High Quality BIM on Time with Autodesk Construction Cloud and Model Coordination

MARIUS ALNES: Hello, everybody, and welcome to this presentation. We're going to talk about model coordination, and the session is called high quality BIM on time with Autodesk Construction Cloud and model coordination. A little bit about myself-- my name is Marius Alnes.

I'm from Norway. I'm working as a civil engineer and BIM specialist in Norconsult. I have many years of experience with the industry, all from small to large scale multidisciplinary projects. I'm working a lot with Revit and cloud collaboration and working as a BIM coordination in the projects.

So yeah, working as Norconsult, we are quite large company. We have over 30,000 projects each year, and we are 6,000 employees. And yeah, we do a lot of things.

We have a solid expertise in buildings, transport, energy, water, industry. Yeah, and risk management also. So, we also are a technology supplier for the entire life cycle of buildings and infrastructure, and we also are certified Autodesk platform service integrator and developer since 2015. OK, when that's said, we're going to head off to the learning objectives for this session.

We have four learning objectives. The first one we're going to talk about is how you set up model coordination space and ad models with the different file formats to the coordination space. We're going to head off further with learn how to filter out clashes depending on the models and objects. And we also are going to talk about adding issues to these clashes.

And finally, we're going to head off to just see some points with the best practice using automatic clash detection. OK, so, first thing, I just wanted to give you like a product overview for the Autodesk Construction Cloud. As you can see here, we have some fields in gray and some in blue.

The blue ones is the Autodesk Construciton Cloud Services, and the gray one are the BIM 360, the old BIM 360 solution. In model coordination, it's a part of this BIM Collaborate Pro package. So you can see that in the BIM Collaborate Pro, that's almost the same as the BIM collaborate package, but the Pro package have Revit cloud work sharing.

It also had collaboration for Civil 3D and also for Plant 3D. So the package we're going to look into today is the Autodesk Docs and the BIM collaborate package. So yeah, just to give you an overview, this is in mostly the design phase of a project we're going to focus on now and also the follow-up with issues and the clash detection.

OK, so, just a couple of things with the setup and preparations-- first, you need to have some coordination space, or you need to-- actually, you need to add a project. So the account admin needs to create the project in the ACC platform. So that's probably something the IT department of a company will set up for you.

And he will assign a project admin which can add users and add companies to this space. So, the project admin will also then add folders to this project in the ACC, and when it comes to the folder structure, it's quite important that you think that through because it can be sort of a line or a path where you want to do your project. So we'll come back to that a little bit later on. And that's called trust level. So we're going to talk about that in a second.

After you have this project in the cloud, in the Autodesk Construction Cloud, you need to get your Revit files to the cloud, and that can easily be done in Revit. So then you have your Revit open, and then you opened your project. And then you can go to Save As cloud model. And then you will find your ACC project in the list.

So then you choose your project, and then you choose your folder and you put your Revit file there. If you want to collaborate more than one person in the-- per each discipline, you need to enable the cloud work sharing. So, that can also be done by choosing work set in Revit. And then you will have this menu app with some bullet points you need to go through and to check out. And then you can enable work sharing so multiple users can then work on the same Revit file. A little bit back to this folder structure-- in this ACC environment, we have something called low trust, medium trust, and high trust.

The low trust setting is based on the design collaboration workflow. So, in the design collaboration, you can publish files from Revit and up to ACC. When you publish from Revit to the ACC in the design collaboration module, it will show as a published model, which can make a package out of.

So when making packages you share your models with the team-- with other teams. And after you share the package, each team discipline can go through and see what you have been published, what's inside this package. And they can look through the models through the changes and et cetera, and they can then consume the package. And then you have the Consume folder within your Discipline folder.

So then you link in the files in the Consume folder to your Revit file. So this is the low trust level. The medium trust is that each file which are shared in the design collaboration module are added in a shared folder. So this folder structure is within Autodesk Construction Cloud Docs or document management. And then these each file which are shared in the design collaboration space are added to the shared folder.

So, this could be also a way to link those files back into Revit. And then you don't have this consumed work, the consume progress. So then you just add the files in the share folders. So then you don't go through models, but you get updates right away a package is shared. So the high trust level is finally the last solution, and that is based that you put on the Revit files directly in your folder and each discipline add or link in these files to Revit directly.

So then you don't use this design collaboration module. Then you just share the models there, and you will have a direct link into Revit. So, just to show you a little bit here, design collaboration module, there, you can create teams, and you can create and consume packages there. So this is just a screenshot for that module. We're not going to cover much work in that model but just to show you how it works. So you get the timeline, and you have packages which comes in that timeline.

OK, a little bit where you can see how these project processes are working. Sorry. The architectural team here have a Revit file, central file, and the structural team have also a Revit file which is a central file.

