Cloud-Enabled Collaboration in Civil Infrastructure Projects

PETER INGELS: Still quite a lot of people showed up, so thank you for that. So this morning's session will be me. I'm Peter Ingels and I have the pleasure and the honor to have Andreas Lippold with me as well.

Andreas is one of the persons in the product team for InfraWorks, who wants to talk a little bit about what's going on on cloud collaboration and related to InfraWorks directly. So I thought it would be more interesting to do that than talk about the current capabilities of the web sharing and collaboration of InfraWorks. Because it looked really, really cool what's up next. But I'm not allowed to talk about what's up next, so that's why I've invited Andreas from the product team directly to talk about that as well.

So just a little bit before we get started, about myself. I'm Peter Ingles. I'm working for Autodesk as a technical specialist, taking care of everything infrastructure. Based in Belgium. That's why I have that funny accent, I guess. Running around for 15 years plus in the Autodesk world. Helping our customers, implementing BIM.

I obviously like my Belgian beers a lot. And business wise, if you want to learn all the stuff we're doing, I would recommend two websites-- the BIM Toolbox is the blog that our team has. Not only me contributing, but all the people in northern Europe contributing to it, showing you workflows, cloud collaboration, or whatever workflows for infrastructure and the whole AEC part.

And then we have a very interesting YouTube channel, which is called the AEC Bar, where we do two to three minute videos about the specific topics. So if you're interested in seeking information about the solution, these are two very good places to go to and to find out more about what we are doing.

Just practical. I have not yet uploaded the slide deck to the AU website because it was only finished half an hour ago, as always. But I will do it and make it available for everybody in the room so there's no secrets in my deck at least. So we will see.

I'm talking about a cloud collaboration and infrastructure project. So when you talk about collaboration, that can go quite a lot of directions. So basically, I wanted to come back with some of the definitions that typically are to be found on internet about collaboration.

And basically, the first part is it's an arrangement. It's where two or more parties are working together to achieve a common goal. And I found it important to talk about this because, in the virtuals that I will be presenting this morning, I will be talking more about how can I, as a designer, collaborate with my project manager on the internal, approval, design review, elements, and so on, and how can I, as a design company, work together with my client?

So this session is not at all focused on, I'm a civil 3D engineer, I have another civil 3D engineer, how can we collaborate together? And the main reason why I'm not talking about that is because there's a second session this afternoon run by Peter Funk from the product team as well talking exactly about that and what's coming next. Because there are quite a couple of developments going on on that side of things. So that's why I, very specifically, chose to talk about communication with customers. Me as a designer talking to my project manager for approval, workflows, and so on.

And collaboration also means an effective method of transferring know how among individuals. I was having the pleasure to see a presentation on Monday on the Transportation Summit from Secretary Foxx from Transportation here in the US saying, if I come to an office, I see a pile of paper, this is not the way forward. So you don't want to share a pile of paper with your clients as a design company. You want to do it in a more efficient way. So this is also what I want to talk about. How do we officially deliver information in a digital way.

And then conflict resolutions. I've never been working on a project where we didn't have problems, didn't have changes. So how can we manage requests for information, issues, or problems that occur? How can we manage it and how can we create or how can we track out all the changes, everything that is happening around these requests in the project? That's all things I want to talk about this morning. And I know we only have an hour, so I have to be probably pretty quick.

Cloud collaboration. Obviously, cloud means having access anytime, anywhere. And that's obviously where the technology comes in to support that for us.

So talking about the technology. When you look at cloud collaboration, there are many technologies. And you can divide them into three groups. Cloud-based collaboration file sharing systems, PDF tools to design, review, do markups, and then you have all these apps available to bring data from the office to the field and from the field to the office.

And there's a lot of different apps for all this. Specific tasks for all the specific situations resulting, actually, in a lot of different data silos that are not connected to each other. So you have a lot of different tools and giving solutions for very specific tasks. But quite typically, they're not connected. So that's where we come in. And certainly, when we talk about version control, having control of making the correct version available to everybody, that needs to have it.

So that's where our solutions come in. And they all sit under the umbrella of BIM 360. There's a lot of sessions available today as well, talking about BIM 360 as the platform for document management and collaboration. I think this afternoon there's some sessions giving you insight in what's going on in the future as well. To be very clear, what I'm talking about is the current state, what we can do already today. I know there's a lot of development going on. There's a lot of things happening. But that's not for me to talk about that as well.

