Digital Project Delivery Using the Architecture, Engineering & Construction Collection and Autodesk BIM Collaborate Pro

BEN WARDELL: All right, welcome. This is the Digital Project Delivery class. My name is Ben Wardell. I'm a Technical Marketing Manager with Autodesk. I've been with Autodesk for about five years. Previous to that, my experience in the field, I had about 17 years of experience in the civil engineering industry, mostly with roads, highways, and with rail projects, working with some of the larger consultants on a number of different highway and roadway projects.

So in this presentation, we're going to go through the AEC collection with the Construction Cloud. And I'll explain a little bit about what some of those are just in case the terminology is a little unfamiliar. And we're going to get into some of these different workflows and how they're connected. We're going to show you how to do some collaboration, and also some of these different industry-promoted elements that are moving forward right now, particularly when it comes to final delivery, digital models, and as built, and how those are all connected toward the end of the project.

So as a matter of policy here, I want to show the safe harbor statement here. This is just saying, for any sort of future-looking items, to not make any purchase decisions based on anything that is a promise for delivery. Again, it's something that there's no guarantee that if I show it, that it'll end up in the project. So don't make any purchasing decisions based on anything.

Future looking-- most of the stuff that I am showing is currently in the product. You can use almost everything that I have. Most of the information that I share is also essentially out of the box. So in the outline, what we've got here with the digital project delivery agenda, we'll talk about what the AEC collection is. We'll also get into what the Autodesk Construction Cloud is, and how those things work together, and just bring you up to speed for any of you, especially that have not had a chance to really dive into that and start utilizing it, just so you can see exactly how it functions and how it's going to work.

Then we'll get into some of the meat and potatoes of this particular class. And that is getting down into the weeds and showing some of the how to do some of these connected workflows. I know there's a lot of questions that seem to circulate when it comes to the AEC collection, and how do we connect from one platform to the next. We're going to get into some of those because some of these are actually some newer workflows that really are going to help quite a bit, particularly if you have an affinity to a certain platform.

Then we'll get into a sample product. The sample product that we'll get into, we'll talk about the project timeline, how everything fits in from the AEC collection, and where it fits in along the lines, and how the Autodesk Construction Cloud helps bring all that together. And then we'll break that down a little bit more by talking about some of the different project milestones.

And in the class in Vegas, we'll probably get into some live demo. But I'll show some of these elements so that we can get a feel for how to do some of these elements, some of these connected workflows as well. So to start with, let's talk about the Autodesk Construction Cloud and what it is.

Most of you are probably familiar with some of the Hero products, Revit, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, ReCap Pro, Navisworks, some of these others. But it's actually much more extensive than that. There are a lot of different expanded workflows that really help to enhance some of these Hero products. And these expanded workflows get into some of these platforms such as Insight, and FormIt, and vehicle tracking. And there's also several structural analysis tools both for buildings and for structures like roadway bridges. So this is in a nutshell what the AEC collection is.

Autodesk has really expanded its portfolio. And the purpose of that is really to expand the reach and the capability for all the different tools. And so this is really critical for customer success, especially when we hear back from a lot of the customers that share some of their success stories to see that these are the platforms that are really helping them out.

So as we move from this continued investment, getting into this common data experience, this is where we talk about these end-to-end workflows that now connect to each other, and integrating these workflows together. Long term, the goal is to make everything a unified platform and really get into where these files are data agnostic.

So if there's a preference of one versus another, it's really all about the data at the center. And that's really where the driving force is going with all of these different platforms and with the collection as a whole, really talking about and centering on this common data environment, this data at the center.

Talking about the Construction Cloud, what is it? Similar item here-- Autodesk recognized a need to move faster when it comes to construction and when it comes to project delivery. So they've invested-- Autodesk has invested over $2 billion when it comes to these Construction Cloud based startup technologies that really help to connect everything with all these different products.

The Construction Cloud really is the first iteration of this unified platform. It brings all of these different capabilities, not only from BIM 360, which a lot of you may be familiar with and may be using currently, but it also integrates all of these different combined, these acquired tools into a package so that it's more comprehensive and more capable. And this is really where the investment is going.

A lot of times we get the question, what's the difference between BIM 360 and the Construction Cloud? They're essentially the same thing. The Construction Cloud is where the investment is though. That's where things are going to be going moving forward. You still have the same capabilities, but they're going to be expanded. And you're going to have a lot more opportunities with that in the future. Again, the goal long term is to really have this unification, and to make all the data available. And it's really going to be about a data-driven resource for all these different projects.