So then, you see that the packaging are shared through that environment and to the shared space, where you can share Revit files, DWG files, IFC files, and et cetera. And then the other team can consume those files which are in the shared space. And we have multiple packages. And then you can share them to the share space and also to consume it. So this shows a little bit about the workflow.

OK, so we're going to talk about a little bit of the coordination space and how to set up that. In the model coordination space, we have something called coordination space. So, to coordinate models you need to have a coordination space. And that coordination space can be Revit models, can be IFC. It can be 3D, DWG files, and et cetera. So, all gathered in a coordination space.

So basically, what you do in the coordination space or in the model coordination module, then you can go to Settings, and you can set up your own coordination space. So, when you create the model, when you create the coordination space. You just click Create, and you browse to the folders. And you add a folder, which you want to establish a coordination space in.

It's important to know that the file or the folder you choose, each folder under, if you have subfolders, and et cetera, it will take all those files also to coordinate them. So, each files which are in the subfolders will also be coordinated. And if you wanted this coordination space to run clash detection, and we want that to have the full functionality of this module, then you need to enable that also when setting up this coordination space.

So, when you need to set up things in Revit before you publish it, the files, to ACC, and and that you can do when you need to create views in Revit. So, each views you create in Revit, that becomes a model.

So, for each view you want to get published to Revit, that's going to show up as a model in the coordination space. And good tip here is to make scope boxes in the models because then, you can coordinate different areas in a model. If you have a large model and et cetera, you can narrow it down to different areas. So, yeah, so make the views you want to publish to ACC and just group them in the project browser there.

Yeah. And before you go ahead and publish these views, it's important that you go and check the site, the location and site, because this is a placement because each model has its origin, and you need to have the same site in each discipline models to match them correctly in the model coordination space. So, that's really, really important to structure it or to coordinate with the other disciplines to have the exact same site and the same origin or placement for all discipline models.

And also, if you have links in your Revit file, it will be published, or it can be published. So as long as it's cloud-based Revit file, it will be published to the ACC. So, just keep that in mind.

Yeah, and so when you publish your views, you go to this Revit home environment. You just click that. And then you see the Autodesk Docs icon and the menu there. So you can click on that, and you get your project up.

And as you see here in this screen, you have the Publish status, which shows update available. And then you can publish the latest. And you can also publish latest without the links.

Yeah, so you can also combine, or when you try to-- or you when you publish your views to the ACC, you get it as models. So, as you can see here, we have the model coordination space here. We have models, and then this is the views from the different disciplines.

So this is my structural view, and I have some architectural, electrical, some mechanical and piping. So, these views are published directly from Revit to the folder. And then you can combine them as models in the model coordination module.

So that's basically how this is done. So keep in mind the views in Revit are the models in the model coordination space, and this will also be the combined model when you check out all the views here. OK?

Just to go through some levels here, be sure you set up identical levels for all the disciplines. If you set up these correctly, you can show here. I'll put up a video for you here.

You're able to have the combined model, and you can also sort out the different levels in the model. It's quite a cool feature and gives you a really good overview of the models in the different levels. Yeah, so this is really nice, nice feature for this model [INAUDIBLE] space.

Yeah, so as you can see here, we have some views which are published. These are also IFC and 3DWG files, and we can go and select different models. We can also combine the IFC and the 3DWG files.

And this is a really nice and cool feature that gives you the opportunity to coordinate all kinds of disciplines even though they don't design in Revit. And these files, you just drop them. Each discipline then have their own folder in the Autodesk Docs.

And you put the model files there, the 3DWG files or the IFC file. And then it will also combine. They will show up in the model coordination space. And then you can combine those files also with the Revit published views.

So this gives you a great opportunity to coordinate other file formats. OK, so then we head off to-- just thinking just to show you a little bit live. So we're going to go first one in the Revit file. You see here I've set up some views here.

This is the full view. I also have some scope boxes here, which narrows down the model. I also then can go to-- I've set up the location for it. I can go, and if I go to the collaboration file here, then we can see in the settings. Let's see here-- collaborate in the publish settings.

I go here. I choose ICC, and I have my views over here which I want to publish. It's important to think that, OK, when you set up the views and et cetera, you need to synchronize before you're publishing to get the changes. And when I'm going here, I can go to the docks. And then I'll get up my sandbox here and my project file. And for example, structural, and you have the update available, and you can publish latest or publish without links.

I'm not going to do that now because it takes some minutes. But that's how it's done. So, really easy to publish models to that. So, keep in mind just save some views which you can export easily. So, just to show off a little bit in the ACC environment for settings, here, you can add some model coordination space. You can add it here.

You can choose the folders here, and then you can Add either main folder or subfolders, which folder you want to coordinate. So, I've added some main folders here.

