Worksharing Sync Conflict Between Two Teams on a Deadline
A 12-person team is working in a central model with worksets divided by building zone (Zone A, B, C) plus shared worksets for grids, levels, and site. Two days before a client presentation, the Zone B team (4 users) and the Zone C team (3 users) both need to edit the same corridor wall assembly where the zones meet. The BIM manager set the corridor walls to workset Zone B, but Zone C's team owns the Zone C workset and has been editing the corridor's finishes and door families. A Synchronize with Central attempt by a Zone C user returns "Cannot synchronize because the central model is locked by another user," and a second attempt shows the model is 340 MB and taking over 9 minutes to sync. The Zone B team lead has been offline for 4 hours and has not relinquished any elements. The client presentation is in 48 hours and requires a 3D view of the corridor.
1. Diagnose the sync failure and the 9-minute sync time, and propose an immediate recovery path that does not require the offline team lead.
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Two distinct problems are layered here.
Sync failure. "Central model is locked by another user" means a save operation is in progress or was interrupted, leaving a lock file. It is not the same as element borrowing. The most likely cause is that the offline Zone B lead attempted a sync, lost connectivity, and left the central model in a locked state. Because that user is offline, their borrowed elements remain checked out and the lock persists.
Nine-minute sync on a 340 MB model. Sync time scales with model size and with the number of borrowed elements and worksets owned by the syncing user. A 340 MB central model is large for a 12-person team; the likely contributors are unresolved unplaced families, imported CAD, and excessive in-place families. The 9-minute time is a symptom, not the root cause.
Immediate recovery path (no offline lead required):
- Confirm the lock is stale. Check the central model's lock file timestamp; if it predates the lead's offline period, it is stale.
- Have all other users save and close their local copies, then the BIM manager opens the central model directly (not a local) and performs a Compact Central Model save. This clears the stale lock without needing the lead.
- Do not use "Relinquish All Mine" on the lead's behalf unless the BIM manager has documented authority; borrowed elements belong to that user's local file and cannot be released remotely without opening that local.
- For the corridor: temporarily reassign the corridor walls to a shared "Corridor" workset owned by the BIM manager, so both Zone B and Zone C can edit without fighting over workset ownership.
- Compact the central model and purge unused families before the next sync to reduce the 9-minute cycle.
The judgment: separate the lock problem (administrative, recoverable) from the performance problem (model hygiene, longer fix) and solve the lock first because the deadline is 48 hours.
2. Recommend how to restructure the corridor workset ownership so the Zone B and Zone C teams can both contribute before the presentation, and what to do about the offline lead's unrelinquished elements.
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The corridor is a shared boundary condition, and the current workset structure treats it as Zone B property. That is the structural error. Recommended restructure:
- Create a dedicated "Corridor" workset and move the corridor walls, finishes, and doors to it. Assign ownership to the BIM manager or a neutral party, not to either zone team. This removes the ownership conflict at its source.
- Establish an editing protocol: Zone B owns the wall assembly geometry; Zone C owns the finishes and door families. Both can edit the Corridor workset because neither owns it, and Revit's element borrowing handles the granularity. The protocol must be written down, because workset ownership alone does not prevent two users from borrowing the same wall.
- Use element borrowing, not workset ownership, for the corridor. Worksets are a coarse filter; borrowing is the fine-grained control. The current setup conflates the two.
- For the offline lead's elements: do not attempt to force-relinquish remotely. Options are (a) wait for the lead to return and relinquish, (b) have the lead open their local file on any machine, relinquish all, and sync, or (c) if the lead is unreachable and the deadline forces it, the BIM manager opens the lead's local file (if accessible on a shared drive) and relinquishes from there. Option (c) is a last resort and must be logged.
- For the 3D presentation view: it does not require the corridor to be fully resolved. Create the 3D view from the current central model, detach it, and use it for the presentation. A presentation view is a snapshot, not a deliverable; do not let it drive the workset restructure.
The judgment: restructure ownership around the shared condition, not around the org chart, and separate the presentation need from the model-integrity need.