Advanced Bridging in Autodesk Construction Cloud

HAYES JOHNSON: Hi. My name is Hayes Johnson. I'm VDC Manager for BL Harbert International. In this class, we're going to be talking about advanced bridging in the Autodesk Construction Cloud or more specifically really utilizing Autodesk Bridge to streamline Model Coordination.

So first things first, a little bit about me. Like I said, I'm a virtual design construction manager here at BL Harbert international. A lot of you are probably pretty familiar with the roles and responsibilities of a typical VDC manager. We do a lot of different roles. But really most importantly, our bread and butter, the real reason that we're here is for 3D coordination across all of our projects.

When I started here at BL Harbert, it was just me as a coordinator. And I was working on one job. Fast forward about four years, we now have four people, and we're working on about 10 jobs at one time. So we've really felt the need as we've grown to work on streamlining how we approach Model Coordination, make ourselves faster, make our subcontractors faster, and that's why we're really trying to utilize bridge in our Model Coordination workflow.

So just a brief overview of what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to go over Model Coordination. A lot of you are probably familiar with it. But we're going to do a little bit of an overview just to give some history on the ways that we set up model coordination because that'll come into play into how we implement Bridge later on. And then, we're going to talk about what we think model coordination is still lacking right now.

We're going to talk about what Bridge is and how we think it can help model coordination. Then I'm going to go through the workflow of how to set up the Bridge, how to set up your models to leverage Bridge, and how to successfully bring them into Model Coordination in the most efficient way, show you how to update models, and then check the updates within a separate project. And then, we'll talk about different ways to live collaborate between separate projects. I'll then go through a few case studies of how we've implemented Bridge, and then talk about what our next steps are that we want to look into revolving around Bridge and Model Coordination.

So let's talk about Model Coordination and why we think it needs Bridge. It's Autodesk's solution for democratized BIM coordination in the Autodesk Construction Cloud. You know what they're trying to do is take 3D coordination that's typically happened in Navisworks, and then bring that, A, to a wider audience, but also give us tools to share more information. Be more efficient with our Model Coordination process.

The way that we approach Model Coordination is we set up a folder similar to what you're looking at in the top left corner. We have our BIM VDC folder, and we have an entire folder devoted to models for coordination. We set up our coordination view on this folder. And so it's going to source every single model that's dumped into this model for coordination folder. So underneath that, we split it up between design models, and trade models, and obviously, we bring those in from separate places. Traditionally, we've just been doing a manual upload to both of those places from wherever we source the design and trade models from.

Then, we like to set up our coordination view and Model Coordination. And then, we like to start off our 3D coordination utilizing Navisworks. So we use the Navisworks plugin to open the Model Coordination view within Navisworks, and then start assigning issues and checking for clashes and large coordination areas as necessary. Then we'll move back to Model Coordination for clash detection as well and work between the two in the process.

So this all sounds great. But it still has some problems we think. And mainly that is it still new. We have this new platform that we're using now, but we're still using some old methods on it. Everybody's used to exporting NWCs. You can upload a Revit model to Autodesk Construction Cloud, but uploading those NWCs is faster even though you need to export multiple NWCs per week potentially. And because of the ways that we're used to working, we're still really only doing a one upload per week. And then, everybody gets the latest uploads just that one time per week. And that really doesn't give us the chance to coordinate or collaborate much between meetings.

And we have the issue management tools that we talked about. But a lot of people are still used to Viewpoints. And so we found that on all of our projects we're still having to do an education period at the beginning of the project to tell everyone, here's how it works. Here's where you can access this. Here's how you can bring this up on one page, bring your authoring tool up on the other page, and work in both simultaneously.

And once people get used to it, it's faster. But there's still that-- it takes some getting used to on all of our projects still.

But the question is if subcontractors are also using Autodesk Construction Cloud now, why can't it be easier to streamline the start up and the coordination process? And I think Bridge comes into play into how we can do that. So let's talk about Bridge and why we think it helps and how we go about integrating it.

Bridge is Autodesk's solution for transferring files and drawings between Autodesk Construction Cloud projects. You can do one time transfers. You can set up automations. We're going to be focusing on automations here because that's what we want to capitalize on in the Model Coordination process.

First key is both parties must be using Autodesk Construction Cloud to use Bridge. It does not work with BIM 360. If you need to copy files from BIM 360 to Bridge or to Autodesk Construction Cloud, there is another tool out there called the Autodesk Replication Tool. You'll have to get with your customer success manager though to get access to that one. It is not currently public. But it is a tool to bring from BIM 360 to ACC.