The way that it fits in on the Construction Cloud, it's in all phases of design. We're talking about planning, design. We'll talk a little bit more about this in detail. It's the entire process. And so where it fits in as far as when it comes to delivery during construction, it's in all phases, so from the beginning of the project all the way to the end.

And, again, we will take a closer look at some of this when it comes to the project life cycle and some of these project milestones. We'll drill down further into that. Just another overview to show you what we have as far as BIM Collaborate Pro, the way that Docs is integrated with that, Autodesk Build and Autodesk Takeoff. All of these are very powerful tools particularly when it comes to project delivery, and for the construction aspects as well.

The whole purpose of this is really to create this connected, unified platform where everything can speak to each other, and there are no drop offs in data loss. You may have seen similar types of graphs like this one before. When it comes to moving from phase to phase within the project, or we could actually say from stakeholder to stakeholder, there really is a concern that there is a loss of data.

Any time you have a drop off or a loss of data, the impact, the further along the project gets, the more costly that's going to be. And so when it comes to missing information from the design team to the contractor, there's a drop off in data loss. That's a huge problem. When it comes from the contractor to the owner, if there is this drop in data, that's going to cost dollars and time in the long run.

It was thought that this black line here really represented a BIM type of workflow. And we really see that that's not entirely the whole picture. Really what it is, it's a unified platform, and having things together with all the stakeholders involved so that there is no loss of data. There is no confusion as to what the current design is, what the design intent is. Everything is available to all the parties as they need to get access to it.

This is another type of graphic that you may have seen before. What we're really talking about here is how the Autodesk, the AEC collection and third-party apps all merge in together into this common data environment. You'll hear a lot about Autodesk Platform Services. This was introduced last year. You probably hear more about it this year as well. And this is all just part of the unifying process to connect data-- so, again, having a data-driven model at the center.

Another graphic that kind of shows how this works, Autodesk Docs, which is sort of the first step in the door when it comes to the Construction Cloud, is a part of the AEC collection. And this just shows some of the different things that it spans. It's part of storage. It's part of the review process. Having the opportunity to review products, and review designs, and make comments and procedures with that is all part of this integration, so just another graphic to see how the Construction Cloud really ties into and works alongside the AEC collection.

All right, with this, let's break it down and speak about the Construction Cloud. And in this part, I am going to get into the weeds just a little bit to talk about some of these connected workflows and how they work together, but not only that, but how we can better utilize those things so that you can get into an environment that you're more comfortable with.

Designers will often say, any time you ask an engineer or a designer what his favorite or the best software is, it's going to be his favorite. It's going to be the one that he or she knows how to use. So let's talk about what a couple of those different workflows are going to be. We're going to talk about going from ReCap into Civil 3D and some of the new improvements that have been made on that.

One of my colleagues is actually giving a presentation on that. I recommend that you look up his class and take a look at some of the things he does. He will take you in a great deal of depth on how to do some of these linear feature extractions from a point cloud and getting that information into other platforms within the AEC collection.

I'm also going to talk about taking a corridor from Civil 3D and linking it into the InfraWorks model, then taking it into Revit, and how that works with the whole bridge workflow as well-- can take a look at InfraWorks as well and another product, which is Twinmotion, which is really a very intuitive product that gives you some really lifelike and interesting animations that can really bring to life your design, whether it's a building, or whether it's a roadway project, or anything in between.

We'll talk a little bit about some of the improvements that have made been made to Navisworks and how that's integrated with Civil 3D as well. And then one of the questions we get all the time, when are Civil 3D and Revit going to start working together? This is a big step in that direction. And that's IFC 4.3-- talk a little bit about some of those nuances that are in that workflow process.

And then this is futures looking as well, this data connector. This is something that's new that is coming out. And it's currently in beta. But what it is, it's an opportunity to move data into the cloud and extract it into one of these different elements in Revit, in Civil 3D from one of the other platforms. But you can be much more granular as opposed to taking a whole entire model at once.

With that, let's get into the first aspect of it, and that is ReCap to Civil 3D. So in ReCap, you have the ability now to store point clouds directly on the Construction Cloud. So right here I'm in the web viewer of the Construction Cloud. And I can open my point cloud directly in the viewer.

