Revit Worksharing through parallels

R

RockK

Bit poster
My fairly new architecture office has an OSX server and a few macs. We also use Revit but are having trouble getting the work sharing feature to function. It appears as though the workstation that creates the shared file is the only one that has control over the files objects. There's no communication between the workstations. We've been successful and our business is increasing...and there's a risk that we'll actually NEED to use worksharing rather than just experimenting.

Does anyone on this forum use Revit worksharing with parallels on an all mac network? All of our imaginary windows 7 PCs access the network through their macs.

And, in case any architects out there are wondering, there still doesn't seem to be a fix for the cursor issue in parallels with AutoCAD. My office has a six year old PC that we keep for the rare occasions when we need to roll back the clock and use AutoCAD.
 
I am in the process of helping a friends architecture firm setup worksharing on their macs. I haven't gotten to implement it yet because we are waiting on hardware. So I am by no means an expert...but I have been searching forums for what seems like a month to find answers in the Mac/Revit realm.

Where are your local files located? Are they on a server? Or are they on one of your workstations?

From what I found and understand...in order for the worksharing to work, the file paths from each workstation has to be the EXACT same to the central file. So if you are storing it on a workstation, that isn't possible because a workstation on the network won't have the same file path to the central file as the workstation that has the central file on it.

So you almost have to have a "server" for the worksharing to work. That server needs to be mapped to the EXACT same drive letter on each workstation...so if Workstation A has the server mapped to Drive Z, then Workstation B must also have the server mapped to Drive Z.

Revit works great on their Macbook Pros, but they have had the workstation issue as well...

I hope this helps...If it does, please let me know because I will be jumping into same situation shortly.

Have you guys used VPN or anything like that with the OSX Server?

Thanks,
Sul
 
I'm not sure (may be my answer doesn't relates at all to your problem), but you can try to switch VMs to the Bridged networking mode.

It is not possible for VMs to see each other in the shared networking mode.
 
Worksharing Requirements

RockK,

As Sully mentioned, I can confirm that you will need to map your network drives the same way for the worksharing to work. Also, as Elric pointed out, you should be using Bridged Networking so that all your virtual machines obtain a IP address separately from the Mac in which it resides, and is on the same subnet, and also grabs a license (if you are using a network licensing server).

Sully, I have not used the OS X Server VPN service as our router does not support it specifically.

I am currently the IT administrator for an architect firm based out in Santa Monica, California, and we have been using Revit Architecture since 2008 with Windows XP Professional 32-bit and Windows XP Professional 64-bit. We are now in the phase of transitioning to Revit Architecture 2012 along with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit using Parallels 6.0-11994. We do have an Xserve running OS X Leopard Server acting as a file server.
 
Connecting to OS X Server

One other thing. If you run into a problem when trying to connect to your OS X Server through Windows 7 or Vista (this hasn't been a problem in Windows XP), you may need to adjust the Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level Policy in the Security Policies under Local Policies under Security Settings through Local Security Policy.

Run secpol.msc to get there.

I have NTLM and NTLMv2 with Kerberos enabled on our OS X Server, but should be able to disable just NTLM now that I think about it. I currently have the policy defined to Send LM and NTLM: use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.
 
Wow...I switched to bridge mode at work today but it still didn't work. Although the VPs still had access to the server, I thought my next step might be to tell the server about the VPs. Providing the VPs with some identity on the server sounds like the next logical step. I'm eager to try this...or, more accurately, I'm eager to have someone that knows networks try it. We're a very small office, which is one of the reasons we have a mac server...it's soooo easy compared to a PC.

I can't thank both of you enough...I'm glad to know for sure that it works and can't wait to get it running smoothly.
 
Better late then never.....have any of you found a solution for this worksharing issue? I've been at it for the last day and I can't seem to figure out what it is. We thought it was a permission issue, but it wasn't. We try having the central and local file is the save folder...still nothing. I'm at the point where I think this is a Parallel issue.
Thanks.
 
Yes, there's a solution but you may not like it. It took my little office about 8 months, an amazing number of ingenious work-arounds, and long discussions with quite a few experts on parallels, revit, and network solutions before finding someone (now our IT consultant, a guy named Josh Morgan) who understood that the way a parallels PC communicates with other parallels PCs on a mac network compared to the way a PC communicates on a PC network. Here's the bottom line: Revit Worksharing cannot function properly using Parallels PCs on a Mac network. It's a problem with addressing. You'll note that the drive letter looks different when you access the network from the Parallels PC. You'll also note that the Parallels PC cannot even see the mac network unless the mac logs into it first.

There is a solution and it works perfectly. We needed to buy a PC server that resides right below our Mac server and made sure that all of our Parallels PCs were upgraded to Windows 7 Professional. The Windows Server resides right below our Mac server. We use the Mac server for all other network functions...we're a mac office. Our only use for the Windows 7 Server is for Revit file sharing. But it works perfectly and we couldn't be happier. We still have the benefits of a mac office and network (we're small and can't afford expensive PC IT consulting) with the small added expense of an uncomplicated windows file sharing server.

I'm sorry it took me so long to post this...it took so long to find a solution that I more or less forgot about it.
 
@RockK - glad to hear you finally got it working!

@Jamyb1 - are you having the EXACT same issue? To re-iterate, you should have the following:

1) be in bridged network mode for the Virtual Machines (VMs)
2) allow VMs to have their own unique IP on the same subnet as the Macs
3) enable SMB or samba sharing on your file server (if it is a mac)
4) be able to map network drives from your server
5) Make sure your security settings are compliant (you didn't mention if you were running Windows XP/Vista/7)
6) all users with access to the shared volume should have read/write permissions if the location is on a Mac
 
RockK said:
Yes, there's a solution but you may not like it. It took my little office about 8 months, an amazing number of ingenious work-arounds, and long discussions with quite a few experts on parallels, revit, and network solutions before finding someone (now our IT consultant, a guy named Josh Morgan) who understood that the way a parallels PC communicates with other parallels PCs on a mac network compared to the way a PC communicates on a PC network. Here's the bottom line: Revit Worksharing cannot function properly using Parallels PCs on a Mac network. It's a problem with addressing. You'll note that the drive letter looks different when you access the network from the Parallels PC. You'll also note that the Parallels PC cannot even see the mac network unless the mac logs into it first.

There is a solution and it works perfectly. We needed to buy a PC server that resides right below our Mac server and made sure that all of our Parallels PCs were upgraded to Windows 7 Professional. The Windows Server resides right below our Mac server. We use the Mac server for all other network functions...we're a mac office. Our only use for the Windows 7 Server is for Revit file sharing. But it works perfectly and we couldn't be happier. We still have the benefits of a mac office and network (we're small and can't afford expensive PC IT consulting) with the small added expense of an uncomplicated windows file sharing server.

I'm sorry it took me so long to post this...it took so long to find a solution that I more or less forgot about it.
Click to expand...

Rock,
I am curious, have you tried using Network Locations rather than mapped drive letters? The problem I have with drive letters is they are old DOS cruft, and Parallels doesn't offer any way to assign those letters rationally, so Projects is P:, Support is S:, Marketing is M: etc. I was having good results with the Network Locations approach (tho honestly had not tested worksharing extensively) prior to Lion 10.7.4, which has caused some problems with saving files opened from a network location. Save As works, Save doesn't. Again, need to look into worksharing specifically.

Gordon
 
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