If granted, they release ownership of the element, and after the second user's next Synchronize with Central, the element becomes available. This conflict management system is one of the core reasons worksharing exists — it prevents silent data overwrites.

What is the Worksharing Monitor and who should use it?

Worksharing Monitor is a standalone Autodesk utility (separate from Revit) that displays real-time information about a Central Model's connected users, each user's last sync time, current workset ownership, and pending editing requests. BIM managers and project BIM leads should run it throughout the workday on large projects. It is the primary tool for identifying team members who have not synced for dangerous periods, spotting workset ownership bottlenecks, and confirming that the end-of-day sync-and-relinquish ritual has been completed by all team members.

When should a project use multiple linked Revit files versus a single workshared file?

A single workshared Central Model is appropriate for small to medium projects with up to about 4-6 simultaneous users working on related content. For large or complex projects — especially multi-discipline work with dedicated architectural, structural, and MEP teams — a federated model approach is strongly preferred. Each discipline maintains their own Central Model (.RVT), and teams link each other's models using Insert > Link Revit. Federated models perform better (smaller files, faster syncs), have clearer discipline boundaries, allow different teams to work at different LOD levels, and enable formal coordination reviews through Navisworks aggregation. The BIM Execution Plan should specify the model breakdown strategy before any modeling begins.

Construction·10 min read·June 19, 2026

🔗 Revit Worksharing: Central Models, Worksets, and Real-Time Multi-User Collaboration

A complete technical guide to Revit worksharing for AEC teams: how Central Models and Local copies work, enabling worksharing and creating worksets, Synchronize with Central best practices, managing editing requests, Worksharing Monitor, Worksharing Display Modes, and hard-won lessons from large multi-discipline BIM projects.

📖Structural Engineering Drawing Set — Illustrated Reader (Full Access)

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Why Worksharing Exists: The Problem With Single-User BIM Files

A Revit project file is not a simple text document that two people can edit simultaneously in a shared folder. Revit's parametric engine — the system that keeps walls constrained to levels, propagates dimension changes, and updates all views in real time — requires exclusive access to write to the model database. If two users opened the same .RVT file from a network drive simultaneously and both saved their work, the second save would silently overwrite the first user's changes. On a project with a 10-person BIM team, this approach is unworkable.

Topics covered

Revit worksharing tutorialRevit Central Model Local copyRevit Worksets explainedSynchronize with Central RevitRevit multi-user collaborationBIM 360 Revit collaborationRevit editing requestsWorksharing Monitor RevitRevit large model performanceRevit BIM team workflow