Those folders will be shown here in the coordination space here or as models. As you see, this is my structural 3D full view. So now, I can choose each models here, and I can get up coordination model. That's really cool.

So, straight away, I have all the disciplines here ready. I can either select models here. I can take off the architectural model.

So I just show the structural and the mechanical and piping and electrical models. And there is also a module here which is in beta version. Then you can have this straight away.

You can show and hide, for example, structural model here right away. I can set disciplines. I can filter out.

So it's a bunch of things you can do here. So, really nice. It's a really nice viewer.

It runs very smooth. You have the ability to make some sections over here. And yeah, basically, it gives you a really nice viewer which you can go and explore the models.

As I showed you, you have also the levels here, which I can go and just filter out some levels. And a really nice feature as well is this first person view. Then you can go in the models. I can just take off the levels now, and you can explore the model in this first person view.

And also here, I can go and, yeah, just turn off the architectural model so we can see that. We have the electrical, which you can choose, and yeah, in mechanical. So, really a nice feature of this.

Yes, OK. Let's get back to the PowerPoint presentation. Clash detection-- so, this is a really, really cool feature in the model coordination space or in this module because we can activate clash detection.

This runs automatically. You just upload the files in the folders, and it starts to run clash detections. So this is a really, really cool feature which can save a lot of time. So, as I said before, you activate the clash detection when adding the coordination space.

And when activated and you upload new files, you're able to run these intervals clash detection. Because it runs in intervals, you can upload a file, and it doesn't need to start right away. It can be like 5, 10 minutes before it runs the checks.

But this is a really cool feature which is something which makes us all coordinate models, not just the BIM coordinator person which should coordinate the models. But here, everybody can go in and check the clashes. So you get the clashes in a schedule format.

You can access those clashes. You can click on it either in the schedule, or you can go directly to clashes in the menu. And then you can group clashes by objects. And yeah, you go through the clashes, and you can mark them as an issue or not issue.

So that brings us back to another live demo. So if we jump back here, we can go to these models or the model coordination module here. If I go to classes, you'll see here I get this schedule or these fields here which have checked some clashes in the model. So if I want to go to the clashes between, for example, structural and mechanical and piping here, it brings us directly to this clash module.

So here, you will filter out, or you will see all the clashes between the structural and the mechanical and piping. And you get a list of 165 clashes here. Those clashes, you see if I click on this one, it will take one structural object and check all the clashes between that object and all the objects from mechanical and piping on that model.

So it gives you a really nice overview of the clashes in a simple way. You can go. You can check out. You can see it's really nice with the red and green colors.

So, when going through the model, you can also-- now we just check the structural and the mechanical and piping model, which we can go here. And we can add the electrical model. We can go back here, and we can set different primary model. It depends on how you want the clashes to show and how you want to group them because here, you take all the structural elements.

If you change this one to, for example, electrical and you check them up with the structural model, then you see that the cable trace shows first. So now, the cable trace show first against the structural models. But you get a really nice view for the clashes in the model.

So really, really cool feature which helps a lot in the model coordination. So, yeah. Here, you can also group by a different parameters.

I recommend that you have to group by object. It's a little bit easier to get it sorted out. But yeah, you have a lot of possibilities here. You can also get some-- you can narrow it down.

So if you have clashes which are really, really close, just touching, then you can have some-- add, for example, 10 millimeters. So then it only shows clashes which are above 10 millimeters. So this is also useful if you have just objects which are just touching a little bit.

Yes, back to the PowerPoint. Let's see. OK, so, yeah, when we have the clashes, we want to add issues to those. And the thing is that the issues, when you add issues, it gives you really good control of the clashes.

You have the issues in the same platform as you have the model coordination or the models for the model coordination. So it gives you the ability to address the issues directly to user or teams which need to resolve the issues. So the thing is there, in the clash or in the viewer, you can sort out when you're sorting out clashes.

You can also add issues to it. So then you add issues with push pins, and you address those clashes to a person or a team. So, a little tip here is to place the parchment to the model that needs to be modified.

That's something you need to be aware of. And that's because we want to take those issues back to Revit. So we'll come back to that in a little while.

So, yeah, push pins placed, and the issues is created automatically. And you can add the-- so you see I put it in the wall in this example just because of the structural engineer needs to create some openings for the ventilation ducts here. OK, so as I said, it is a Revit issue add-in which can be downloaded.

You will have to download it from the Autodesk account. It's really easy. You download it, and you install it, and you have it right away in Revit.

So, this gives us the ability to explore issues which are created in the ACC environment. And it's really-- it can be really time-consuming when you run coordination checks and et cetera in different software, and you're going back to your design software, and you need to change the design, or you need to locate where the issue are and et cetera. And this helps us to see the issues right away in the Revit environment.

