Enhanced Coordination and Change Management Using BIM 360 and Collaboration for Revit

SRI VEMURI: All right, let's get started. I should apologize. I have a bit of a cough, so please bear with me through the presentation. It wasn't a result of too much drinking I promise. I got it from my kids last week.

So welcome, everyone. I think Glen was just mentioning that it takes a group of dedicated people like you to attend the last session of the last day of AU. So I am very grateful that you guys are here. Hopefully, you get some value out of this.

My name is Sri Vemuri. I am the BIM Manager at HGA. I am a licensed PE in the state of California with a structural engineering background. But the past 12 years or so, I've been working with a number of AEC firms implementing BIM workflows.

HGA is a full-service architectural engineering practice with eight offices and growing. In the next year, we'll be growing a lot across the US. We work on a wide variety of projects, health care, higher education, arts. What else, Glen? Energy and infrastructure.

I am part of this digital practice group. Like most of you guys, I am involved in testing, implementing, supporting, researching, tools related to AEC technology, specifically related to BIM computational design, fabrication, and reservation including AR and VR. Recently, we were featured on the cover of the Architect magazine for R&D award that we were mentioned.

The study was we were trying to understand the body, the different ailments that an aging body would experience and how that, in turn, impacts our design process. So it was called The Empathy Effect. So we put on the goggles, filters, to replicate the aging eye, the body suit, to replicate the movements. So it was interesting.

The reason I just wanted to give you a quick introduction on that is we are looking to use these tools in innovative ways and with the least impact on the overall cost to our company. And C4R, in fact, was one of those tools that, once we implemented, we immediately started realizing the importance of that specifically on this project. So this presentation is a case study of that, of how we implemented C4R on this particular health care project.

This is the agenda. We'll spend a lot of time on the tips and tricks and limitations and workarounds, most of the C4R. So we will not be covering the picks and clicks of how do use C4R, how to set up users and all that. There are a number of other classes that you may have attended.

This is purely just sharing our experience on what were the trials and tribulations, what were the successes, and what were the criteria we used to select C4R. So hopefully, that gives you an idea of what we'll talk about today. We may go back and forth a little.

This is the project. Can't share the name, unfortunately, but it's a hospital project ED expansion. It has CT scans and ICU beds on the top two levels. IPD project, GC, and the entire design team, subcontractors all, had to follow stringent goals, which we'll talk about a little later.

The team was co-located at a trailer in Northern California. But it was also spread out throughout the US. So we were working from different offices across our California and Midwest offices on this project.

Another enlarged view of it-- and at the center is the actual expansion. And surrounding the expansion, this is some of the renderings of the exterior and the interior spaces. Hopefully, I made sure to hide the client name there, hopefully.

So two key goals-- and before we even began drawing a single wall, these two were the primary goals that we had to meet. One was the using construction costs by 15%. And this is the hospital project in Northern California. And you can imagine how stringent and critical that is looking at the numbers. And reducing the schedule by 12 months-- so these were the two key goals that the client put in front of us.

And this was a very smart client. Specifically, this client team, they had done a number of IPD projects before. So they knew exactly what they wanted. Although, they didn't know how they wanted it.

But this is what was put in front of our design team. And obviously, as you guys know, reducing construction costs starts with efficiency in design process. Our design principal project manager reached out to our digital practice group to brainstorm ideas on the different tools.

So obviously, they looked at a number of different areas where they could reduce the cost. But one of those was selection of the proper tool to perform this job in a most efficient manner. And we looked at a number of different tools.

This is not very clear. But I still wanted to share this screen capture taken about a year and a half back. But basically, we started off looking at what was important for us, the criteria.

And there was another big criteria that's missing in this list. We'll talk about that. But robust infrastructure, we wanted it to be something that we didn't have to worry about.

It was a simple yes or no answer. So we listed all the different criteria we wanted and then looked at the different options and then went with it. That was our first round of selection.

And then we went back to the different vendors, came back with the different pricing. And we eventually chose C4R. But the different options that we looked at were VPN, remote desktop, server on site, VDI, which were desktop, and C4R.

