Way back in 2006 I blogged about AutoCAD Architecture/MEP’s (ACA/AMEP) Project Standards feature. It allows object and display styles to be updated in all or selected files within a Project. There is provision to automatically apply ACA/AMEP Object Styles, Display Settings, Materials and AutoCAD Standards ( like line, layer, font etc) from your reference library when you access the project. If you update content in a project it warns on project close, prompting you to optionally update the project standards for future use.
In this respect ACA/AMEP toolset shames Revit’s crude (all or nothing and manual) Project Standards Transfer as a BIM Content management platform. In ACA you can specify where content is sourced from, including a mix of corporate and project specific standard with priority managed accordingly.
On file open you can accept the automatic updates (they just happen) or get an opportunity to accept/reject specific Item updates.
Every object style carries its version information.
You can get a report of every version change, created automatically, over the life of the style. If only Revit had this!
Until, for us, about last September.
It was impossible to pin down the cause but last September somewhere in the mix of an IT server/host change and application/OS updates something caused our network hosted projects sync to blow out. Sync went from 15-20 seconds, to update hundreds of styles on file open, to 20-30 minutes. Even worse, there was no viable workaround other than disabling project standards.
With lots of support from our IT team (logging) and Autodesk/Microsoft Support analysis a solution was developed to restore the previous performance. With the latest AutoCAD Architecture/MEP 2020.0.1 updates that solution is available for everyone.
Problems Reported Through the Customer Error Reporting Utility
As a result of the detailed information that we received from customers who used the Customer Error Reporting Utility, we were able to identify and fix several defects including the following:
Project Synchronize: Slow performance when sychronizing project standards on projects that are hosted in the network.