"Connect the Dots in Cloud" to Understand AutoCAD Integration with Autodesk Construction Cloud

VINOD BALASUBRAMANIAN: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone from wherever you are listening from. Welcome to our AU class on Connect the Dots in Cloud to Understand AutoCAD Integration with Autodesk Construction Cloud primarily with Autodesk Docs features. It's good to be back in AU after two years of [INAUDIBLE] by the global pandemic. We'll start off with our safe harbor statement. So let's move on to the safe harbor statement.

Since most of you are familiar with the safe harbor statement, I'll will be reading the first portion of the message as its key to the content that is shared in the upcoming slides. We may make forward looking statements regarding planned or future development efforts for our existing or new products and services and statements regarding our strategic priorities. These statements are not intended to be a promise or a guarantee of business results, future availability of products or services or features, but merely reflect our current plans and are based on factors currently known to us.

So with the safe harbor statement, we want to open up with the class summary then. So let's go have a look at the class summary for today. Today's class is all about AutoCAD integration with Autodesk Construction Cloud, focusing primarily on Autodesk Docs related workflows. We'll be showing some detail walkthroughs on Desktop Connector and handling reference drawings and their relationships, cross project relationship, file locking features for collaboration and troubleshooting tools that help you Excel with multi-product interoperability workflow on the Cloud.

We'll be also sharing some quick tips and tricks, as well as best practices during this presentation. With that, I move on to the learning objectives for the class today. As I mentioned, we will start off with the installation of Desktop Connector and configuration of Desktop Connector for better Cloud connectivity. We'll also talk about how we can create and maintain reference relationship of AutoCAD drawings in Docs. We'll also touch base on how file locking feature works in better collaboration during product life-cycles and cross project references.

And then finally, we'll wrap it up with Reference Explorer and Autodesk drawing migration for Docs on bulk uploads. These are tools that would help you to have much better productivity with Autodesk Docs and AutoCAD integration. So before we get started with our presentation, I want to introduce about myself as well as my co-presenters. So I am Vinod Balasubramanian and currently working as principal specialists for AutoCAD family products.

I'm based out of Autodesk, Singapore office. I've been with Autodesk for 15 years now. I'm primarily responsible for product insights, voice of the customer report, escalation framework and customer success organization at Autodesk. And also I'm responsible for our roadmap engagements with our customers. Along with me, I have to co-speakers, Bastien and Elliott. I'll let them introduce and Bastian will take over the first segment of our class today. Elliott, over to you.

ELLIOT ROSENFELD: Hi there. I'm Elliott Rosenfeld, I'm a principle specialist in the customer service organization covering civil infrastructure. I've been with Autodesk for about eight years. And I've had several various roles. Before joining customer success. I was working on technical help content. and my top priority is to report strategic insights to our product leadership about barriers that prevent adoption and expansion by you, our customers. Over to you. Bastien.

BASTIEN MAZERAN: Make sure you get next slide. Hi, everyone. So my name is Bastien Mazeran. I've been with Autodesk for nine years in various support roles I'm currently based in Barcelona, Spain. I'm responsible for product insights for our Forge API Cloud platform and developer platform. As well as some Cloud tools, such as Desktop Connector and our security.

I'm responsible for delivering product insights for this portfolio to the product and engineering team. And I also help with mission-critical escalations. Next slide, please. All right, so let's talk about connecting the dots with Desktop Connector first. In this class, we will cover what Desktop Connector is and how it integrates with Autodesk Docs for the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform. Desktop Connector is a desktop service that allows users to work with their cloud files in Autodesk Docs directly within the familiar windows File Explorer environment.

In this class, we will not talk about the connected drives for Fusion Team or BIM 360 team. We will only cover Autodesk Docs connected drive. Additionally, this presentation covers only the current version of Desktop Connector, which is 15.7. And the recommendation found in this class do not apply to future releases of Desktop Connector. Next slide, please.