And obviously, C4R came out on top. VDI was the other tool that we were really interested in implementing. But it has its own challenges.

Back then, we didn't have a lot of offerings. And the offers that were available to us were very expensive. So we didn't end up using that. But we did use Collaboration for Revit, purely for Revit modeling purposes.

And then so the benefits, again, for us were-- and this is what I was mentioning before. And the slide was a true collaboration. I think that is missing in that criteria. C4R performed above our expectations in terms of truly collaborating across the different offices and co-location-- less IT issues.

So if you've attended the C4R sessions before, last year, you know there's very little IT set up required for the C4R implementation. Speed to market was really, really critical, as mentioned. We needed to reduce the project scope, project schedule, by 12 months.

That meant for every single increment, we had to keep reducing our time. And we didn't want to deal with any IT issues or modeling issues which we had in the past hospital projects that we've been working on for several years. There's a project that we started in 2007. It's still on. And there are all these IT issues that keep coming up, because we didn't have C4R back then.

Cost efficiency-- as most of you may know, there is a cost component to this, $100 per user per month. But you know, depending on how many users you have, if you talk to your vendors and resellers, the cost may vary. But there is a cost component to it. But after talking to our PM just a couple weeks ago, he was more than happy with how it was not an issue at all. So it was very efficient cost-wise as well.

Collaboration for Revit-- again, we won't get into the picks and clicks, like I said. But very quickly, it is a cloud service that allows multi-user worksharing in Revit. That's as simple as it is.

So you are able to work in a true collaborative environment as if you were all working in the same firm. So users can be within the same firm or different firms. You don't have to be in one firm.

No more silos-- so that's the biggest issue with all the other offerings that I mentioned before. With C4R, you don't have to worry about firewalls and all the different silos. Especially for this IPD project, we had to work as a team. And we didn't want to deal with all those components related to the silos and firewalls. So that's the biggest advantage that we saw in terms of implementing C4R.

Software and hardware requirements-- so this is something that Autodesk puts out there for all their products. 500 gigabyte hard disk space is something I think they do put that in there. But we provided 2 terabytes of hard disk space on all of our workstations.

So hard disk space is one criteria. The second criteria that you really have to worry about is the internet pipeline. 5 to 25 Mbps per user was the recommended pipeline for this C4R for our projects in general.

And we had, like, 40 users. And if we had 40 users with the 5 megabits, it's 200 Mbps at a minimum. But if you're familiar with the internet providers going from 100 Mbps to 200, it's not the same as twice the cost. Sometimes it can be three times the cost depending on where your trailer is located. So it was a big deal for us to manage that and understand what would work for us.

So we reached out to Autodesk. And based on their research, they came back to us and said that, OK, you know, there is this thing called utilization factor. You really need that pipeline if all your users were using Revit syncing at the same time.

So there is this redundancy. You can make use of this utilization factor. And based on their study, it was about 30% to 40% to the overall user pool, which means if you had 40 users at the 5 megabits per second times 40 persons, it's only 80 megabits per second.

So that worked out for us. That's why we went ahead with 100 Mbps. And the performance has been seamless.

This graph here was also provided by Autodesk. We were kind of getting concerned early on about how huge models would perform on the cloud. And as you can see, this guy here, on the left, is your model size.

And these are the durations that it takes in minutes to sync to central, which is the most amount of time that it takes when working in a C4R environment. The smaller the size, it takes 0 to 1 minute. The larger the size, you can see that it keeps-- this is based on their statistics across several of their users.

So based on that, we made sure that our models were not exceeding, I want to say, 400 MB. So we tried to make sure that our models were all within that range. And it worked out great.

Revit models, before moving to C4R, this started in spring of 2016. Yeah, spring of 2016. And we had a model started in Revit 2015, which was in SD phase with 200 MB file size. The performance actually was pretty average.

We didn't even have C4R at the time. But since moving to C4R, we have almost 20 models, all of them on C4R. And like I said, we want to make sure not to exceed 500 megabits file size. And the performance, in fact, it seems like it improved even more based on just the feedback I got from the team a couple of weeks ago.