So with this, I've got the ability to change the way that my point cloud displays. But now I can actually do an automated linear feature extraction. If I have an edge like a curb, an edge of a platform, I can define those different points and run an automated feature extraction. So each one of these nodes that I create, it's actually going to extract a 3D polyline for me that I can then take into some of these other platforms.

If I want to go and trace a line-- in this case, if I identify a single polyline, and I use a Control button, I can actually go and select point by point something like an overhead wire. Now, this is a game changer for a lot of these different kinds of workflows, particularly early in the rail aspect.

So all of these different 3D line strings are something that I can extract either from an automated process or from a manual process. Then what I can do from here, I can pick my linear feature group. I can export that either as a DXF file or an XML. And that's just a simple import XML into my Civil 3D file. And now I've got these 3D line strings that are in their georeferenced location.

If I bring in the point cloud along with that, and then I can start to model these things, I can create my alignment from that. I can create these 3D feature lines, these 3D polylines, and then generate my corridor, all based on this georeferenced, accurate point cloud data-- so some really cool elements that have been a game changer, and just make it so much easier to get to when it comes to these point clouds, and making them just a lot more user friendly to really extract these key elements of data from that.

OK, let's get into-- and I'm just going to show right here. This is an older workflow. And when I say older, this is a couple of years old. But what we're going to do is we're going to import our Civil 3D corridor into our InfraWorks model. So in this case, I've created a corridor. And this is out on the Construction Cloud.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to select my Civil 3D model. And here I can specify exactly what I'm looking for. Is it the corridor? Is it the alignment? Is it all these different elements? But I'll need to go in and configure that once that's imported. And I can specify that either as a component road or a corridor component road.

In this case, I want to make it a corridor component road because that way InfraWorks will import it just as it was designed in Civil 3D. I want to make sure that my coordinate system is correct as well. And I can check some of these other elements to make sure that everything is accurate.

Once that refreshes and that uploads, my corridor that was created from Civil 3D is now linked in my InfraWorks model. If there are any changes-- and you can see the stationing that's involved with that as well. If there are any changes that are made to this, I can reload that. And that will take an updated view of that-- again, creating a bridge in this case, we can specify the begin and end locations of the bridge.

And this is one of the ideal workflows that, again, my colleague Andy Manzi is doing a class on as well. So I recommend taking a look at his class-- some of the bridge workflows that are available going from InfraWorks into Revit. And, again, it's a simple, just a few clicks away from getting that bridge from InfraWorks into Revit, where you have the capabilities of really outlining and designing all the elements of your bridge, your rebar details in the abutment, the section view, the details.

From here, you've got the power that Revit offers when you create these plan sheets. And this is actually stored on the Construction Cloud right here. And when I select some of those different section views, it will reference me and take me directly to those different plan sheets-- so, again, setting this up, going through this whole process, a powerful, powerful workflow.

On top of that, these are some of the new workflows that have been introduced as well. So, again, taking a look at my InfraWorks model, one of the elements that was in the workflow before required the use of some of the platforms that are outside the AEC collection.

Now in Revit, I can actually create a Revit family of a bridge pier. And in this case, I can identify some of the different parameters, the pier height, the pier width, whatever it is. And this is a very simple family. But I can identify some of these different elements as key parameters. So now I've got a solid block. That's a Revit family. And I can import that into my InfraWorks model to where I've got full control of those parameters.

So now I take that pier and I assign that to a specific location. And with that, I've got an entire list of these Revit family parameters that I can now adjust and update exactly how I need to. I can use this, now apply this to other piers, select which piers I want to have that same selection. And it'll implement those same parameters that I've just created-- again, just another step in the bridge workflow.

That's a powerful, powerful element to make the Revit and InfraWorks, the connection between those platforms just much, much more powerful. I want to say this, Twinmotion is a really, really cool and terribly intuitive platform. And it is called Twinmotion for Revit. I want to emphasize this though. It's not just for Revit.

So if I take a building, I can add animations. I can add cars and vehicles. I can add bikers and pedestrians, and different times of day. And it's really fascinating and cool animation. However, if I've got an InfraWorks model-- in this case, I do have a project that we'll talk a little bit more about-- I can extract the limits of what I want. I can take the whole model or I can take just a piece of it by outlining the area that I want to take out.

I export that as an FBX. And now I have that the ability to open that up as an FBX file. And now I can apply all sorts of textures and elements to that from Twinmotion. And, again, it's just as simple as it looks. I've got a group of people. I've got plants, and shrubs, and things like that. If I want people walking, creating animations, creating life, motion, people dancing, whatever I want to do, I can actually add that element to there.

