As architects computerize their design practices they are faced with unique networking challenges. One of these is the “wide area design” problem. This is the problem of collaborating on large architectural projects from geographically dispersed locations. Revit, in particular, presents acute collaboration challenges owing to its large monolithic file sizes and its rigid synchronous database architecture. In this article we describe the unique networking challenges faced by design professionals. We explain the factors that impact network performance and using these factors, we describe and evaluate two possible solutions to the wide area design problem currently under consideration at Perkins+Will – Remote Desktop and Revit Server. We end with some testing results of Revit WAN performance using both Remote Desktop and Revit Server.