So we did have overall for the projects 40 C4R licenses, [INAUDIBLE] 28 were architectural, structural. 12 were mechanical, plumbing, and electrical, including our trade partners. And one thing that we also kept track of was how many users were actually working at the same time. Because we wanted to make sure not to purchase too many licenses or to less.

So based on our study, it seemed like we were at least using 16 C4R licenses concurrently all the time throughout this 1 and 1/2 year or so. So we had some redundancy there. But it was efficient for us to have some cushion, so we can switch between users easily.

And it was co-location. But also our staff was spread out in different offices working on the models, including outside of US. So that's the project teams.

And the IT architecture-- so I did say some of you did want to geek out on this IT architecture, there are three distinct layers. One is the BIM, the lowest one. I don't have the clicker here, unfortunately.

This lowest row is the actual Revit layer where you download the C4R add-in, install it on your desktops. The second layer is the C4R Worksharing Service. And the third layer is the BIM 360 Team Service.

So for those of you that are new to this-- thanks, man-- what you need to understand is if you're opening the models from inside of Revit, it's not the same as the same model that is on BIM 360 Team. So some of you may be aware of that. But so that's what that layer of structure is.

There is also a personal accelerator that's installed on your local workstation. For those of you that are familiar with the Revit Silver, you know, we have the host, and we have the accelerator. It works kind of similar in that regard.

So that's as far as the IT architecture is concerned. Just understand that we have three different layers and files going back and forth between these layers. And most of you may already know this. C4R utilizes Amazon Web Services, specifically Amazon CloudFront.

I don't want to go into too much detail on this. But just know that across the globe, there are several points of presence they call Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches. Edge caching is critical or important if you have teams across the globe.

And also, within your team, there may be users that are just opening the models to read versus actually working in the model. So for people that are opening the models just to read, it grabs the file from the nearest edge caching location. But you are writing, it goes to your nearest regional edge cache.

So there's that website. You can go and read more about it. But I just want to put that slide there, so you know it's something that is reliable across the globe.

One thing I really wanted to encourage to look at is Autodesk and Amazon Web Services. They are both cloud based, obviously. And there is outage from time to time.

So one way we've been keeping track is through this Autodesk Health Dashboard. So I would recommend that to anyone that's working in this environment. Sign up for the notifications. And you'll get an alert if the service is down.

That way, you're not worried why this is not syncing, what's going on with the model. So try to sign up for that. Same with Amazon, you have the Amazon Web Services Health Dashboard as well that you can look at.

BIM 360 Team-- so two components, right? C4R, BIM 360 Team. BIM 360 Team is also cloud based. Again, I wouldn't go into the picks and clicks of how to set this up.

But very quickly, it provides centralized access to project data outside of Revit. So for your non-Revit users, this is your window to look at the models. You can click on these different models and look at the 3D view sheets, comment, markup.

Back to the three-layered architecture, the difference between BIM 360 Team and the collaboration for Revit storage is that except for the first time that you create a model and sync to the cloud, the versions that you're syncing every time is not the same as the version that's being published to BIM 360 Team. So just be aware of that. I think I mentioned this more than once. I might mention it one more time.

But this is something that we had a hard time understanding, you know, a few months down the line in trying to figure out why the models that are showing on the BIM 360 Team are not the same size, same date. So know that unless you deliberately publish models from inside Revit, it doesn't get published on that BIM 360 Team hub. That's it. If you sync to central, it just publishes to the collaboration for Revit layer.

Change management, that's something I wanted to talk about as well. I wish we used it a lot more than we wish we should have. But there are a couple awesome features in BIM 360 Team that you can make use of to manage the changes.

One is the markups and commenting. The nice thing about that-- and some of you that have attended BIM 360 sessions, it's very similar to all the other BIM 360 products in terms of the tools available. So you can markup. You can comment. You can click on the comment, and it will highlight the element in the view.

So it's a pretty neat tool. It does get a bit of getting used to. But once our team started using it and seeing the benefits of it-- but it was too late. So we were already using Glue BIM and other tools like that to markup. But this was one of the tools that we should have used more we felt like.