I can specify the time of day. So I can see what this is going to look like. My lighting, that might be a critical element that I need to consider. We can also do the same thing with vehicle paths here. So I specify the path of the vehicle. That information, now I've got vehicles moving, I can specify their speed, the time of season, if it's raining, if it's snowing. This guy is way too close, given the conditions. But all of these elements are something that I can adjust and really specify to really make an incredible, lifelike type of animation.

So this happens to be a rail station in Germany where we have the InfraWorks model for this. And we added some life motion. The rail cars are moving. The people are standing around talking. They're conversing with one another. Trains are coming in based on their schedule-- so, again, a powerful, powerful element that is a really cool tool to use. And, again, for whatever reason, you can make people dance because they're just so happy about this product-- moving along.

The next one is something that I have particular interest in. I think it's a really cool step forward. Navisworks now has the ability to recognize alignments from Civil 3D. So when I append a model, bring this in-- I brought in a roadway model-- I can view all the different alignments that are available in this model. So what I'm doing here is picking the different alignment paths and then moving forward on my navigation bar just to see where I'm at.

I can change my View Ratio, the parameters of how I'm viewing this. And what this does is this gives me the ability to measure, to view things relative to the alignment. And I can run things like the roadway drive function to inspect my entire 3D model of this particular element here.

So, again, appending the model, bringing all these elements into Navisworks, and showing all this information in here, whether I'm measuring it based on the center alignment of my Civil 3D corridor, or if I'm looking at it in section view, or looking at all the components in an aggregated model, this is something that's a huge step for Navisworks, and bringing all these elements together as an aggregated model to view it in a very user-friendly type of environment.

So some pretty cool elements that have been added there-- again, pretty simple to use. It's just under the View parameters. And then we can turn on and off the different elements of the alignment and view it relative to whichever alignment we happen to want. OK, this next step, I'm going to break down exactly how to walk through and do the IFC conversion from a Civil 3D model into Revit.

There are not any gotchas on this. And, again, I don't want to make it seem like there's any kind of issues with that. But I want to show a couple different nuances with that. So the function that I run is IFC Infra Export. So I can specify the name of the IFC file that I want to create. And what happens is when it does that, it's going to create a COGO point. And that is the base point that it's going to use when I import that into Revit.

If I were to do something in a different file, let's say I have the systems elements for a rail project and I do something similar, I do the IFC Infra Export, it will also pick a point. However, those points are not coincident. They're not the same point. So if I look at this and I want those to come in right on top of each other, I'm actually going to have to make a slight modification.

So I'm going to look at my first file where I created that point. And it's point number 53. So let's copy the easting and the northing value, and reassign those to the COGO point that was created in that second drawing. So what I'm doing here is I'm making it so that it will line up.

So what this process does, it looks at that point as that insertion point when I bring it into Revit. So if I can line these up, I want to make those exact. So what I've done is I've updated that point and then re-exported, did the same thing. I did the IFC Infra Export again.

So in a blank Revit model, I want to go into my 3D view. And all I'm going to do is link IFC in this case. So I'm going to go out to the Construction Cloud and find the files that I created. And in this case I had one for the corridor model and I had one for the systems elements. And these were just 3D blocks.

So I import that. I bring that in. I can look at it, get some view parameters to it. Then I do the same thing with those systems elements. And when I update that, they do come in exactly where they're supposed to be because I lined up those points. I want to close this file once I have this. I don't necessarily need to save this, but I want to close that file because what happens is in the process of creating that IFC, Revit will create a file that is called a .ifc file. But it's a Revit format.

So that's the file I actually want to get into so I can actually start taking a look at all the different parameters. And so in this case, looking at the corridor model, I can turn off or on some of these different elements. I've got the entire surface in there. But if I take a look at this and some of the different pipe network elements, or some of the systems elements, I can see those parameters and those properties that were created in Civil 3D are now fully viewable in Revit as well.

One thing of note here is that these elements are still-- the parameters I'm not able to change. So it's basically taking a snapshot of my Civil 3D model and bringing it into Revit. Now I've got all of that information that I need there. And I can create labels, and sections, and do a number of things with it.

But in Revit, I don't have the ability at this point to make changes to those. I can't change the parameters of some of those elements that were created in Civil 3D. I'd have to do that again. I'd have to go back into my Civil 3D model, make some of those changes, and then bring that back into Revit. And that would basically give me an update.

