Last night we had our 8th Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup meeting. We’re coming up on one full year of meetings (our first meeting was in October 2009)! We’ll have to celebrate at our next meeting in November. I’m thinking I’ll bring pizza for everyone. Thoughts?

While the intent of the meeting was to talk about first impressions of version 14, we ended up spending the full two hours on Teamwork 2. The guys from Wilkus Architects, led by Adam, gave a great presentation.

First off, forget everything you know about the old teamwork. This is great news. It’s time to get over the hoarding mentality. Figuring out all the bits and pieces you need for an 8 hour day at 8:00 am. Sure you could ask for stuff later, but it was a pain. Signing in and out and in and out. It was much easier to just grab as much as you could and not let go. Global changes to attributes and other high-level file management were also a nuisance. One had to get exclusive access by being the first to arrive at the office (impossible to do), while everyone else was at lunch (who doesn’t want to work while hungry?), or after the rest of the team had left for the day (annoying).

No more painstaking signing in process that takes forever and creates a log jam of other people waiting to get into the file. Now you can reserve the settings for a view in the view map (let’s say a section), make changes and release. All the while the rest of the team can be working in that section on whatever 2D and 3D elements they have reserved. This means one person can spend a day in the file setting up views, layouts, tweaking pens, line types, fills, etc. without restricting anyone else’s ability to work. As a BIM manager, this means a lot to me.

And as for hoarding… it’s not necessary. Since objects can be reserved and released one by one, it’s easy to take just what you need and relinquish bits that other people need (or ask for). The instant message system within ArchiCAD / Teamwork 2 works nicely for that. Not only can you send messages —hey I’m hungry, want to get lunch?–, you can include requests linked to objects –Jared wants to reserve this wall that Adam has (so that he can make a change and get lunch). If Adam okays the request, the object automatically becomes part of Jared’s workspace. Adam can also deny the request. In which case he better have a good reason!

Within the messaging there are also some silly easter eggs. Depending on the number of spaces you put at the end of your message different icons will show up on your coworkers’ screen.

Libraries are also done nicely in TW2, though there are 2 slightly annoying issues. First the good. The BIM Server stores all the libraries and each project references those libraries. What I really like about this is that, as a BIM Manager, it makes library maintenance much more streamlined. I update the one copy of the version 14 library and the office special library on the BIM Server and I’m done. In the old days (which for me are still going on since I’ve yet to move SALA from v11 to v14 and teamwork 2), each person’s machine has a copy of the version 11 library and the office special library. This means when there’s an update, I have to make sure 15 laptops and 2 servers are updated. Much more room for error. This is great, but unfortunately libraries are not automatically updated when you open a TW2 project. So individual users still need to (within ArchiCAD) check to see if their local copies of the BIM Server libraries are up to date. If they’re not current, it’s just one or two clicks, but I’m not crazy about that. I’d like to see it become automatic in future versions of ArchiCAD. The other annoyance about libraries in TW2 is the number that will appear on your machine. Unless you manually redirect where each project looks for its local copy of the libraries, ArchiCAD will download a copy of the BIM Server libraries for each project. So 10 projects, 10 copies of the same library. Granted hard drive space today is essentially unlimited (or we should at least think of it as such), but I’d rather have one local copy of the libraries automatically synced to the one BIM Server copy.

Unrelated to Teamwork 2, but also very cool, is how Adam showed us two users within the Teamwork 2 file using one computer. Instead of just launching two instances of ArchiCAD 14, he used iChat AV to do a screen share with a second computer. This allowed him to switch between the two computers and we were always able to see the second user in a smaller window showing the inactive screen. Very cool. This also allowed us to see the speed of sending and receiving changes between two machines, over wireless. It was pretty speedy. Though if one was really working, the speed could be improved by forgoing the mobility of the wireless connection.

What interests me most about Teamwork 2 for my own work is the ability for remote tech support and expanding teams during Crunchtime. As the BIM Manager at SALA, I’m supporting ArchiCAD users in two offices. For complex issues I’ll have people e-mail me the .pln file so that we can both be viewing the same issue. But with Teamwork 2, I could open the file from a different office and see/fix the problem directly. Equally interesting is the ability to add people to a project as needed. I’d like to test out having all projects be Teamwork 2 projects. Working solo, someone can just reserve everything and work like there’s no difference. But when it’s time to bring in help to finish the documents, it’d be seamless. No need to copy and paste between files or make the project a .plp late in the game. The promise is a cleaner, easier, and more transparent workflow.