Same thing-- another option you have is Compare Versions. And this was something that our GC was really impressed with once they found out. But, again, they found out too late.

There is this option of comparing version. And so when we were back to that layer, when you're publishing your models, it creates versions, right? So those versions are stored on BIM 360 Team. And you can pick and choose and compare between any two different versions.

And by clicking on that tool, it gives you a nice list, a good visual, of the things that have changed, been removed, and modified. This is exactly what our GC partners were looking for after we finished with our implementation documents. And once we went into our CA phase, they were basically manually looking at the changes and manually keeping a log of all the different changes.

But once they found out about this, it was too late, like I said. But it was very helpful. So please make use of this.

There are several things, several options, here, like disciplines, effect, and modification type. And as you may have heard, there is metadata for these objects you can look into. So that's the other tool that I would highly recommend.

Finally-- the feedback from the team. I know we beat all the increment deadlines. We beat the recent one by almost a month. So we are on target in terms of meeting those extremely stringent goals.

And the client couldn't be more happier with us. Our design lead was extremely happy, because, according to him, this gave the opportunity to not only collaborate, but also spare some time for some innovation that they could pursue through the project. So that's the feedback we got.

Limitations and workarounds-- I'm trying to speed up. Am I good on time? I think I'm good. Limitations and workarounds-- I think this is the part that we'll spend a lot of time on. Sorry.

AUDIENCE: 4:08.

SRI VEMURI: Limitations and workarounds-- cloud service outages, like I mentioned. You know, Amazon Web Service goes down. ROS may go down. But for us, we only experienced one major outage in the past 1 and 1/2 years that actually affected our production.

There have been several instances where the cloud service went down, but it came back up. And because we were all signed up for the notification, we already knew why that was happening and when it would potentially come back up. So we made sure to sign up. The entire team signed up for the modifications.

The other thing I wanted to put out there was the other good option that we were considering was VDI. But VDI also uses Amazon Cloud, some of the VDI options there. And if Amazon goes down, VDI also goes down. So it's not like you have a superior option other than working locally.

So local file access-- this, again, I wouldn't probably recommend. But there is this option to go into your local files and work on your local files and discard the ones on BIM 360 after you're done with working on your local file. So that's really only if you have a deadline in the next one hour or so, and you have to meet a deadline. You can really just go to your local file. But know that you'll have to deal with all the different links that are there with all the other models.

Non-Revit files linking. This is one of the major limitations for C4R. But it is C4R, right? It is about Revit. It is collaboration for Revit.

So CAD files, IFC files, Point Cloud-- I'm not sure. Maybe they're incorporating that now. But all the different file types you can't really link those files from within the C4R storage. But do you have some options available.

You can create shared locations on the WAN or create a cloud synchronized share like Dropbox or Box. But, again, it's good to know. Because it's not to say that you can't save your non-Revit files on BIM 360 Team. You can still save your CAD files on BIM 360 Team.

You can save your shared parameter files. You can save Point Cloud files. But when you open Revit and when you're trying to link, it won't give you access to those files. So that's the limitation there. But you know, it is for Revit.

AUDIENCE: We have a method to get [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Sorry?

AUDIENCE: We have a method to [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: What we do it put the CAD files into the generic mode and then [INAUDIBLE] into a Revit mode. [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: That's a good way to do it. Yeah. Yes.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] the desktop connector [INAUDIBLE]--

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: --which can look into the hub [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: OK.

AUDIENCE: You can actually go into your BIM 360 Team, and you can download from the [INAUDIBLE] area.

SRI VEMURI: But you can link from Revit? Like, from inside Revit?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] desktop connection. [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: OK.

AUDIENCE: It's just like Dropbox, instead you're using [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Got it. Got it. OK. Awesome. I learned something new. Like I said, we started implementing this back April of 2016. So there were only limited options.

Same with the admin controls- basically, there are only two permission levels. You can either view or edit. I know there are different terms-- team member, project contributor. But really, if you provide access to Revit users who are working in Revit, they have the ability to open your models and make changes.