And what we want to do in this session is link our AutoCAD Civil 3D solution and InfraWorks solution to that BIM 360 environment. So for those who know the Autodesk offerings in the BIM 360 side for collaboration, there are basically two different types of solutions. One is called BIM 360 Team and one is called BIM 360 Docs. And basically which tool is best fit for you depends on what you want to achieve, what you want to get out of it.

If it's about me working in my team within my company, collaborating in what we call a high trust environment, then BIM 360 Team might be a very good solution. You have a project calendar where you can get your tasks on. Your can do markups and redlining. So all very nice. But as soon as it comes into the situation that you also have to communicate and work together with external parties where maybe the trust level is a little bit less, then BIM 360 Docs the solution to go forward.

So in this presentation, I will be focusing on BIM 360 Docs going forward. As you've seen in my previous slide, we're talking about issues, RFIs, contractual documents, and so on. This is typically something we can manage within the Docs environment.

Going forward. So what are the different pillars of the collaboration platform we're talking about? That we can publish data. That we can make that data available for other people for viewing, for markup. And that we can share the data with people. Very important, sharing to people. We want to share it, but you probably don't want to share all the data with everybody. So we have permissions and different rules that we can define to make that data available to only the people we want.

On the viewing side, very important that it's not only about viewing on a desktop machine. It's also viewing on your iPhone, or an iPad, or an Android tablet as well. We don't live in an iPad only world. If you have a Windows laptop or a tablet, we can obviously use all these typical devices to access the data anytime, anywhere, because that's one of the big things when it comes to cloud collaboration.

So first, I want to show a couple of videos introducing the platform a little bit. So this is using my Google Chrome to look into the interface of BIM 360 Docs where you basically have a very clear and very simple view on all the data that we've uploaded. So you have the folder structure that you have put in place. You have the issues and the RFIs very nicely listed so you can very quickly go to the place and to the solution where you need to be.

Very important, and I'll repeat it a couple of times, is we have two different environments within BIM 360 Docs. One of them is the Project Files. This is typically where I would share my data with the people within my organization where I have a high trust kind of environment. So sharing all that information during design reviews where I'm not afraid of having legal discussions.

And if I want to share information with external companies, then I'd probably go to the Plans section of BIM 360 Docs because I have more means and more things available there to track everything that happens with these documents. And I'll explain that later on as well.

Obviously, it all starts with setting up your own folder structure, so we're not pushing you in a specific direction. You can create a folder structure exactly in the way you want to work and want to have it set up for your project. And for the deliverable part and the internal part, that can be completely different as well.

One of the other things we see quite often, and this is linking to BIM requirements if you're working in a BIM required country or project, is that we probably need to give some additional attribution to our documents. This is also, obviously, another thing that we can do. We can create attributes that we set on folders and on files in these folders.

So for instance, the status is typically something that we need to provide, so we can say this document has that status. You just create the pull down list, for instance, with the possible values to keep very consistent input, rather than having everybody to type in whatever and having non consistent data. So very simple, basic capabilities that we have there available to help you doing whatever is required in your project really.

So next thing is about permissions. Let's see if this is playing. So I was too quick. So again, I said I would repeat myself, and that's what I'm doing. Again, Project Files is the place where I have my working data that I want to share information internally in my project team. So this way, the Plans side is where I share my contractual documents.

Typically within several projects, although I know many of our customers are looking at fully digital, fully 3D models. But in reality, a lot of clients still require plans, plan sheets, profile sheets, cross-sections sheets. That's typically what goes in in that Plans section. So different places for your documents.

Next thing. Obviously, you want to work with people on the project. And the reason I've added this little video is within some of the other solutions, you don't have great flexibility in setting up rights, and rules, and permission. So basically what we do, we add all the people that we want working on our project. We add them to a pool of users into the project. We can group them into roles-- a designer role, a project management role, a customer role. We can put them in companies. And then we can set these permissions on the files and folders for individuals, for these companies, or for the specific user roles.

And setting these permissions is pretty easy. You have four options-- view, view and upload, view, upload, edit, or full control. But you can do that for different individuals on specific folders. And an individual can have different rights on one folder than on another folder as well. And again, the flexibility we have with regards of doing individuals, company, or roles, is very, very easy to do, and very, very easy to manage.