And you can save a bunch of time on this one. So, really helpful to have this possibility to have the issues directly to Revit. You can also change the status of the issue in Revit.

So, when you have a issue addressed and you change the design, you can change the status of the issue. And then you can have that sync back to the ACC. OK, just to go back to the ACC environment, I've created some issues before here.

Let's see here if we go back and select the models. OK, so we have some issues here in this model. You can see I've made some here for the electrical piping there. And we also have a issue for some piping which goes through the wall here or the ducts go through the wall.

So these issues will can be shown in Revit. And also, this is some existing issues. I want to also create another issues. So if I go to the clash here, I choose the structural.

I choose clash with the electrical model, for example. I have some issue here, just with some pipes going through the wall. So if I want to have created some openings for these pipes, I can mark the clash here. I can create an issue.

It gives you a warning that, OK, or a tip that it's recommended to place the push pin on the model that needs to be modified. So I choose the wall over here. And then it's create a issue.

So then, you have it up here. I can assign it to myself. So, this is the-- it gives you the screenshots and et cetera, and it's stored as an issue in the ACC platform. So if I head back now to Revit, I have my model here. If I go to this full view, I have an issue add-in which I can-- it's over here. It's called Issues.

So this is from Revit. So it's installed these extensions. I can go to Manage Issues.

It will sync. It will connect to the cloud. You see the issues over here. This was some over here.

And if I choose to take in the electrical model like this, you see it's synced already to the pipes here, which I make a issue for now. So now, I can go to the issue. You see here. Here was this screenshot.

So it's nice and synced. It gives me an overview for all the issues in the model. It's really helpful. I can section the view down and et cetera just to see the issues easier.

But when I make opening here, I can go to this issue. Now it's status open. I can, for example, say it's in pending or in review, change the status there. I can sink it, and it will be also back.

If I choose now and I go back to the environment, it should be changing status. Just need to refresh. So let's see here.

So if I go to the-- or the models, I can go here, open. And if I go now to the issues, you'll see here its changed status in review, et cetera. So this is a really nice way to collaborate in the cloud and to connect the platform, the ACC platform, which are used of maybe user which are not using Revit and also users which are using Revit and can get the clashes directly to Revit and just to resolve them there.

So this is really, really helpful. OK, so, back to the presentation, again, let's see here. OK, so, just to have some closing up now, we're going to see-- go through the best practices for using the model coordination tool.

So, OK. First thing first, we need to optimize the collaboration conditions. So, agree which size to be used for publishing. Agree with all the disciplines that you use the same size when you're publishing.

Get your levels matched up. Be sure that you're using the same levels in each discipline. Then you can sort out the coordination model by levels and filter out that and publish new settings. You need to agree which 3D views you want to use to publish, and that comes also with the scope boxes.

So, I recommend using scope boxes just to narrow down the models. And just add scope boxes with one discipline. Add the scope boxes. You can copy it, et cetera, but have the same scope boxes. Use that between all disciplines.

OK, number two, the folder structure-- so we need to define the trust level which you want to use. So, this is a thing you need to address early in the project. So, just keep that in mind when you're setting up folders just if you're going to use what kind of level on the trust level. So, keep that in mind when you're adding the folder structure.

So, yeah. And then you take up the coordination space, or you make that based on the folder structure and what trust level you are agreed on. So, keep that in mind. That's number two.

So, number three, publishing routines-- you need to publish to ACC to get your clash coordination or clash detection going. So, don't forget to publish. This needs to be done.

This is-- when you're using directly link or these different trust level. And then you need to-- on some kind of trust level, the high trust level, you need to do this manually. If you use the design collaboration module in the medium and low trust, you have the ability to schedule a publish, weekly publish, on that.

But I recommend publishing maybe daily or maybe once or two times daily just to have the models updated and on track. So yeah, publishing routines is really important. So yeah, clash like a king. Be structured and use the filters.

So, just go through. Add the filters in the module. You can limit the clash areas, as I said before, with the cropped 3D views.

So, do that. Narrow it down and use scope boxes to have the same cropped view in different discipline models. Then you can have total control in what's published and what area you control. So, filters and small models can be really helpful.

So, number five, the Revit issue adding. This is a game changer for Revit users, which you can go through issues and, yeah, directly to Revit. It's a really, really cool feature which helps a lot.

And keep in mind that when you go through issues in the Revit environment, you might start cropping the view in, et cetera. The issues will only be shown in the view which you publish to ACC in Revit. So, you might start cropping the view and see how the issue or where the issues are. Just remember to reset the view back to its original look before you publish the new model. So, keep that in mind.

And again, just limit the clash area in 3D views. I can't say that enough just to keep track on the clashes because it can be really many clashes If you don't do that. So, yeah. Yes, so that was that I had in mind. Thank you for watching this session, and have a good day.