What's The Deal With Revit Worksets Anyway?

A Revit Workset is as a named collection of elements, organized by their purpose within the Revit project file.  Worksets are only available in work-shared Revit project files (central files).

Worksets allow you to control various aspects of all the elements within the workset.
You can set a workset to be off by default.  This is good for special purpose elements, where you would have the workset visible only for specific views.  Keep this in mind when you are looking for something you can't see.

Worksets give you the ability to…

• Control the visibility of elements that belong to a specific workset
• Segregate elements and control the ownership of everything within a workset
• Shorten the time it takes to open a Revit file by selecting which worksets not to open, such as a workset used for linked Revit models.

Worksets can be segregated into 4 classifications…

• Families
• Project Standards 
• User-Created 
• Views

User-Created Worksets

The User-Created Workset is the most recognized kind of workset.  It is as a user-defined collection of model elements.

• When used properly, they will keep your project well organized and predictable.  
• When worksets are miss-used or disregarded, your project can be difficult to control. 😱

Using Worksets for Good

User-Created Worksets are known to be good for the following categories of model elements:

• Model content
• Linked Revit and CAD Files
• Levels and grids 
• Levels and grids for the linked Revit models
• Rendering specific content
• On/Off By Default

Avoid Overkill

Too many worksets in a project will increase the likelihood that elements will end up on the wrong workset! Or forgotten!!!

• Only create worksets that are necessary.  
• Don’t use them like you would use layers in CAD
• If you can control the visibility of a specific type of element by its Revit category, then you don't need a workset to control its visibility.