So this is the basic one. And this is where you see how easy it gets. Obviously, this is only the administrators of the website or the portal that can do that kind of setup.

One of the important parts as well, if you want to, is that you can set up a notification. So if something happens in a folder on that project, I can get an automatic notification that files have been added just in this folder, or also maybe another subfolder that are available in the project. So pretty, pretty simple, but very efficient ways of having the communication in a good way.

Good. Fifteen minutes already. I have to speed up a little bit. So what I will do in the workflows I'm presenting next is I'm talking about different persona. So you have the designer persona, that's the blue guy. You have the project manager, that's the yellow one. The client is green, and the contractor is red. No reason for colors and matching. Just randomly done, basically.

But what I want to tell is, look, I'm a designer and I need approval for my design in my project from my project manager. Typically my project manager doesn't have a full Civil 3D. I'm doing road design. My manager needs to be able to view it, markup, and give me feedback. So this is the process we're talking about now.

So Mr. Blue is doing the design. That's me. Mr. Yellow is a project manager. So looking at the data. It's again, in BIM 360 using the Large Model Viewer. Gives me feedback doing markups and comments. I'll take the drawing back, make modifications. We can go around for ages like this. And then we can finally [INAUDIBLE] the attributes, we can set the file to approve.

So a little video on the process. A little bit important to say here is typically we use, and certainly in a larger project, we make use of data shortcuts in Civil 3D projects [INAUDIBLE]. So I have a surface in a surface drawing. I have my alignments in an alignment drawing. I have my 3D model drawing. And maybe or maybe not have cross-sections in a separate drawing as well.

This is something that has a little bit of an impact in how we work with the BIM 360 Docs. So basically this drawing has a shortcut to my terrain, and all my alignments are in the drawing itself. And basically what I'm doing now, I'm uploading the alignment file into Docs. So basically it's uploading. It takes a couple of seconds, depending on the internet speed. It's being prepared and you will see that version one of the file will show up.

So I can always click on the version of a file, see what the file history is, revert to a previous version if required, and so on. Obviously, it's file 1 or version 1, so there's not much to do. I'll talk a little bit more about that as well. And then there's a couple of options for sharing, for downloading, and so on.

So basically I don't know if Mr. Project Manager has notifications set up. So basically I want to share the file with him, send him an email saying, Mr. Project Manager, it's Mr. Patrick [INAUDIBLE]. That's translated to Patrick in the morning. Do you want to do a design review on my file? Yeah, the Dutch guys will understand.

What he will get an email saying Peter Ingels, the design engineer, requested you to review the drawing. And I'm very slow and typing in our videos. Basically, that's the email he gets. He will have an option to view the document directly, go into the BIM 360 Docs environment, go directly into the viewing of the file.

And what you see even I'm using surfaces as data references that the surface data is available in the viewer as well. Typically you can set up your layers. It's AutoCAD files with different layers. I can turn on and off layers so I have better visibility. And so I can do markups, obviously. That's the whole idea of what we're doing. And Mr. Project Manager says, well, Mr. Designer, you're too close to an existing tunnel. So if you want to build a [? flyover ?] there, you probably need to make adjustments to the alignment. Very basic, very typical workflow.

So at the moment, when I'm reviewing, I'm just preparing my data, so everything is private. I'm the only one who can see these markups at this point in time. Again, I'm typing very slowly in these videos.

So I'm done now. So I'm saving the markup. And what you see is on the left side of the interface, you can see all the markups. And what I said earlier, it's private, so it's only visible for me at the moment. Because maybe I want to change the comment. Maybe I want to add additional stuff. And then I can publish it so it's available for everybody and in the project as well. You get a notification saying that everybody will be able to see it now. I'm fine with that, and that's gone.

So basically going further, this basically was Patrick [INAUDIBLE], who was logged into BIM 360. Now the design engineer will log in again and see the same drawings. All right.

So basically one of the things you could do, and that that's quite interesting, if you change the view from these lines and details to a thumbnail view, you will actually have some icons showing that there are markups on this drawing. And I can very quickly go to the Preview again, see the markup, and so on. So very typical process. I've received markups, I see what the markups are, and you see that the process has gone a little bit further. Some additions to it. I see that this markup is there that I need to work on it.

So I know what to do. I am happy with that. So basically I want to make modifications to the file. But while I do this, I don't want anybody else to be able to download the file, start modifying the file as well. So what I will do first is I'll lock the file, so it's only for me available, and download it so I can continue working on that file.