It's not really the topic of this conversation though. So we're just going to continue on talking about Bridge. Anyway, long story short, you no longer-- if you're using Bridge, you no longer have to manually upload a model to a separate project from the one you're working in.

So let's look at a couple examples of what that looks like. So the old traditional workflow was generally this. You model in your authoring tool, Revit, or AutoCAD, or whatever. You save, or you publish it. Then, you export the NWCs. Then, you upload to the coordinators project, which is likely different than yours. And then, you view your model and the coordination model in that project.

Well, with Bridge, we can cut out a couple of steps from that. Now, you model in your authoring tool. You hit Save or publish. You don't even do anything on the third step. It's just automatically transferred to the coordination project. And then, you can go view the updates in the coordination model. So a lot shorter workflow and a more streamlined as well, just less button clicks to do.

So let's talk through how we set this up. There are some key things to know about this. I mean, it's a pretty straightforward process. But there are some things that are maybe a little hidden.

Number one, so there are two ways to establish a Bridge between two projects. If you go to build, there's a Bridge module down on the left towards the bottom above settings, and you can select to Bridge a new project there. This window when you hit the bridge new project, this window pops up. And you type in the email of a project administrator on the project that you would like to Bridge with.

Project admin on the other project will receive the email, select the project that they want to Bridge with you, and then the Bridge is made. And you can transfer files between the two projects like you were on both projects. To send files from the other project to yours, that person will have to initiate that Bridge. But to send files from your project to theirs, you can establish that file transfer.

The second option is to just have a project admin from the other project add you to their project. Key thing here is on the permissions, you need to have create permissions or hire to be able to set up a Bridge connection. And that basically means that you can upload and edit within that folder to be able to push files back and forth. You don't necessarily have to be a project admin on the other project.

At Harbert, we prefer to use option number two because it gives me the I can go in and take care of everything myself approach. It doesn't require a series of emails back and forth of here, accept this, set up the Bridge, send the files to me. You didn't send the right files. And then, it just creates less education. And I can just get in there, set it all up, show them how I've done it, and then, hopefully, they know the next time around.

All right. So step two, once you've got all that set up, select a folder to share. Key thing here is if you want to set up automation, you have to select a folder, not a file. As you can see in that pop up below, if you select just a file it'll give you this message that just says sharing is not supported on just files. Please select a folder. So that's just the key thing.

It might require in some scenarios for us it's required to restructure the subcontractors folder structure to be able to do this. They might have stuff at the top level that they're working on. And we ask them to create a model or a folder just for your working models. Dump everything in there. And then, we can push it to our project.

Once you select the folder that you want to share, you'll get this screen. You can set up the automation by hitting that checkbox there that you see at the top. Create a title for the Bridge automation that you're setting up. This is helpful to know what it is. If you end up having 10 different automations or maybe five different automations to your project, this title lets you know what it is that's coming to your project. We'll look at that a little bit more here in a second.

Select the project you want to send the files to. Select the folder that you want to dump the files into. And then, just hit Share.

Once you do that, you can now see. Go back to the target folder, and then see that the models have been transferred to your project. On the left there, we're showing those are two models that have been bridged over from a separate project. There's a little indicator in the new indicators column that shows that it's being transferred via Bridge. And if you hover over it, you can see which folder it is or which project it is coming from.

Additionally, if you go back to the Bridge module and you click on either incoming or outgoing, you can see the list of shares that have happened or are currently happening in incoming and outgoing. This may be something that needs to be adjusted, but right now, it shows that first one is the title that I gave that Bridge when I set it up. But as you can see, unfortunately, right now, every time new files come over, it just says untitled. We do know what's going on there just because I set it up, but hopefully, that's something Autodesk is going to fix in the future, and all of those will have the same title.

So once you have everything set up, once you have the Bridge set up and all the parts and pieces of the infrastructure together, we got to go about setting our models up in a way that makes the best use of this. So there's two categories here. We're going to take non-Revit models, or Revit models that may not be Cloud-Workshared, or the subcontractor may be working in BIM 360 actually and can't utilize Bridge. And so if that's what's happening, we're going to suggest using the Autodesk Desktop Connector.

If you're doing that, you can just save your updates into the Desktop Connector. It's going to sync to the cloud, and then push over via the Bridge to the other project. If you've never used Desktop Connector, there's an example on the left there of what that looks like. It just looks like a normal file structure. On your local machine, you can see we've got two fire protection models stuffed away in there.

Every time those are updated, they sync to the cloud and sync over. So we highly suggest using Desktop Connector for non-Revit models or non-work shared models.