So the first thing you need to consider is how to access Desktop Connector. So Desktop Connector is a tool that you can download, either from the online help of Desktop Connector under the release notes, but you can also download it from the Autodesk accounts products and services portal. You can simply search for Desktop Connector and you'll be able to download the installer to your local disk. It is currently not possible to install Autodesk Desktop Connector through the Autodesk desktop app and you will not be able to custom install Desktop Connector through the account portal. Next slide, please.

Before you install Desktop Connector, you should know the system requirements for version 15.7. Desktop Connector currently supports Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. We have plans to support Microsoft Windows 11 at a future undetermined date. You can perform a simple manual installation by following the installation walkthrough. But you also have advanced installation options available to you, such as a silent install or deploying the tool through Microsoft Configuration Manager, formerly known as the SCCM. And I also provided a link to a knowledge-based article that covers how to do a cleaner install. Next slide, please.

You can easily get started with Desktop Connector in four quick steps. The first thing is after successfully installing the tool, you will discover in your Windows tray a new icon for Desktop Connector. You can right click and proceed with the login. The login step will require that you have an Autodesk ID to connect to your Autodesk Docs environment. So this is the same login you use when you connect to Autodesk Construction Cloud through the web.

During login, Desktop Connector will check your entitlements for Autodesk Docs. If successful, you will see in your File Explorer windows of Windows File Explorer, you will see a new icon for Autodesk Docs. So to connect and see your cloud file, simply double click on that icon and you'll be presented with your project folders and cloud files.

Then finally, you'll be able to navigate through the folders and access your files and note that because your users are already familiar with the Windows file Explorer environments, you should not expect too much user training or a sharp learning curve with that tool. Next slide, please. Let's navigate through your new Autodesk Docs environments in the context of Desktop Connector.

So Desktop Connector as permission requirements with Autodesk Docs, users must have added permission in Autodesk Construction Cloud to be able to interact with their files, mainly uploading them, downloading them, saving changes. Let's move on to the next slide. Because Desktop Connector integrates tightly with Windows File Explorer, it is also subject to Microsoft Windows limitation around file path length. A file path in Windows should not be longer than 244 characters. The same applies with Desktop Connector.

This limitation can be somehow mitigated by using a new feature of Desktop Connector called Change Workspace. With the Change Workspace command you can relocate the workspace to another drive. With prior version of Desktop Connector, the workspace was always installed under the C Users directory, now you can select a D-Drive and hopefully shorten your folders path that way.

Stay on the same page, please. Another important concept is the related data folder. This is a key concept to understand in order to have a finer control over your folder structure. The related data folder is created by Desktop Connector to capture all the references that exist outside of the cone of the main drawing that is drag and drop into a Docs folder. In other words, Desktop Connector will not create a related data folder if all the references exist in the same folder structure as the parent file. We will have some slides for further down in the class that go into more details. Next slide, please.

Next Desktop Connector is subject to content refresh rates. As an example, if you change the name of your hub, you should expect 12 minutes maximum for the change to reflect in your local Windows File Explorer environment. You can see the other content refresh rate for projects, folders, files and user permissions. You should make sure your end user understand those refresh rates.

Additionally, because Desktop Connector connects to Autodesk Docs, you should be aware of the supported file types as well as the maximum number of files per folders. Next slide, please. If you run into trouble, Autodesk provides you with two nice tools that you can leverage. The first one is the installation log collection tool. It is called the ADSK ODIS log collection tool program. It can be downloaded from the link provided in this slide. And you will need to ensure that the installer window is closed before running it. And once you execute the tool, you'll be presented with a zip file and you'll simply have to share it with Autodesk support. Next slide, please.

Another key feature is the diagnostic logs in Desktop Connector. Vinod, Could you play the video for me, please. By default, a logging mode for the diagnostics is set to none. But there is a way to increase it to verbose mode using the shift right click button in the Windows system tray. When in verbose mode, when you can elect the diagnostic logs, the verbose logging will collect much more detailed information. And that information will be invaluable for our Autodesk developers to troubleshoot your issues further and diagnose it correctly. Once you're done, I reproduce the issue, say collect the diagnostic logs and send the zip file to Autodesk support. Once you ever produced an issue, do not forget reset the login to none so that performance returns to normal.