So there is no way around that. But C4R operates on a high trust environment model, right? So for IPD projects, it's one of the best tools.

So all you need to do is, you know, set of document, plan around that, educate the users early on, and set up the corresponding workflows. Because we were operating in such a collaborative environment, we didn't have much of an issue. There was one instance where we had to kick a user out of the session, not physically kick him out.

But other than that, I think as long as you know that this is the environment that you're working in, it's been a very smooth process for us. I know BIM Field and BIM Ops, they have different administrative controls. But for BIM 360 Team and C4R, you don't really have those options. There is a viewer option. So if there are non-Revit users, you can just give them access to BIM 360 Team viewing.

A few other quirks are text. So if you're like us, we use Arial Narrow for our annotation. And that doesn't show up very well in BIM 360 Team.

So the workaround, we discovered, was to use Arial font with reduced width factor. But I heard recently that the development team is looking into fixing that issue. But that's something to be aware of unless you guys know if it's already been fixed. No.

Replacing or renaming files can be very tricky. It's not as simple as going in and changing. I mean, whether it's C4R or not, it's always an issue, right? Changing a file name in Revit-- all the different lengths you have to make sure to update that.

But with C4R, it's even more trickier. Because there is this cloud version. There is C4R storage version and, potentially, a local version. So you have to plan that.

We had this issue recently. So we had to go and pause the work for everyone else, make changes. And it was not the best. So planning the final naming in advance is a good suggestion, not necessarily workaround.

Inserting views from files that are on BIM 360 is not available. Oh, this is just similar to your Revit server. If you're trying to link, you know, details or whatever from a different Revit file that's on BIM 360 Team or it's on C4R, you can't do that. Because that's how it's set up, same with Revit Server. So we just have to download to local and then link views from that model.

Shared parameters on BIM 360, just like there's no CAD file support, there's no shared parameters support. That means you can't really browse through 360 Team and pick the shared parameters text file. But, again, I heard that the development team has accepted one of these Revit ideas, which we'll talk about later. So hopefully, that's coming soon.

Minor quirks when opening the files-- when you go into Revit and open a file, all your Revit files show up in one spot. So there is no way to organize.

Even if you set up folders in BIM 360 Team, those folders actually don't show up in the Revit environment. All the files are all there. And you just need to go looking for that. You can't even sort it by the file size or date. So that's a minor quirk. But, you know, if you're one of those that has issues with that, it's a good thing to know that's an issue.

Can't detach the model, you'll have to download it. That's by design. You know, ROS doesn't want us to treat it as a non-cloud environment.

So they disable their option of detaching. So the only option you have is downloading and then detaching. But what you need to know is when you download one file from BIM 360 Team, it brings in all the files that its linked into that file.

So we had 20 models. So one has at least, maybe, 12 links. So every time you try to download all the 13 models will be downloaded-- so no way around it, but good to know.

Tips and tricks surrounding the local files-- so local files, where they are located, the path isn't already obvious. But once you create a shortcut or whatever, it's pretty straightforward. It's under Local App Data Collaboration Cache. That's where all your local files will be stored.

But you need to know that all the files and folders naming is very cryptic. So they're trying their best to make sure you don't access the local files directly. So if you notice, all the names of the files and folders, they have this GUID associated with those model files and project files.

So to work around that, you can go to a Journal file and try to identify what project is associated to what. I don't know if I'll be shot by giving you all this information. But you can just open a Journal file and look for CLD.

And you should be able to identify what that cryptic name is associated what actual file name. But suggestion is, you know, try not to work directly. Try to work off the cloud as much as you can.

Some more tips and tricks-- Revit username. So when you open a file from BIM 360 Team from Revit, it automatically changes your username and matches it to the A360 username.

So we all know that, typically, the Revit username is your Windows login ID. So what we did, just to avoid any confusion, we just went into our Autodesk account and changed the Autodesk 360 username to match our Windows logon name. Because we can't change our Windows logon name.