But to get the most out of the Bridge, really Cloud-Workshared Revit models give you the most bang for your buck in what we're talking about. So let's talk about how to set those up.

First things first, when working in Revit it's important to set up a 3D view of exactly what you want to publish for each part of your model or each discipline in your model that you want to push to the cloud for coordination. This would typically be each different NWC that you export from your model. In this case, we got a ductwork model, an equipment model, and a mechanical pipe model all coming out of the same Revit project. We're going to coordinate those three against each other and against everything else.

So first, we set those three views up. Then, if you've never done this, you're going to go to the Collaborate tab, Publish Settings, open that guy up, create a selection set for the 3D views that you want to publish to the cloud, and make sure those three are selected in that publish set. This is how Autodesk Docs knows which 3D views from your Revit project you want to extract and make viewable within the cloud.

Lastly, before it shows up in the cloud, you got to go back to Revit home and hit Publish. But the beauty of this is one subcontractor may be working in multiple models, as you can see there. You can group select all of those and hit Publish on everything at the same time. So we got multiple NWCs coming out of one model, and we're publishing both models at the same time. We're pushing four NWCs to the cloud simultaneously without having to go through the export process.

So the result is just like we discussed. You can see those top three views are now extracted and published to the cloud.

Additionally, the plumbing model and our three views from our mechanical model are pushed all the way over to Model Coordination. If you're not familiar with how Model Coordination works with Revit models, it takes those 3D views, and then it extracts them as separate models. So we had two Revit projects, but now we have four models that we're working within Model Coordination. Again, just like if you were exporting multiple NWCs.

And then lastly, because we set up the coordination view and then opened it in Navisworks and saved it as an NWF or a coordination, those updates from Revit get pushed all the way into our NWF in Navisworks where we can then start coordination on them.

So just to summarize, the update started in Revit. You hit Publish. Wait a little while, and then they show up in Navisworks on the other end. And that's all you have to do.

So that workflow alone has saved us a lot of time. But utilizing Bridge and getting those updates on a regular basis throughout the week instead of once a week does give us the option to link models into each other and collaborate more throughout the week. You can potentially see live updates from your sub-- from the other subs on the project as you're working, or other design consultants, or whoever you're working with on your project.

So first things first, it is important to note that bridged models can only be linked if you're working in Revit 2023.1 or newer. The reason for this is the Revit model being pushed over via Bridge is actually an amalgamation of the Revit model you want plus all of its links attached in. So it's actually like a zip folder that just looks like a Revit model when it comes over. There could be seven models in what you're bridging over.

It wasn't until Revit 2023 that Autodesk taught Revit or programmed in to be able to open just the one model in question instead of being confused at what this zip file is. So as a result in 2022 and older, you can't link in a bridged model, and you can't even open a bridged model in the project that you've bridged it to. You have to open it in the original authoring project.

2023.1 was when Autodesk gave you the ability to Bridge that linked model-- or sorry, to link the bridged model into another model. A little confusing, we're going to hopefully look at a situation that makes a little more sense to that here. But anyway, so that being the case, you've got two options.

If you want to link models into each other across separate projects, you can use the desktop connector. One of the beauties of the Desktop Connector is you can push all of the projects that you're on to your desktop. So let's say subcontractor A and subcontractor B both have Desktop Connector, and they want to link models into each other. If you add team members from the other company into your project and vice versa, they now have access to the other models. You can link them directly in across the Desktop Connector because it works just like a normal file system.

The only issues we've had with this are it can be a little error prone. Like we said, that's a lot of people ending up on both projects. But it is the only option that works if you're working in Revit prior to 2023.

Our preferred method is to Bridge the model across the project, and then link it in within the project. It's a little bit cleaner workflow. You don't have to have multiple people on multiple projects. It's a little bit cleaner to set up. But it only works in Revit 2023 and later. So that's definitely our limitation there right now.

Personally, we still have a lot of projects working with in Revit 2021. So we just can't utilize this workflow.

So let's look at a potential scenario. This is pretty similar to what we have going on one of our projects right now. So design team is working in Autodesk Construction Cloud. We are working in Autodesk Construction Cloud. So we're able to Bridge their models into ours.

Our mechanical plumbing subcontractor is also working in Autodesk Construction Cloud. So we can take their model and bridge it into our pool of trade models. We got a steel, fire protection, and electrical contractors. None of them are in Autodesk Construction Cloud. So they do manual direct uploads to our project.