VINOD BALASUBRAMANIAN: OK, great. Thanks, Bastien. So we are now going to look at the second learning objectives, which is managing your AutoCAD references in the Cloud. So let's take a look at what we have in terms of managing your AutoCAD references. OK. The very first thing is where is this integration of AutoCAD with Docs?

So if you want to access Docs within the AutoCAD interface, there are two different ways that you can access it. One, with the file I/O, or the file open dialogue that you use normally use for opening any files. Here we go. Where you have a nice Autodesk Docs logo down there where you can go in and select to connect to different projects within the Autodesk Docs. And the other one is the newly introduced app, the formerly called the Home tab, where you will see Autodesk Docs as a separate link. And within that link, you will be seeing all the projects that you have in Autodesk Docs that you can navigate and all the sub-folders, and including the drawing files that you can open up.

And you can also see what state it is, if it's locked or unlocked. And it's synced, or it's not synced. And what version of that drawing file, who was the last one who authored that drawing, all those basic information about the drawing is available within the Home tab itself. So multiple projects can be accessed through the Home tab itself. And we have created faster access to projects by providing more filtering of drawings through the Home tab. And the lock symbol is displayed as you can see in this picture to help the users to understand whether the file has been locked by another user or not. And also the drawing version and the file status will help the user to collaborate more efficiently within the AutoCAD interface itself.

Now let's look at what are the file formats that will be supported by AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs. So within the Autodesk Docs, we will support two different file formats, which is our basic drawing file format, or the DWP format. And the templates, which is the DWT file formats. These two file formats are officially supported through Desktop Connector with the Docs environment for following features that you see here in this slide. So you can do a concurrent editing between two different users. You can also lock a file using our file locking mechanism, and then you can also do a versioning update for one user or with other user. And then also the reference handling. So you'll be seeing videos for each one of these features, how it works in a collaborative environment.

And one other thing that I also want to highlight here is Autodesk Docs supports all drawing file format. So if you are running AutoCAD 2018 file format, or 2013 or previous releases of drawing file formats, you can very well use it with Autodesk Docs. Now let's take a look at what are the file formats that probably we don't support are things that's a little more difficult to utilize within the Docs environment. So as you all know, there is standard set of file formats that other than the drawing and DWT that AutoCAD uses, the commonly used file formats are plot styles, line types, fonts, images, and PDFs. Either these are embedded into a drawing or used as part of the drawing, like plot styles or line types.

Now how can I use these file formats when I'm in the Docs environment? So the way you have to use it is first, you have to copy those block styles or line types to the same folder where you're drawing file is in the Docs environment. So if you have a dry drawing in a specific project, make sure your plot styles are line types are copied over to the same project and to the same folder where the drawing is available. Then what you need to do is you have to go into your AutoCAD and go to Options and then configure the path for that plot styles.

So the default path from AutoCAD will be somewhere different. You need to reconfigure under the support file search path to the path of the local cache of that Autodesk Docs environment. So here you can see, I have changed the path to my AU project within the Docs environment. So the plot style now resides in the AU project and it's not in the local drive at this moment. Now what happens next?

So when I am using this drawing from the Docs and when I try to plot the drawing, then I am able to see my plot style. You can see that AU.CTB, which gets automatically picked by AutoCAD because AutoCAD looks at the local cache and picks the Docs environment and picks the plot style from that file. So again, this is not possible to do concurrent editing. So if you want to do any changes to plot styles while another user is working on it so that we can get the immediate update on the styles, it's not possible. But you still can edit and then save the file back in and inform the user to download it to the local cache. And AutoCAD will automatically pick the updated version. And Desktop Connector will handle the upload and download for both users.