So it's locked so people can see the file, but they can't download it. Because I want to avoid the situation where we have two [? ALMs, ?] one and the last one that uploads the file wins. That situation you want to avoid. OK. Back to Civil.

Very basic changes to my alignment just to show that I can create a next or a second file version for my design, making this a very big engineering job. Drag and drop alignment is very detailed engineering work. But just for the purpose of the presentation, it's probably good enough.

So I end up having a second version of my line. Going to BIM 360 Docs again, obviously unlock my file and drag and drop the file there to upload it again. And then in the last part of this video, I will archive the comment because the comment has been dealt with and is ready for the archives. So it's obsolete information now. So you see the markup is still there. Although when you look in the markups step now, it's not on the current version, so it's on the previous version. So I know now that I can archive the comment and the feedback. So this is one of the processes that are enabled for design review with people that have no Civil 3D available.

What I've mentioned, an alignment drawing alone works on a full Civil 3D drawing as well with corridors in it. 2D, 3D viewing definitely possible. Talking a little bit about that later on as well.

Going to the next workflow. And this is where I don't want internal review, but I'm talking with my customer now. I'm creating my project documentation, plan sets, cross-section views, and that's the example I will do. And then I'll deliver that information to my client. Instead of going with the minivan, sending him paper, I'm doing it digitally. You could do PDFs as well and upload a PDF, but I can just take my Civil plan sets and work with that as well.

Again, we have communication about if the client is not happy, so you need to make modifications. But what we want to do is we don't want to do it as a simple markup. We want to define it as an issue. And the reason is that an issue can be [INAUDIBLE], can have a status, can be assigned to a very specific person, and we have a very good audit trail of what happened and when the issue is resolved. Which is important with contractual situations that you can keep track on who's doing what, who's lacking of doing something as well. And then, obviously, we can compare versions if you have multiple versions, as well, which I will show in a bit.

So basically, I'm going to my second environment. I'm going to my Plans. Putting my file in a specific folder. So basically what you will see is that it's pretty similar. The only thing that happens now is that my Civil 3D drawing, there's some extraction happening. All my layouts will show up as different files or different entities within that folder.

So instead of having one single file, which is my Civil 3D file, I'll end up with 2D view, 3D view, and all my layouts separately. Because I have layouts, which are cross-section sheets, and I can work on that cross-section sheet separately.

So this is my layout. These are my cross-sections. And again, you see immediately what's wrong. The guardrail on the right side has the note on the wrong side. So it doesn't help too much.

What can you customer do on this? He can measure distances. He can measure areas as well. He can investigate or look at the design. And you can see you can snap on the objects as well, so it's quite intelligent. It's not guessing. It's really looking into the model itself. Very nice capabilities of investigating and interrogating the design a little bit. I'm talking about properties later on as well as one of the capabilities that are available in there.

What do I want to do next? Probably go to my 2D view again just to show it's not only the full 3D sections that are available. I have 2D views as well. And so all the data is available, not only the derived sections.

So if I click a Civil object, you will see that you have [INAUDIBLE] and Civil 3D object information attached to that object. If it's a corridor, you will see the baseline information. If you have assigned properties and data to these corridor objects or to your alignments, you will see these properties and data as well. So it's not only a sheet. It's fully intelligent models.

Good. Next. If I have Plans and if I have these title blocks, what I can do with this way of working in the Plans is extract all the fields that sit in the title block as well. I just need to set up a template saying the information there needs to go to that property, the information there needs to go to that property. So a very interesting way of extracting additional information from your sheets as well, just as additional part of information.

Next thing and something completely right, as I said. So this is Mr. Green now looking at it. And basically he can make a issue or raise an issue saying something's wrong. And basically this is, again, as I mentioned, more binding than a simple remark. I give a position. I say, well, this is the wrong type of barrier. And it's not only pointing in the wrong direction, it needs to be a concrete New Jersey barrier as well.

And I can assign that issue to a very specific person I'm working with. So Mr. Designer, I'm your client. You've done a bad job. You have to do it right now. And I want you to do it until a specific date.

So I'm getting the blame again. Or I can assign it to a role, older designers, because I don't know who is responsible for it. And again, I can set it to be fixed on a certain date. Done.