So once we get all the models in our pool, we can then push some stuff back to the subcontractors for them to link in. Ideal situation is we push those models via Bridge back to the mechanical plumb subcontractor. We can also push the design models back to the mechanical plumb subcontractor.

Important to note, though, is I cannot push those models from my project to him. Bridge models cannot be quote unquote forwarded. I would have to set up an additional Bridge from the design project all the way to the mechanical plumb subcontractor directly. Once we have all those models in here, as I said earlier, you can just link them straight in within the project.

Additionally, we can take the design models and the trade models from our project. And the electrical contractor, since he has access to our project, can direct link them in across the Desktop Connector. Let's say he's working in BIM 360. He can do that.

Again, though, this only works in Revit 2023. Parts of this will work in earlier versions. But the linking of the bridged models will only work in Revit 2023.

So let's say we're working. In an earlier year, this is going to look more like this. Same deal, architect engineer, those models get bridged over to our project. Everybody's still uploading the same models. We can still Bridge the mechanical plumbing subcontractors model into ours to prevent them having to up export those multiple NWCs.

But when it comes to linking of files in, both the electrical contractor and the mechanical plumbing subcontractor are both going to have to use the direct link via the Desktop Connector. But that means it's still possible to get those live model updates as they happen or as they're uploaded from both parties.

The electrical subcontractor wants to bring in the mechanical plumbing subcontractors model. It's probably the best to direct link to be added to their project, and then direct link that in directly between the two subcontractors. Again, because we're bridging the mechanical plumbing subcontractors model to ours, we cannot then link it into the electrical contractors model because it's before 2023.

So hopefully that made sense. It's a little confusing, but it's all possible one way or another.

So we talked about live collaboration. Now, let's go over a few case studies of how BL Harbert's actually utilizing this across our projects.

So the first one we really did this on was this subscale drone facility that we worked on. There were four buildings on the project. And we discovered a little way into the project that our mechanical plumbing subcontractor was also using Autodesk Construction Cloud. They were using it to Cloudwork-Share their models. A lot of subs have classically used BIM 360, but they had already made the jump to Autodesk Construction Cloud.

I knew about Bridge. We hadn't really ever utilized it successfully before. But I proposed hey, let's try this out and see if we can streamline y'all's workflow by utilizing it.

So we got it set up. We ended up in a situation where we were working on three buildings simultaneously. They had three discipline models for each building. And so as a result, we saved them from exporting nine NWCs per week for a period of time by not using the old workflow of exporting NWCs for everything. So we think that was a pretty good time saving for them.

Side benefit that we didn't expect, but was actually really helpful and a good benefit of Bridge, is after we had finished coordination. They had to make some changes through shop drawing review process that they forgot to tell us about. And so they made those changes and published their models, and we got a notification on there. And they were like, hey, new models have been published.

And I was able to go in, look at those, find some issues that they created as a result that would have resulted in field issues if I hadn't, and we were able to work through those and fix them. So it's also a great back check in case you forget to tell somebody that you've made changes.

Another project we're working on is this WEG headquarters building. It's really large building, and we're working with another subcontractor, Gallo Mechanical, on it. Again, they have three separate views, but these are three separate models within just their piping model, so domestic water, waste vent, and mechanical piping. On top of that, they have a second tier subcontractor that's doing their duct work and equipment layout in a separate model. So they got really five things going on here.

What we're going to try to do on this one is because when you Bridge a model and it brings those links, we're going to see if we can link in the ductwork and equipment model into the rest of the mechanical and plumbing model, Bridge that all over at once, and see if that provides us any time savings there. If it doesn't, we can still just have the second tier subcontractor upload to Gallo Mechanicals project and Bridge that over as normal as a separate model. But it does give them the ability to run things out of their project, work internally with them, coordinate, and then publish and send hopefully the coordinated duct and piping models all over together.

Worth noting, this is also a project that we're using the Autodesk Replication Tool on. Our A/E using BIM 360. So we were able to pull all of the latest model updates and then push those to our subs. As a result, we started coordination on this one before the design ended. And so it was key having those model updates come in and be delivered to our subs as we started coordination with our subcontractors.

So the last one I want to talk about today is a expansion we're doing for BMW in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This is the one that I was using for my example in the potential live collaboration imagery that I put up. But we are bridging models from our architects GMC's ACC project over to our project.

Again, we have a tight construction timeline where we're going to start coordination with our subs before the design is ended somewhere between 90% to 100% time frame is when we'll start that. And so it's again going to be really key that every time design changes are made, those are pushed to the subs, and they have those updates so they can incorporate them into their models, and we can continue on with construction level coordination. It's going to be absolutely critical on this project.