So this way, you can configure additional file types in the Docs environment for a collaborative project. OK so let's look at what we have in terms of AutoCAD references in the cloud. So Xref manager, most of you know, are the external reference manager. What you're seeing on the right side screen is the typical one that handles all the external references for your drawing. And it allows you to attach or overlay any references to the main drawing. And excerpts can be in any format, drawing, DWT, PDFs, images, fine cloud data, and so on.

Currently, concurrent editing is only supported for DWG and DWT file formats in terms of external references. So since we mentioned there are two different types of Xrefing, which is XATTACH, or the attach reference to a drawing, or OVERLAY, which OVERLAY is the reference drawing onto the main drawing, which is the best one to use? Both can be used but the preferred way of using references in the Docs environment is OVERLAY. And the reason behind that is OVERLAYs mostly prevent us from doing Circular references. Circular references are a little bit tricky when you handle them in a Docs environment.

And it also breaks the relative path when a project is moved from one workspace to another workspace. Other the folders are changed for the reference drawing within the Docs environment. So that's why we prefer to advise users to keep OVERLAY rather than XATTACH. So we'll talk a little bit about why in the next slides around nested references.

So let's go take a look at what are the different ways of uploading references to Docs? There are three different ways of uploading references to Docs. Starting with upload using Desktop Connector. So upload using Desktop Connector as simply drag and drop your files from your local drive through the Desktop Connector, to Docs. And the best thing with this approach is Desktop Connector is quite smart enough to understand the reference tree and it takes automatically all the references and the data shortcuts and put them into the Docs, even though you are dragging and dropping only the main drawing.

All the related files will be automatically copied into the Docs by Desktop connector. And also it can help you change or modify the folder structure of the reference drawing and also help you to retain the folder structure, what you have in your local environment. You will see that in a moment in the next slides. So the only challenge that we see in this preferred way of uploading files is if you are doing bulk uploads, it could impact the Desktop Connector performance. And especially if you have files from a network drive or from an external storage, it could depend on the connectivity that it could slow the Desktop Connector to upload those files.

So it's always preferred. You bring in all of your files to the local storage and then drag and drop into Desktop Connector. Then you have the next option, which is through the browser window, which is through the Docs environment itself, which is going into acc.autodesk.com in the browser and uploading the files there. So the biggest benefit here is it can understand the font files and its relationship with the drawing mode effectively than the Desktop Connector mode.

And also it allows you to upload 200 files in a single action. But again, one of the caveats in this browser upload is it cannot understand the complex reference tree that you have. So if you are uploading single drawings in different folders, then this may be your better option. But if you are having references and you want to maintain reference relationship, the best option is through Desktop Connector. And the third one is more if you are trying to do a concurrent editing and then want to upload the file straight into the project, especially if you are in a field environment, you open the file in Docs, which is from a project. And you want to make an additional change and create a copy of it, then using the AutoCAD web, AutoCAD web is a new product that is launched on the web interface.

You can use the AutoCAD web, which is connected to the Docs environment. And you can do the share feature within the AutoCAD, which allows you to take the file through the web to Docs. The only caveat that though, the reference relationship can be maintained when it is a single upload package, which means you have to do an e-transmit if you have reference relationships. Otherwise, through web, it cannot understand the reference relationship immediately.

So there is a way to do the e-transmit through the web, but you could use that and then connect it to the Docs and upload the file. But this third option, we normally recommend for users to doing single drawing edit on the fly in the field then it's probably the best option. So looking at all three, options the most commonly used option by all our users is the very first one, which is using Desktop Connector. And asset has more features, and Desktop Connector also understands the relationship between AutoCAD and the Docs.

So here in this video, you're going to see how the external references are being worked on by two different users. So here, Bastien and myself are the two different users. So you will see Bastien opening up the drawing, which will be the main drawing, while I'll be opening up the reference drawing here. So reference one is the main drawing here. So you can see Bastien will be opening up to reference one, while I'll be doing a concurrent editing of reference two.

So when Bastien opens, it wants him, that the reference two is already locked by me. So it's a good warning for a user to know that the reference file is already being edited by another user. And Bastien accepts that here. And then tries to refresh this Windows Explorer to understand which file is with him, which file is locked to somebody else. In this case, the second file, which is referenced two, is locked to me.