It's a draft, so not available yet. I can now publish it or open it so it's official. And again, this is for me very easy. When I go into the Docs environment, again, every day, for instance, or the next day before I start my work, I can view all these issues as well.

So again, Mr. Blue popping up. That's me. And it's morning, so I need to start my working day. So basically what I do next is go into the issue list of the project to see if somebody had any remarks on my deliverable. And I can filter them on that as well, so I only see all the issues that are targeted to me that have been assigned to me, rather than all the list. I'm not interested in old issues that have been assigned to somebody else, so I'm filtering it.

I see what's happening. I can, again, view the document to see what actually is going on. And I say, OK, I'm working on it. And this goes on. And again, you see that there's a full audit trail of all the history of all the comments, all the information that has been related to that issue. So very different way, very interesting way because you can follow up on it and track all the changes, all the issues fairly easily.

Just to go a little bit further, one of the things we can do as well if you've made the changes and uploaded different versions, I can compare the cross-section sheets. I want to see what actually happened. So basically, I can look at the cross-section, or overlay the two on top of each other, or have two different colors and a slider, which I can move around and show what the differences are. So this is a minor difference, so you need to know what it is, but I can imagine it being very useful to see what the difference between the two versions of the file is.

Good. Going next. And as I was anticipating, time would be not on my side. I'm just showing a flow. We've done the issue tracking where I have an issue where somebody needs to resolve the issue. And that's it. We have also the possibility to work with request of information and have an approval flow. I can't say approval flow.

We have a flow managing these requests of information. And this is typically when you have multiple companies working together where somebody asks something. The contractor, for instance, asks something to the client, where the client needs to revert back to the design company and accept or ignore that request. So Just to make you aware that we have these capabilities available today as well to manage requests for information in Docs 360.

A couple of little things before I hand over to the interesting part with Andreas and the new stuff is I can do any type of design files. This is a DWG file with corridor solids. Because I've been focusing a little bit on the 2D drawings, so I want to talk a little bit about the 3D models as well.

So I've extracted my 3D solid models from my corridors in this design file and I've uploaded them to Docs as well. You'll see you have all the data available. You can see that as well. If you're looking in a full BIM-enabled project, you typically will have Navisworks files as well. So this is a coordination file where I have my Civil design, including my pipe network file coming from Revit. Utilities coming from GIS. All combined together in one model.

So there was InfraWorks involved, there was Revit involved, there was Civil 3D involved. I just uploaded the NWD file in here. And basically what I said earlier about RFIs, about issues, about markups on the 2D [INAUDIBLE] work is working on this as well. So it works on the 3D models that are available in your environment as well.

Again, if you have a Navisworks file, just like what you have with the DWG file, you can put things on visible, invisible. Rather than being layers here, it's kind of the object [INAUDIBLE] in Navisworks with the files and then the latest within the file. You can get all the properties as well. Navisworks can, for instance, link data to databases, which you can include in the Navisworks NWD file. So all that information could be available in here as well. So it's quite a rich model view that you have available. And as soon as you point on something, you can see that information popping up.

One of the key elements of having cloud collaboration is having the data available anywhere, anytime on a mobile device. So I took my iPad, and there you see my daughter. Basically we have a BIM 360 Docs app for iPad, Android as well, were you just can, if you have an internet connection, go to your project. You see directly the same folder structure popping up. And you can browse through it.

And this is just a video showing some of the capabilities we have on the iPad as well. So my big hand is popping up all the time. Very funny. Important to say here is that I can download these documents on my mobile device as well. So if I want to take them with me in a place where I don't have an internet connection, I can still work on these documents.

And you see, I can go to my cross-section sheets, again. I can go to do measurements. I can go to create issues and RFIs as well. So everything I basically showed you on the desktop, I can do from within. I'm just struggling a little bit with my thick fingers on my screen, that's all. But basically, I have the same capabilities on the app as I have on the desktop. So I can take the data with me anytime, anywhere, basically.

OK, so moving on a little bit. This is just showing that I can do an issue next. So the buttons that are on the bottom here, we'll see in a bit that we have these issues, even with the [INAUDIBLE] That capability as well, all right? So it doesn't matter how you access the data. You have the same-- hi, Anthony. Good morning.

Good. This is all of the same thing. Typing slowly, but I'm creating an issue. This is on the mobile device. Viewing and all that kind of stuff. Good. And again, as I mentioned, the activity log is an important part because it's also giving you all editing that happened. All the trail of everything that is happening on that as well.

