Spent 3 hours tracking down a phantom BIM conflict

I was working on a model for a hospital renovation in Austin last week and kept getting a clash report that made no sense. Turns out someone had linked a structural file that was two versions old. Took me half a day to realize it wasn't my mistake but a sloppy file management from the GC's side. Has anyone else burned a whole morning on a problem that was just bad file versioning?

2 comments

2 Comments

averywilliams29d ago

oh man, i feel your pain on this one lol. what worked for me was setting up a simple rule with the GC that before i even open the model, i check the file name for a date stamp. we started putting the date in the file name like "STRUCTURE_20250315.rvt" so i can see right away if it's the current version. also i made a habit of opening the linked file properties first thing to check the "saved by" and "saved date" fields before diving into clash detective. saved me a ton of headache after i got burned the same way you did with an old link. plus i keep a shared google sheet with the whole team where we log the file versions we're using, so if someone updates a link, they have to note it there. it's a little extra work upfront but way better than losing half a day to a phantom clash.

fiona_young28d ago

Oh wait, do you have the GC enforce that date stamp rule or is it just a team thing?