It's easier to change the Autodesk logon name. So it's easy to keep track and manage. It's just a thing to be aware of.

Model access issues-- so most common issues we've had was accessing the model, so the [INAUDIBLE]. The only issues that we were getting were, you know, we can't access the model. So two things worked. Two things helped.

One is clearing the local cache of the users. And the other is just logging out and logging back into A360. These still pretty much resolved maybe 80%, 90% of our file access issues, so good to know.

But just be careful with the local cache. So if you clear the local cache and you're opening the file, it takes a while to open the model. The first time, it always takes a long time. So be aware of that.

And what else? If you have a user that's not been working on the model for, let's say, two months or three months and he's back, he or she will most certainly have this file access issues. So best recommendation is to clear the local cache of this user and then have him or her restart.

Mouse zoom direction in BIM 360 Team works the opposite of Revit zoom. I just wanted to put it out there. But you have the option to go in the settings and reverse it-- minor quirk, but yeah, can be annoying sometimes.

All right, what else? We've got a few more, and then you can open it up for questions. Publishing model to the cloud will publish all the sheets and 3D view by default.

So create a selection set, and then publish. If you don't, then it will just publish all the sheets. Although, I think we had some issue where it was not even publishing the sheet. It was just publishing a blank 3D view. But best practice-- create a selection set, and then use that to publish.

Live Review, this was the other thing that we didn't use a lot. But I would highly recommend you use it, Live Review by sharing a URL. So in BIM 360 Team, there is this tool called Share where you can create a unique URL and share it with your team members.

And they can just go to that website and immediately can start sharing your screen and commenting between the different team members. It's like using Zoom or Citrix, WebEx. But it's a feature that's right in BIM 360 Team. Not many users are aware of that, but it's a really cool tool. Maybe you don't need as many zoom licenses anymore if you start using this.

Opening project file for the first time takes a while. I mentioned that before. So just be patient with that process.

A few last thoughts, tips and tricks-- Revit ideas, I think someone mentioned this yesterday. Please make use of that. I think some of those features that we talked about the non-limitations and workarounds, some are being taken care of, because people are going in there and voting.

So based on the votes, the number of votes that that particular idea receives, they either accept it. They either decline it. So please try to use that as much as you can and sign up for notifications for Autodesk and AWS.

Last couple of slides, recommendations-- institute consistent publishing of models for the team hub. Even though the folder or organization doesn't really help much inside of a Revit environment, it is still important to organize folders. So that way when you go into BIM 360 Team, it's easier for you to locate and navigate.

Documenting C4R workflows in the BEP-- it's a high trust environment. IPD projects, typically, even if it's an IPD project, it's good to be aware of the limitations and workarounds. So document the ones that are important to you. Identify the criteria that's important to you. And make sure people are following those recommendations.

For us, we're still using 2016. For us, we have to download C4R Add-in separately. But 2017 and '18, it comes installed by default. We still had to make sure everyone was using the same version of C4R Add-in.

So that was critical. Because if you don't, then there's some compatibility issues. And you don't want to deal with all those weird little issues that you get, messages that you get, when you can't access the model.

Clearing cache and logging out-- I mentioned this, again. I just wanted to reiterate two of the most common fixes to the file access issues. And for us, the keys for success were, you know, documenting the plan, identifying the criteria that was helpful to us, and providing the training that was required.

But more importantly or equally importantly-- fostering a collaborative team spirit. So as you guys know, you know, BIM, our technology implementation, is not just about technology, but also sociology. So the design team and the construction team leads did a phenomenal job of organizing events, trainings, training sessions, and-- what do you call-- the Fandango Fridays.

So all of this is kind of required in some ways to foster that collaborative spirit in a high trust environment. So all these also help in addition to C4R. So I think that's all I got. Questions?

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

So now we have a lot of time to discuss. Yes.

AUDIENCE: I have a question. Because this is brand new to me, it may sound really silly. But how did you do asset management for low [INAUDIBLE] user's workstations and then using C4R? And how did people on the team [INAUDIBLE] that [INAUDIBLE]?