And he also goes to the browser to see what's the status looks like, just to make sure the browser is up to date. Here, you can see the file lock displays who the file is locked to. Now here, what you're seeing here is now my window. So I have made some modifications to the reference 2 by adding four more components here. And now I'm going to go in to my Windows Explorer to check what's the version now and then making sure the new version gets updated through Desktop Connector.

So I'm going to save the file and close it. And I'm going to go to the Desktop Connector tray and make sure in the pending actions to see whether the file is synced the Cloud. Yes. It'll take a second, like what Bastien mentioned. So it takes some few seconds for Desktop Connector to sync. Now you'll see the file is now synchronized. Now what happens next here is you will see the versioning that's automatically updated on my machine. And you'll see the change in status. And then it starts to now upload the file to the Docs environment.

Now let's see what's happening on the Bastien side. So before that, I'm also going to my Doc's environment and refreshing it. And now Bastien is going to open the reference1.data [INAUDIBLE] file. Now here, you see a warning showed up, which means the reference that I have edited is now having a newer version, and asking Bastien to synchronize the reference. The way Bastien will synchronize the reference now is going to AutoCAD and open the reference drawing.

So he can either go to the reference manager and open the reference from there, or he can open the drawing straight away from the Docs environment. So he going to do the reference open or X-open from within the reference manager. Now you can see that Bastien has received the updated changes that I have made on the reference two. Now when he switches back to reference one, you will see that AutoCAD also gives him a warning that reference two has been updated, and asking Bastien to update his reference one.

So the way, typically, we do any reference update is go to the reference manager once again and reload the change references. So this is what Bastien is doing now. And he reloads the references. And Xref compare automatically kicks in to tell Bastien what are the changes made in this reference try. Now Bastien accepts the changes. Now here you see Bastien will receive the updated references from my changes.

Now Bastien saves the reference one and he closes the drawing so that it gets synchronized back in to the Docs environment. Now we will see in the Doc's environment these changes are reflected there. OK. Now here you go. So the changes are now available and there will be no more warning messages as Bastien gets the updated copy of the references. This way, two users can work concurrently on a main and a reference drawing within an Autodesk Docs project.

Now let's take a look at what are the limitations in this references in Docs environment? So I was talking about circular references. But before we go into circular references, I also want to highlight nesting. Nesting is something very common for users. And nesting occurs when users use attach option and attach more references to the host file and then reference it into another try. Now here, you can see in this example, I have drawing A, B and C. Now drawing A is attached to drawing B. And drawing B is attached to C. So drawing A and drawing B are now attached to each other. And drawing B, now attached to C, again, as a second level down reference.

But then when drawing A gets attached to C, that's when the nesting happens. You can either attach or overlay, but it's going to be a nesting at that point. But if you attach drawing C back to drawing A, then you are creating a circular reference there. So the thing that we want to highlight is avoid using circular references. Even in a local environment, circular references are a little bit tricky on the structure and how you abate those relationship drawings.

So in order to avoid some mishaps in terms of collaboration, we normally recommend not to use the circular references, but use the nesting to a certain degree, so in this way. And nesting as well, one of the challenges with nesting is if you are doing nesting, it may be a little difficult to move the reference drawings to different folders within the Docs environment because it's going to-- AutoCAD will have difficulty understanding the relationship in the nested drawings. So in that case, the biggest challenge that you will have is if you move a reference drawing from a nested environment, then you need to make sure all the reference drawings are opened and saved in the user's environment. And then update the master drawing and save the drawing. So all updates or the changes are coming in from AutoCAD back to Docs.

So that AutoCAD understand the change in relationship by reloading those references from different parts. And then it establishes those relationships to Autodesk Docs through Desktop Connector. We do support concurrent editing in references, you just saw how Bastien and I managed to do a concurrent editing. We also do file locking capabilities with references. You will see that in a moment in the next video. But if you are using circular references, we don't allow concurrent editing or file locking at this moment. So that's one of the additional reasons why we want you to avoid secular references.