So they're linked. It's kind of like a snapshot. It's not a live link. So it's not taking live data. If it's updated in Civil 3D, I'd need to run that export process again. But since I have my COGO point in place, all that information should be taken care of. This is, again, a big, big step in the right direction, and a request that's been on the table for many years, frankly.

So next thing I want to show is this is the data exchange. So it's similar to the IFC process. However, it offers us the ability to be much more granular. What this does as well, when we create a file using the IFC 4.3 conversion, it creates a fairly large file. Depending on the size of our model, that file could be a gigabyte in size. But it's usually several megabytes, if not hundreds of megabytes. It's a big file that it creates in that IFC process. Sometimes it can take a little while to upload, depending on processing speed and everything like that.

In this case, what this is doing is we have the ability to create a data exchange based on particular Civil 3D elements. And so in this case, we can specify everything in the drawing, the entire model, or specific objects. And so in this case, if we say by object, we can then specify which objects we want, so everything, just the surface, the pipe network, the corridor. All these different elements that are intelligent elements from Civil 3D, we can actually specify here.

And so in this case, we want to specify the surface, or the corridor, or the pipe network. What that does is on the Construction Cloud now-- and here I am in the web viewer-- it has created a marker. And you'll notice the size of these files. There's zero kilobytes. There's nothing to the size. What it is, it's a marker of that Civil 3D file.

So if something here is updated-- I believe they're live links. But, again, this is still in beta. So some of this information is still being determined. But what I can do is actually in the Construction Cloud, I can open the viewer. And now I can view those elements that were-- there was basically a picture taken of those.

And so this is much more granular level. A lot of people might ask the question, what's the difference? Why would I do the IFC one when I can do this? Or why would I do the data exchange versus IFC? IFC gives you the chance to take the whole model.

This one has gives you the ability to be much more granular. But, again, this is still a work in progress, still in beta. By the time it's released-- get on board if you're interested in taking a look at it. But hopefully it may be released by the time AU comes around. But it's something that's exciting, moving toward that direction.

So those are some of the different connected workflows. Let's use some of those connected workflows now and let's dive into a sample project. Now before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about project lifecycle and what we're talking about. We're really talking about four major phases.

So there's the planning aspect where we're determining what we're going to do. This is where the EA documents are put together. This is where the alternatives analysis is considered. Then you get into the active design where really the heavy lifting goes on when it comes to the design platforms.

Then that translates over into the build aspect where the contractor is making sure that the design intent is implemented in the field. And, ultimately, this is handed over to the owner for operations and asset maintenance. So with most projects tend to function this way as far as the beginning, through the design process, finally into operations. And this cycle will repeat from project to project.

So what's vital all along the way is that we make sure that we maintain that data, and that it's available to every stakeholder at every phase. Again, we talked about a data loss makes massive, huge impacts that can really disrupt any project, cause them to go over budget, cause them to go over the time extension as well.

We'll drill down into some of these different project milestones and talk about them sort of in detail, and how the AEC collection helps with each one of these steps along the way, and how all of this ties back into the Construction Cloud as well. So with each step, we'll take a look at what will happen from planning to design, and break this down by each one of these phases. And so we'll take a look at each one of these milestones on an individual basis with our example project.

So the example project that we are looking at here, we have a two-lane road that connects a freeway interchange with a fairly major subdivision. This area-- so the freeway is on the left side. The subdivision is on the right side. And we've got about a two-mile stretch that is connecting those two elements together. It's over capacity. This roadway needs to be expanded. We'll take a look at how we would do a project like that.

Neighboring to this project we have an existing at-grade rail line that is a more or less a people mover. And we want to take a look at a theoretical project if we were to use this end station, end-of-line station. What if we were to add a high-speed rail corridor adjacent to that? How could we get those to integrate with each other? And what would be some of the different elements that we would need to consider in that aspect?

So this is our example project. This is more of a theoretical project. But we want to take a look at it from start to finish, how would we do some of these things? And so we'll get into some of those elements and how those work. And we'll really focus in on this area. So let's get started with this first element, these first parts of it. So, really, we're going to be talking about the purpose and need study, the alternatives analysis, and everything that goes into that.

So in the environmental process, in the assessment process, the first thing we need to do is evaluate our existing conditions. And that's going to include the roadway configuration. That's going to be traffic volumes-- and in this case, we'll show a simulation-- as well as any impacts to the surrounding environment.