So this was a little bit an introduction of current capabilities and how it would support you working with Civil 3D and all the people involved in the project.

So this is a big disclaimer now because we go into territory where we have not everything released what's available. And something with InfraWorks and the Rolling Sandbox, currently. So, at the moment, if you want to share InfraWorks models, you have multiple possibilities putting it in a group. And if you have InfraWorks installed on your desktop, you can download the model work and the model synchronizes so you can collaborate and work together. And then you have the web viewer as well, where you can publish a model for people to watch it.

I was very tempted to do that. But then also basically everything that was going on within the product design group of how we are replacing that web viewing technology with the BIM 360 technology as well, and large model viewer for viewing the finals. That's the point where I want to hand over to Andreas, who will tell you a little bit what's currently possible. And remember, everything you've learned before from what we did on several drawings is probably possible on what's coming next as well. So thank you so far. Andreas, the floor is yours.

ANDREAS LIPPOLD: Turn this one on. Good Good. Hi, everybody. My name is Andreas. I'm from the product group. So I'm a product manager for InfraWorks. I'm working with InfraWorks, actually at Autodesk, since 2008. So InfraWorks is more or less one of my babies. I have real ones and this one.

So I'm working out of Potsdam office, so I'm based out of Germany. And we have a couple of teams over there working on the platform of InfraWorks. And one of our highest goals is to connect InfraWorks the whole BIM 360 instance.

Our mission, and I brought it up here, is that we want to actually transform the project delivery process by putting the data in the center, coordinating the teams, the people, and the activities, in order to deliver a project. And what Peter actually mentioned a couple of minutes ago is InfraWorks is up to today a product which is pretty much a silo. It comes with the capability to collaborate, but only within the InfraWorks environment.

So we can create a group, invite people, and they have to have InfraWorks as well. And then they can communicate via the design feed. And they can share stuff between InfraWorks and InfraWorks, but that's about it. And you also manage your people who are actually working on a model in InfraWorks.

So when we look at BIM 360, we're trying to actually understand all the issues. And you actually are familiar with the issues. So these got collected over the last couple of years, and you hear this all the time. So these are the issues which customers face working on a bigger project and want to actually combine different stakeholders, different companies, different constructors, different people who are working on a project.

And the main thing is how do I deal with the data and the personas, so that the project goes on fluently and efficiently? And that's why we look into BIM 360 in order to connect it to InfraWorks.

I have here another [INAUDIBLE] slide. I just put it into my deck because this was a presentation on Monday. A guy talking about multidisciplinary projects. And this is actually showing very well what the problem is. So people work on a project, and things change, things have to be updated, things have to be up to date, things have to be recognized, things have to be changed, and people have to get notified. So this is all about why we are doing this.

So this is a different way of presenting what Peter just showed. So we are connecting. So when we look at InfraWorks, we are not looking at InfraWorks as a product, but we look at InfraWorks as a piece for delivering a infrastructure project. And that's why Civil 3D and InfraWorks is on that page. And we further look into Revit to connect it as well.

So what we did. This is what you saw from Peter. So what we did so far, and this is why it says Rolling Sandbox. It's not part of the product, but it's part of the Rolling Sandbox. Rolling Sandbox comes out every two weeks, so this is our iteration cycle. So we develop for two weeks and then we release a Sandbox. So you are all invited to test and install the Sandbox and give us feedback about this.

So what we have done is that we got rid of all the user management. Everything is done and BIM 360 now. So there's no user management in InfraWorks. So you actually create a model in InfraWorks, and then it's a local instance, and then you actually want to publish it. And you're doing it while you're actually connecting to BIM 360.

So what InfraWorks does now is it opens up a dialogue, which comes up in a minute. And then you see all the different projects which you have set up in BIM 360 where you have access to. And then you select it. And then what happens is that an instance or a reference will be stored will be published to BIM 360.

And based on the permissions, all people who are working on the InfraWorks instance will actually see this model popping up on their home screen in InfraWorks. And depending on the permissions they have, they can either view it or actually open it up in InfraWorks and work on it. So this isn't more or less taking out the process we had in InfraWorks and using the BIM 360 version of it.