OK. Now let's take a look at these messages that you received. So these messages are standard messages that you will receive when you have AutoCAD in a Docs environment. So these notifications will happen when users do concurrent editing on references. And in the first case, when you have an updated reference drawing, it is AutoCAD which triggers that to ask you to reload. And in the second case, when you open the drawing in the browser, it's the Docs which triggers you to go back to AutoCAD and reload and update the references.

Again, all nested reference drawings should be opened and updated through this way when you get both the notification so that the relationship is brought back. And sync is instantaneous in both instance through Desktop Connector. So the relationship is maintained very quickly. And then the last element that I also want to make sure that you are aware of is the Xref notify sysvar. So if you are used to local environment or a network environment, Xref notifies is a very commonly used sysvar to alert the second user about reference changes.

And this applies only when the drawing is changed in the local case. If it's not, then it won't automatically understand the changes made by the second user on the doc so you have to make sure that the reference is brought over to the local cache so that the AutoCAD understands and alerts through the notify command. Now let's take a look at all the system variables. So Xref notify, we talked about it. It works only on the local cache, not directly on the Docs environment.

Same goes for Xref notify time. This is also another one to improve the reference performance by narrowing down the notification time both of them will work as long as you update your local cache through the Desktop Connector with the relevant files by synchronizing your Docs project. However, we have an auto synchronization option within plan 3D, which is one of our AutoCAD tool sets where there is a system variable called PLANTREFRESHDCXREFS. What this does is it automatically goes to the Docs and checks if that is a new reference update. And I'll ask the Desktop Connector to pull the reference update inside the AutoCAD environment, and then alerts the user to reload the reference changes within the PLANT3D project.

This system variable is only supported on PLANT3D, not with any other toolsets or Civil 3d or advanced [INAUDIBLE]. By default, this system variable set to off in order to have better performance, but you can turn it on by setting the value to one in the command line of AutoCAD. Now there are other system variables that people typically use, which is XLOADCTL, which is about demand loading on references, whether to demand load the reference with the main drawing, and then indexing the references created and saved in the drawing files.

So both of them are directly not supported in the Docs environment. But as I mentioned, the file, as long as it comes to the stock connector local cache, both XLOADCTL and INDEXCTRL with values two and three will help improve the performance of your Docs files in AutoCAD. And finally, Cloud collab lab modified option, which is a sysvar introduced in terms of file locking. You will see that mode in the latest slides. .

By setting it to zero, you will turn off the file locking feature for both main drawing and references. I'll talk a little bit more expanded in the upcoming slides on this particular sysvar. So before we go into the file locking, I also want to touch on one other very critical component, which Bastien talked about in the first segment, which is related data folder. So Desktop Connector, as much as it understands the relationship of AutoCAD drawings, it creates a folder called related data folder.

So when this related data folder gets created, so there are two options where that related data folder gets created. When you have an xref and a master drawing in the same folder where you won't see the related data folder being created at this point because in order to do that, you do an e-transmit of the master and all references in the local environment of AutoCAD and bring them all into a same folder and drag and drop the master file. At that point, there will be no related data folder because your main drawing and references are in the same folder, desktop connector will transfer it in the same way into your Docs environment.

Now if your Xref and your main drawing are in different folders, or if your Xref is in a folder one and your main drag and your main drawing is in your folder one, sorry, and your Xref is in folder two, or if you have sub-folders where you have multiple external references, then this related data folder gets created when you drag and drop the main drawing in order to maintain the folder structure that you have in the local environment. So you're going to see that in a moment in the next slide.

So you're going to see here you can see, I have four drawing shaft 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now all of them are in a single folder. There's no sub-folders for references. So this is a nested drawing. You have shaft 1 connected to 2, 2 connected to 3, back to 2 and 4. So you'll see that in external reference manager shortly. We will show you the references here and we will also show you the reference tree to just show how the reference relationship is now. Now what we are going to do here is I'm going to drag and drop shaft 1, which is my main drawing, into the Docs project on the left. What you're seeing here is my local drive. And I'm going to drag and drop into the AU project, which is in Autodesk docs.