And so Bridge gives us the ability to do that. We can pull those over without having to be notified or remember to go pull those from the A/E's hub and then push them over to the subs as well. Theoretically, our subs can just have the updates on their end, open up their model, see the design model has changed, do a coordination check, and see what the changes are, then make them in their model.

Additionally, BMW uses BIM Collab for issue management. And one of the things that we did on this project is set up the integration between BIM Collab and ACC so that we can view our latest models within BIM Collab, and then do some of our issue management checks in there.

Because we have models, we're doing a combination of design coordination, and then transitioning into construction coordination. So we knew we needed our subcontractor models and all of our design models to come from the same place to go through this integration. Again, utilizing the Bridge to bring those design models into our hub, and then push them to the cloud so that we could later replace them with the subcontractor models means that we don't have to go reset up this integration once we make that switch to construction level coordination. It's just really streamlined, again, that whole effort for us.

All right. So that's what we've done. The next thing I want to talk about is where we want to take or things that we're looking into implementing into the Bridge and Model Coordination workflow.

So Autodesk released Bridge for Design Collaboration earlier this year. We started looking into potentially incorporating this mainly with the goal of answering the question, what if a consultant or a subcontractor is doing that internal work amongst themselves, like we mentioned on the WEG headquarters, but they don't want to share something that's mid-process with us because it'll just be confusing?

The scenario would be they have to publish internally on their project to coordinate with each other. But if they send that to us, it's going to throw people off the rest of the coordination process. Well, that's where design collaboration comes in because not only do you publish your models to the cloud, you have an additional step of publishing a package when you are complete with your work in progress that is then shared with the rest of the team.

It's an extra step of work to do. So in all honesty, it's not something that we think we're going to try and implement unless we really need to. And it's going to be a big learning curve for the subcontractor to implement this as well as us. It seems that both parties have to have it implemented to work correctly. But if you do, basically what happens is when you publish a package to your shared folder on Design Collaboration on your project, the updates to the shared folder are pushed to the shared folder on the target project.

So what would happen is if Gallo elected to do this with us, they would publish their complete mechanical package. That would get synced over to our package. We would consume it into the Model Coordination space with everything else and keep on rolling.

What we really want to see implemented though, is what we consider to be the Holy Grail is getting the Model Coordination issues that we create in our project available in the working model on our subcontractor projects. Right now, we think this really would be the key to solving that learning curve of how do I work with the issue management tools? How do I open this in Model Coordination or Navisworks? Look at the issues that have been assigned to me, and then go look at my authoring tool and make those changes in this tool, pushing back and forth, make sure that I have everything fixed.

Theoretically, if you can get all of the other models and all of their latest updates brought into yours and see the issues in your authoring tool, resolving issues should be a breeze. And you should be able to get ahead of the curve on the general contractor assigning coordination issues to you. Unfortunately, it currently isn't possible to do that. Basically, the authoring model is in one project, and the coordination issues are in another project. Unless your subcontractor actually works out of your project, It's. Never going to work right now. And we steer clear of that for a variety of reasons.

So a couple of ideas here-- one, the Issues Add In-does allow you to pull issues in from other models in the same project. So like you see an example of a duct model there. Well, you could go pull in the issues that are also on the plumbing model. As long as they're in the same project, you can pull those in for context. But you cannot pull in issues from other projects into this model.

I think that's a great opportunity for a feature request in the Issues Add-In that would just solve our issue immediately if that was possible. But as that's not implemented currently, one of the other things that we're looking into is utilizing Autodesk Construction Cloud Connect to basically duplicate the issues that we make in our project and our subcontractors project. In the image on the top at the right there, that's just an example of what ACC Connect looks like and some of the recipes that you can start.

But basically, what you're able to do is set up a trigger so that when I create an issue in my project, it says, hey, new issues here. It's assigned to so-and-so. Go create an equivalent issue in that project. And you can copy over all of the placement information, all the other attributes about the issue to that other project. And if you can do that, you can then make the issue visible in Revit on the subcontractors project so that you can reply to it accordingly in that project.

We'll have another layer is pushing updates from the duplicated issue back to the original. We still need to cross that bridge, too. But this is something that we're currently working with Autodesk on. Think it's possible, just got to go about trying to implement it. And hopefully, that's something that we can get going here in the near future.

This is of our three issues, this is the last one that we think we really need to address. The other two, utilizing Bridge, we really think we can improve upon with the tools that we currently have. That's where we are, and this is where we're going with utilizing Bridge. And we really are looking forward to what Autodesk has in store.