The reference file in BIM 360 is not only responsible for sharing this model to make sure that we have an instance which we can actually connect people to so that they can actually work on the model, but also making sure that this particular reference file shows up in the LMV viewer. So we also have the capability to view this model in a web browser. So there are actually two things related to the instance we put on BIM 360. One is the viewing option and one is the management option, so we can actually manage the model across team members.

So I just want to go quickly through a small workflow. InfraWorks, you just saw. We created a model. In this case, it's Jack, the civil engineer, created a model in InfraWorks. Next, he published the model to a BIM 360 project. Then once it's published, he can directly, out of InfraWorks, open up the viewable in BIM 360.

Now Jack invites another engineer, who is called Bright, to this model. So Bright opens up this model. He sees the same model in InfraWorks. This is the InfraWorks instance. Now he has another civil engineer create a roundabout for a certain intersection in InfraWorks. So he has Civil file and imports it into InfraWorks to update the model.

So now he has updated it. And now he actually syncs the model. Syncing is the similar process how we did it so far, but the version in BIM 360 will be updated now. So what happens is that Jack needs to sync the model, so he gets the updates and sees the roundabout in his InfraWorks model.

And now I don't want to stick to videos and PowerPoint slides. So now we end up in BIM 360. So when you click the connection button in InfraWorks either from home or from within a model viewer, you end up in the right position in BIM 360.

So when you click on a model link to BIM 360, you end up actually in this folder structure. And then you open up from the home instance, you end up in this certain project you have selected. So now we end up here in BIM 360. And what we see is that we have the Providence new model in BIM 360. And we can click on it. And what happens is that it opens up.

And you see actually the model as it is and as it was in InfraWorks. It's pretty close to what we have at InfraWorks. There's a couple of clashes we have, like when you see the water and other things which do not come through yet. But it's pretty close to what we have in InfraWorks.

So now we open up the model and what we see is actually the [INAUDIBLE] of the roundabout on this position that's not there yet. So now we can actually switch between the different proposals. So the proposals come through as well. So you can quickly change the proposals in order to see actually the new roundabout. Where is it? Here is it.

So as you can, see the bookmarks come through as well. So this is something what we provided for the LMV viewer in order to actually manage a better navigation through the model. And the nice thing about this whole instance, and you heard about [? Forge ?] and all of these nice things, is that the LMV viewer is an instance where different teams work on. And different teams provide different features.

And this is pretty cool. This toolbar provides a lot of tools which we already can use just by plugging into this LMV viewer. So all the measurement tools you have here, it can be used in the model actually to measure lengths, angles, areas, all kind of things.

What's also nice is that you have this model explorer, so you have the different levels, similar to what you see in InfraWorks. So you have all the different buildings. You have the intersections. You have the water areas. You have the bridges. And the bridges have different piers, and decks, and girders, and all this kind of stuff. So you actually can select them, and fly directly to them, and see them.

You can also click on them. And I can click it. Let's take this one. And isolate them so that you only see this model. So there's a lot more functionality in the LMV viewer in order to inspect the model to get exactly what you need to see out of the box. So we haven't tweaked it in terms of using LMV for infrastructure projects yet. So there will be a lot more tools to come in order to use this viewer for infrastructure projects.

Another interesting thing is this section viewer, for example. So this gives you a good insight into structures. I'm going to zoom out a little bit. I think, yeah. I see these arrows. So you can actually move this. Or you can actually see it in navigation as something we definitely need to improve.

So you can go along this bridge, for example, and inspect it. So there would be probably much more capabilities to go along an alignment to actually inspect it along the way. So there's a lot of stuff which we can already use and build upon. So this is why BIM 360 is so interesting for us to connect to.

Now you also have these markup capabilities, I think. So you can actually create markups. And these markups will be then like a picture. Like a snapshot of the model. And can be shared and discussed. And this is a pretty nice thing.

The only thing when I talk about these tools in LMV is that these are LMV tools only. Which means you can collaborate across this LMV instance of this model on LMV. So also the issue tracker. So you can talk about things. You can discuss things. You can mark things. But you can only do this across the [? map ?] application.

So the next step for us would be then to see how much and what needs to be brought into InfraWorks, especially when you communicate. So when you have an issue, you can mark it here and then send it to the desktop. So they are all things which we need to actually consider, and think about, and see how we can pipe it into the desktop and get rid of maybe the older capabilities which are not that nice and sustainable for us.

Is there something interesting?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]