Now you'll see that along with shaft 1, 2, 3 and 4 will be automatically copied over to the same location. Here we go. Now you'll see all four drawings are now copied over to the Docs environment. You will start to see the status to upload and so on. Here we go, now you'll see all four of them have been uploaded. And in the Docs browser as well, you'll see all 4 is now uploaded in a single structure. Now here, you are seeing my main drawing is in a folder called Main. And all my references are in a second folder called Shafts. So you have a main folder and a reference folder here. Now I am dragging and dropping that before I do that, I just want to go back to my AutoCAD environment. And I'm going to my Xrefs to show where the parts are.

So here, you can see those parts were updated. Now they are under the shaft folder. You can very clearly see each references are in the shaft folder. Now, I'm closing my article just to make sure it's not locking the files. Now I'm dragging and dropping the shaft 1 at this moment. So when I drag and drop shaft 1 to the Docs project, sorry, I will see here the related data folder will get created at this point of time.

So you will see AutoCAD is trying to synchronize all the fold-- sorry, not AutoCAD, Desktop Connector is trying to synchronize all the files, including the folder structure to the Docs environment. Now all the files will synchronize in a moment. OK. Now you start to see the status icon showing that the file is synchronized. Now you see the related data folder.

So why this related data folder? Because I had a folder structure for shaft [INAUDIBLE] and I had a subfolder for my references. In order to establish that, it automatically took those reference relationship folders there. So this way, you can either eliminate the reference related data folder or you can keep the related data folder by just keeping all your reference folder structure and dragging and dropping your main drawing.

Now let's look at cross project references. So Autodesk Bridge, which is a new solution or a new tool that was introduced by Autodesk Construction Cloud for managing cross project references. So what is actually Bridge? Bridge is a feature within Autodesk Docs which allows you to improve collaboration, reduce rework when you are working on two different projects, and gives a better control and management of project information across projects.

So what file formats of AutoCAD can be shared on a bridge environment? So again, same like general Docs environment, you can share AutoCAD templates, reference drawings, from one project to another project. Reference updates are automatically synchronized between both projects. But keep in mind, this synchronization happens with a one way sync. So Bridge, again, only works on Autodesk Construction Cloud, as Bastien highlighted, this AU class is about Autodesk Docs and AutoCAD relationship, or connectivity between AutoCAD and Autodesk Docs through the Autodesk Construction Cloud.

So if you are using BIM 360 Docs, this feature bridge is not available at this moment within your BIM 360 Docs environment. On the right hand side, you are seeing four different tabs, which is incoming, outgoing, automation, and bridge projects. So incoming and outgoing actually tells us what type of traffic is being exchanged, or what folders are being shared between one project over another project. And automation tells what file formats are being exchanged through this bridging.

And then the bridge project tells how many projects are bridged together. So this is a very simple configuration. You can do it by selecting a folder, or selecting a project, or even selecting an individual drawing. And then right click near the 3 icons just next to the drawing file in the Docs environment and do a share. And when you do a share, you will see this dialog box, which gives you three options, whether you want to share the project with additional members, or share with anyone, or share with another project. Because we are doing cross project referencing-- so you pick another project and then also make sure to select automatically sync updates to that target.

So why this is? Because whenever you make changes to a reference drawing in the first project, then the second project will get automatically updated through this auto sync option, now here in the next dropdown where you will select the projects. So the first one, which will be my reference project and the second one that I will select would be my main project, that is the AU project that I will be selecting to link. In the next video, you will see how this thing works.