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: I was really hoping to hear a little bit more about that. But maybe that's more another class for another day.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah. I mean, in terms of the licensing management, if you're asking about that, we didn't start out buying 40 different C4R licenses. We didn't start on buying 20 different workstations. We just started small. And as the team grew, we just went adding the hardware.

The nice thing about C4R licensing is that you can switch between users very easily. And it happens almost instantaneously. So you don't really necessarily have to buy. You don't have to start out with 10 licenses if you're expecting 10 users who'll be working.

I don't think we had a specific plan in terms of which user was coming in at what time. But we almost had a plan. But we didn't start out with 40 licenses. We just kept adding.

And same with workstations-- we knew that we had to have at least workstations that had enough capacity on that. And that was big, because every time you load, open a file, it opens all these 10 different files. Your workstation is also acting as a personal accelerator for the Revit Cloud. So we knew that we had to have better workstations than we already had. So that was some investment there for sure.

AUDIENCE: As far as like each machine has a copy of Revit on it.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: So you're IT said you have people that are in different cities and different--

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: --areas or maybe even remote users working at home.

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: Did you, like, loop up the workstations and [INAUDIBLE] somebody a [INAUDIBLE] and say go where your location is? I mean, how does that work? From a kind of IT management standpoint, how did you get the users to [INAUDIBLE]?

SRI VEMURI: So most of our users were either in our office, in our HGA offices, or the co-lo trailer. There are a couple different exceptions where people were working out of South Korea, for instance, and one other remote user.

We tried avoiding that as much as possible. But for those, for the South Korea user, we did provide a higher end laptop. But, yeah.

AUDIENCE: But the C4R license is independent of the Revit license. So you can assign the C4R license--

SRI VEMURI: Oh.

AUDIENCE: --to use it as [INAUDIBLE] company.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, you can take--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] and giving them the licenses to work.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, absolutely.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] licenses.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, absolutely. You can switch between users. You can kick users out. It's just a service that you're adding to the user, basically, in your company. Questions? Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. For me, the limitation of the [INAUDIBLE] you can only read of--

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] For me, it's completely [INAUDIBLE] with the possibility of [INAUDIBLE] different companies. I mean, as soon as you have responsibilities in both--

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: --how can you manage this?

SRI VEMURI: So, yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] contracts.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, I mean, that is an issue. And we struggle with that quite a bit, too. But, you know, it is one of those things that you need to make sure to institute as a-- yeah. It is a limitation for sure.

There's nothing you can do about it right now, but maybe in the future. But it is a high trust environment model. So if that is an issue, then you need to look at other solutions like, you know, VDI, or something else. Yeah. Sir.

AUDIENCE: Two questions. The first one-- the local cache doesn't [INAUDIBLE] clean itself [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: No, it doesn't.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] back process [INAUDIBLE] cleaner [INAUDIBLE]?

SRI VEMURI: So we were doing that once in at least two months or so. But it doesn't do it automatically. So we had to do it manually. But we were not doing it on all user's workstations. But I would recommend going in at least once in two months would be ideal.

AUDIENCE: And then my second question was about kind of IT best practice and stuff.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: The file, your active files [INAUDIBLE], server [INAUDIBLE] processes [INAUDIBLE] backups are structured and everything. [INAUDIBLE] cloud [INAUDIBLE] still want a backup of it. And we can't very easily point to a backup and [INAUDIBLE] team--

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] facilitate [INAUDIBLE] copies [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: That's a great question. Our IT didn't really do all of that. It was Glen right here. He's a project architect and also acted as BIM Lead initially.

He was the one that was taking care of maintaining those backup files at every submittal. Or, I think you were doing it once a month almost? How often?

AUDIENCE: Every other month.

SRI VEMURI: Every other month.

AUDIENCE: Every major milestone.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah. So, yeah, IT was not doing it. So we were doing that and saving it on our local server. That was backed up [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: So [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, yeah.

AUDIENCE: I mean, you do have redundancies. Because if you're publishing regularly--

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: --you've got versions in the 360.

