Introduction

Teamwork represents a breakthrough approach to collaborative project work. Teamwork is based on a client-server architecture and is designed to ensure maximum flexibility, speed and data safety to enable teams - even those spread out around the world - to collaborate on large projects.

The ability for several individuals and teams to collaborate effectively on a single project is a basic necessity of architectural work. From the beginning, ArchiCAD has met these needs of architects with such features as Hotlinked Modules and Teamwork.

Today, effective collaboration among project teams is more important than ever. Projects are growing in size, and teams are often geographically far-flung and separated by time zones. And the team of users itself will change over time as the project proceeds through different phases.

Teamwork for ArchiCAD is optimized to meet these changing needs, and specifically designed to meet the demands of a modern, multinational team. Breakthroughs in performance, data safety, and workflow enable your team to make the most of the efficiencies and coordination capabilities of the BIM model.

The following table highlights the key functions of Teamwork for ArchiCAD 17, compared to the way they worked in ArchiCAD 12 and earlier Teamwork versions:

Function	ArchiCAD 12	ArchiCAD 17
Reserving Elements	Reserve elements by reserving physical or logical regions of the project Occurs at sign-in Element creation restricted to these regions Each user reserves own items	Reserve any existing elements individually, by selection or criteria Occurs any time, as needed No reservation needed to create new element/data Assign elements to any user
Reserving Other Project Data	Available to Team Leader with Exclusive Access	Reserve as needed, at any time, by any authorized user
Releasing Elements	Occurs when changing workspace or signing out	Released by the user at any time, as needed
Feedback on Reservation Status	Updated at Send & Receive	Always up to date (if user is online) Color-coding for at-a-glance feedback
Ownership Conflicts	Not handled	Use “Request” function to signal need for data
Send & Receive	Entire project is downloaded or uploaded to the server.	Download/upload involves only data that have been modified since last Send or Receive.
Team Communications	Use ArchiCAD’s Mark-Up function	Use simple built-in messaging system in addition to Mark-Up
Project Management	Users defined separately for each project Teamwork Roles are predefined	Central registry of users defined for all projects on BIM Server Each user’s role can vary by project
Working Via Internet	LAN-based connectivity	Users access the BIM Server from any remote computer via Internet
Working Offline	Managed by the user by saving local drafts	Local copy created automatically. Local copy can be saved as “Travel pack” for transfer among several computers.