And again, as I mentioned, Bridge is supported only on Autodesk Construction Cloud projects. So you can't do even with BIM 360 project migrated-- before migrating it to the Construction Cloud. Now here is a quick overview, or a preview of how this thing works. Here, you can see this master drawing, which is linked between two different projects, which is like the project reference and my AU 2022 project winnowed, where you will see the copy of that master drawing gets created under the bridge folder. And whenever a change is made on the reference, then this AU project will get automatically updated through the bridge mechanism.

We'll see that in the next slides. And then that update kicks into AutoCAD. Here, you can see that the reference gets updated, along with the main drawing, with whatever changes to the reference that I made in the reference project. That gets shown back again in the AU 2022 project. So now this is how you link to different projects and show those updates between two different drawings, residing in two different projects. In this case, my main drawing is part of both the projects, but my reference drawing is part of the referenced project.

Now here we go. You're going to see in this video. So here, you can see drawing A, which is part of project A. Now you will see the next one, drawing B, which is now part of Project B. OK. So the main drawing will be drawing A and drawing B will be a reference drawing. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to open AutoCAD and I have referenced A with B. So A is my master drawing, B is my reference.

Now I'm trying to sync that back through the stop connector and I get an error message saying it's not supported because cross project referencing is not directly supported in the Docs environment, you need to enable the bridge to do the cross project relationship. Now let's take a look at how we do that in the next video. So here, I'll be going in and creating a subfolder on project A, calling it bridge from Project B. And I'm going to go to Project B, and again, I'm going to create a shared here. And here, I'm picking another project. And I'll be sharing the folder in project A to bring the reference file back into project A for relationship.

So here, you will see I picked another project. And I'm also selecting automatically sync updates to make sure that updates are synchronized. And here, I am going to pick the folder within the project A, which I just created called Bridge from Project B. Now I have selected that now I'm going to say share. So once I have shared, now you will see that copy of that reference file from Project B is now stored in project A. Now project A and Project B are bridged at this point.

Now I'm going to save the file. Now you'll see it will automatically update now the changes. Now I can't able to synchronize now the reference project with domain project here. Now I can see my drawing A showing my drawing B, which is a reference drawing coming from a different project. So this way, I can do a cross-referencing of two different files from different projects. And here, I'm also making a change to the reference drawing from Project B and I'm saving that to the Docs environment.

Now you can see, it gets automatically synchronized. You can see that the drawing B is now updated into the Docs. Now I'm going to project A to see whether the B is done. It won't, because as I mentioned in the past, you have to make sure the references are updated. So if I'm the user who is doing project A, have to go into my AutoCAD and then Open Project A And then-- sorry, open drawing A from project A and open the reference that's linked. Here we go. It shows the reference that's updated.

Now I will save the main drawing, which has the reference now updated. Now when I go back to the Docs environment, I'll see that the reference that I changed in Project B will be now reloaded and showing with the updated changes that I did to the reference in Project B. Here we go. You'll see that in a second. Here we go, that's pretty fast and this way, you can cross-reference both the projects.

So with that, I want to move to the next topic for today, which is multi-user cloud environment, cloud collaboration environment. So starting with that will be file locking feature. File locking feature was introduced with AutoCAD 2020 and 2021 release. It was introduced as an add-in in our app store. Is the Add-in is still available. You can go and download from our app store, just called File Locking for Autodesk BIM 360. It supports both BIM 360 Docs, as well as Autodesk Construction Cloud.

Then we integrated this file locking feature to AutoCAD 2022 and 2023 release as part of AutoCAD feature. This allowed us to do a better locking mechanism through AutoCAD API. And we also, on top of it, improved the overall performance of file locking by doing improvements, both on the Desktop Connector and on AutoCAD side with the 2022 doc one update.

I was talking about a system variable called Cloud lab modified option. So this is what allows you to control whether you want to lock a document immediately after you unlock, or you want to lock a document not immediately when you unlock the file. That's meaning you close the file. So you can set it either 0 or 1, this is where we'll control how your file locking works. And also helps you to improve performance in case you don't want to unlock right immediately, you can set it off by using this as well. And there is also a Civil 3D system variable, which is called ACC unlock current drawing, which is only available for Civil 3D toolset.