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: And you've also got versions on the C4R that you can [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: Absolutely.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] procedure [INAUDIBLE] just, you know, help maintain your assets and [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] consistency [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] you don't need IT.

SRI VEMURI: (LAUGHING) You don't need IT. That's one of the biggest things on the C4R.

AUDIENCE: What do you do when the cloud goes down for more than a couple minutes?

SRI VEMURI: Go get coffee. That's a good answer. For a couple minutes is we don't worry that much.

Because when you go to the Autodesk Health Dashboard, they tell you immediately if they are working on it and when they anticipate it to come back. So if it's a couple minutes to, you know, half an hour, we don't worry as much. We just don't sync to central.

AUDIENCE: But I mean when it's red, when it's down.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] wait for it to come back on, and then you can sync?

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: So we actually implemented it when we were doing [INAUDIBLE] right after [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, code word for C4R before it was C4R.

AUDIENCE: And when it first came out, there was a major down. It was like almost two or three days.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: And unfortunately, it scared a lot of the consultants [INAUDIBLE] go back [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] But basically, we just downloaded it, worked on it like we normally did.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Whenever it was back up, we initialized all the models [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: When are you going to download it?

AUDIENCE: Save it as to your desktop.

AUDIENCE: You can just save it as to your desktop?

AUDIENCE: The one you're in?

AUDIENCE: Yup.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: So what if you've got six, seven people in [INAUDIBLE]?

AUDIENCE: So it still caches from your desktop to your user.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

SRI VEMURI: Right.

AUDIENCE: So just like [INAUDIBLE] used to work and it still works in a regular WAN environment.

AUDIENCE: So you just create a central [INAUDIBLE] user. [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: You go and find which one has the [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Which one has the latest, and then you detach it and make that as a central file, yeah.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] since your last save [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: It's actually pretty good. If your user's are sophisticated enough, you can actually go and find the latest [INAUDIBLE] in their local and [INAUDIBLE] that way.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: See, you already lose work. From my point of view, this is the smartest thing Autodesk has ever done [INAUDIBLE] C4R.

SRI VEMURI: All right.

AUDIENCE: I'll definitely say that we never ever went to that extreme.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, yeah.

AUDIENCE: It's only one time when service was down significant.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: And that was when the whole data center went down. And probably everybody [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: It's probably the same that I was [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah, yeah, all across.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] only one.

SRI VEMURI: It was the only one.

AUDIENCE: Most of the outages were less than an hour--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

SRI VEMURI: Right, right.

AUDIENCE: If you were in the model already, most of the time you could work. It was only when it was severely downgraded that it would prevent you from touching it. Most of the time, you had limited access that you could work in your local file and function. And you just couldn't sync.

SRI VEMURI: Yeah. It was a problem early on during the Skyscraper days. But I think it's gotten a lot better.

AUDIENCE: One other thing that you didn't mention was the Communicator.

SRI VEMURI: Yes.

AUDIENCE: And [INAUDIBLE] Communicator is-- [INAUDIBLE] uses the worksharing monitor? [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: The Communicator is worksharing monitor. But it's so--

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: --much smarter the way it works. You actually see [INAUDIBLE]. It's the best tool. You can actually go into it. And you can actually tell it [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Sorry.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] someone grabs an element and goes [INAUDIBLE]. And you have to go in. You have to change your profile and go--

SRI VEMURI: Yes.

AUDIENCE: --in [INAUDIBLE] do it. They've got a tool in there that just says, OK, take it away from [INAUDIBLE].

SRI VEMURI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SRI VEMURI: Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. I think Communicator was a really good tool. We were using Skype, so we didn't use Communicator to communicate a lot. But I think when communicating across the forms, I think Communicator tool helps.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. It worked out well [INAUDIBLE] Revit model.

[AUDIO OUT]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] we were viewing so many teams so much that if we waited, the delta change was breaking.

AUDIENCE: Right.

AUDIENCE: So we had to make sure it was being synced in a really nice, clean order.

AUDIENCE: Well, and syncing was different, too. Because in a more traditional method, if somebody was syncing, it would just tell you you couldn't do it.