Open the model. Lock it. Roll it back.
Open a multi-gigabyte Revit or CAD model from any office or home in seconds, with file locking on every platform, Revit worksharing locks enforced across machines on Windows (no add-in required), full version history, and an audit trail on every change. Worksharing, versioning, and review on a drive your team already knows how to use.
Getting to the model is the hard part.
Stuck behind a VPN
Open a 2 GB model from home and the VPN turns it into a coffee break. Or you copy the whole central file to your laptop first.
No idea who changed what
The facade moved and nobody knows who did it or when. "Rolling back" means hunting through folders called final_v3_REAL.
Consultants can't get in
The structural engineer needs the model. So you email a 2 GB file, or pay for another platform login just to share one folder.
ACC prices, still syncing
Autodesk Construction Cloud holds the models, but the desktop connector still syncs and copies them, and the per-seat bill keeps climbing. See how Swarmfile compares →
Swarmfile gives your firm a drive letter back: fast, versioned, and easy to share.
What works for AEC today
Prove where the models live
Pin an organization to the EU or the US at signup (infrastructure-enforced, not a policy promise), so a client or public-sector data-sovereignty requirement has a real answer. Included on every paid plan from Starter up, not reserved for an Enterprise contract the way it is with most vendors.
Open any model, from anywhere
A 2 GB Revit or CAD model opens in seconds, at the office or at home. Browse a 10,000-file project without downloading it - nothing lands on your disk.
One fetch per office
The first person in an office to open a model pulls it from the cloud; everyone else gets it from them over the local network at LAN speed. A coordination team of ten doesn't mean ten cloud downloads of the same federated model - every machine that opens the model becomes a source for the next, so read capacity grows with the team.
Keep the NAS as the warm tier
Run a self-hosted seed node on your own NAS (Pro and up) and most reads come from your office instead of the internet - the NAS you already own stays the warm tier, and the cloud serves the office once. Seed node guide →
Nothing on-site to run or lose
No server, VPN concentrator or per-site cache appliance is required: workstations mount the project directly, the LAN swarm (or an optional seed node) makes the office fast, and the cloud copy is the backstop. Fewer boxes means fewer things that fail, fill up, or get forgotten.
Cooperative file locking
Lock or check out a file and one person edits it at a time. Swarmfile locks show up on every machine, on Windows, macOS and Linux alike, and release automatically if a workstation drops off, so no two people overwrite the same drawing. An--exclusive mount refuses a sibling mount’s write-open outright for files that must never be opened twice.
See who's in the model, live
A live roster shows who has what open, updated the moment someone starts or stops editing. It's not an activity log you check after the fact.
Commit a design pass, revert it as one
Group every file that changed for a design pass into a named, atomic commit. See it in the Commits tab, and revert the whole batch if the pass gets rejected.
Version history and rollback
Every change is versioned. See who changed what and when, and roll the whole project back to any moment, with no digging through backup folders. History is hash-chained and hub-signed, so swarmfile-verify-history can re-check it offline against keys you pin.
Try a design option without copying the model
Branch the project to explore a facade option or structural alternative on your own. Open a Merge Request when it's ready so the project lead reviews and approves it before it lands on main, with conflicts flagged, not silently overwritten. Run a BIM pipeline? There's a CLI for all of it.
Knows your file types
Swarmfile recognizes .rvt, .dwg, .ifc and .pdf and tunes chunking and prefetch for each: RVT/DWG pull their headers and footers first (linked .dwg/.max files are scanned so XRefs land early), IFC streams sequentially, and PDFs fetch whole for instant skim. FastCDC means only changed blocks move between saves.
RFIs and submittals
A full RFI/submittal workflow lives right alongside the model: raise, assign, submit, acknowledge, decide, and close or void, each one attachable, searchable, and tied to the same permissions, comments and audit trail as the files it's about. Driven from the web, or scripted end-to-end from the CLI.
Clients and consultants, no seat
A named guest gets read-or-comment access to one folder without a paid seat (Starter includes one per seat, Pro five, Enterprise unbounded), and password-gated share links cover one-off hand-offs. Both run against the real project folder, with the same permissions, comments and audit trail as a member - no 2 GB email, no extra platform login. Revoking a guest purges the cached copies on their machine and files a receipt for the org.
Permissions that match the NAS
Folder and file grants with allow, deny and inheritance apply to the drive and the web alike, and on Windows they project as normal NTFS ACLs, so Explorer's Security tab and your existing review workflows keep working. On the Pro plan.
Start from the Revit worksharing template
Create the project from the Revit worksharing template and the right shape is already set: staged changelists, a protected default branch, keep-every-version history, and a starter folder layout with a Revit-aware ignore file. Web, Desktop App or CLI.
Encrypted, on every platform
On paid plans, files saved through the drive are encrypted with your project's own key. A native drive on Windows, macOS and Linux, with no plugins and no browser uploads. Working on regulated or pre-release projects? An opt-in end-to-end tier keeps your keys off our servers (Pro and above). Free and public projects are stored unencrypted, and direct git-LFS uploads skip app-layer encryption (details).
Revit worksharing: no add-in, no plugin.
Revit worksharing runs over the Swarmfile drive with no add-in. On Windows, Swarmfile presents a real local drive, reads the exclusive share mode Revit (or SolidWorks) opens the central model with, and turns it into a hub-enforced claim across every Windows machine on the project. If the hub can’t be reached, it fails open: the file still opens rather than locking everyone out. Revit doesn't need to know we're there: central-and-local worksharing keeps working the way it always has on a network share, now streamed and locked across offices. It's the same OS-level approach the established players use, with no application plugin anywhere in the loop.
Running Revit central + local worksharing across offices? Get in touch and we'll help you set it up. Tell us your firm size and Revit version and we'll route you to the right guidance.
- Native-lock enforcement is Windows-only: macOS and Linux mounts don’t take part in it. Swarmfile’s own cooperative locks (lock, check out, Pack & Go) work on Windows, macOS and Linux, so a Rhino user on a Mac can still lock a shared linked asset.
- Need finer, element-level locking? A hub-enforced byte-range lock API is there to build your own tooling against; Revit itself doesn’t use it.
Running Revit worksharing?
Tell us your firm size, Revit version, and worksharing mode and we'll help you get set up across your offices.
Get in touchStop waiting for syncs to finish.
Whether you're a solo practice or a multi-office firm. Trial Swarmfile on one project with a 7-day Pro trial. Card on file, nothing charged until day 7. A trial covers up to 2 seats; add more once it converts. Bring your own NAS; we'll help you migrate.
Cancel anytime before day 7.