We need to identify environmentally-sensitive areas or possible future development sites. Those need to be considered among multiple alternatives. And all of that information is required in an EA document. So in InfraWorks, we really can easily and quickly create these concepts and alternatives to view them in their contextual environment.

So in this case, we're looking at a multiple lane area, an area of development that we're going to consider. On the other side of the project, the rail project, we're going to perform similar functions. In this case, we can connect multiple Civil 3D corridors like we showed. Two are InfraWorks project for analysis.

And it really doesn't take long for us to develop some of these key features like the bridge location. Here we've determined our preferred alternatives. And just like in the traffic simulation, we want to take a look and look at a model where we're looking at pedestrian and passenger simulations that are based on a projected schedules and predicted volumes. And this is really helpful when it comes to train stations or airports.

We can even consider restrictions or issues that might happen with the pedestrian flow. So, again, all of this information can be based on projected volumes, or schedules, and projected use. These files are actually stored-- all of this information, the corridor, the models, the Civil 3D files, the simulations, they're all stored on the Construction Cloud just like they would be stored. And I'll get into exactly how this is all stored.

But we've got this model viewer where team members have access to these files. They can view them without having to get into some of the platforms and really risk messing with some of the data. Nothing's worse than having an alignment deleted or a model deleted because someone got into that file. This gives some of the stakeholders the opportunity to view these files without really getting into and messing up any of the data.

So I want to take a closer look at how the Construction Cloud works. We've got kind of a funny animation here. But you're familiar with a LAN or remote environment. You connect to a VPN or a server that connects you to project data. We know these systems can be slow. They can fail.

In this conference, data at the center. This is what you're going to hear a lot about. So your project data is connected in a common data environment during the entire project duration. The way the Construction Cloud works is the same way that you're familiar with. When you're opening a file, you open a Civil 3D file from Docs just like you would on a LAN connection or a local drive.

So Civil 3D will access the files from Docs through the Desktop Connector. So it's getting, pulling information from the cloud, bringing it into the environment that we're talking about. Huge improvements have been made here. When files are updated, you'll receive notifications for X reference files or data shortcuts. Those will communicate to you when they've been updated.

You can also review, access your project data through Windows Explorer. And here you can add or delete folders. And this is just like you would work in a typical work environment, a standard environment. You can use the drag and drop method to drop files into the folder from your local onto the cloud server.

And the Desktop Connector will show you the progress of all of these things as these changes are being made and uploaded to the folder. So once those files are uploaded, you'll see different icons that represent different states. So the Cloud icon represents that this is now a cloud model. It's stored on the cloud.

A Check Mark indicates that the user has access to that file. A Lock icon next to that file indicates that this has been opened by another user. You can also free up disk space. And there's a number of other functions that you can use with the Right Click menu as well.

Now in the Web Viewer of ACC-- we've kind of shown a little bit of that as well-- 85 different file types are accessible here. So Microsoft-based files like this one, this is a Word file, we can actually get in there and make some edits. Once those have been modified and saved, then we can see those version numbers uptick as well.

Point clouds-- again, talked about point clouds a little bit. Huge advances have been made here. The ability to view them, to extract information from them, fantastic steps have been made here, so kind of a game changer there. I want to emphasize this. You can look at several different CAD formats.

This is a DGN file right here. We're taking a look at some of the details that are involved in there. You can look at the same thing with DWG files. There is a little bit of a limitation right now when it comes to intelligent DGN information from ORD files, but that's still in the process, in the works as well.

Getting a bit more advanced, we can show some of these-- we'll show some of this later in the class. Different modules like design collaboration allow you to combine a model and see everything working together. And then in this function, we have the ability to look at clash detection to see if we've got any issues prior to construction. A lot of these things are very, very useful bits of information. So that's on the beginning side. And that's how, in a nutshell, the Construction Cloud works.

So now let's move forward into these different project milestones as well. So now getting into the existing conditions, we're going to start to extract information. So the GIS connector helps the design team compile later layers of data. And this is something we have a direct connection to ArcGIS Online with.

So we can add property data, floodplain information, contours. Whatever data we've got available for our project, there might be other projects that were adjacent to that. We can get that information here. That information comes in as different layers. Once this data has been assembled in the Construction Cloud, a design team can start to share and gather this information and collaborate with others.

So in this case, the survey team is going to share the existing features that they collected as well as the ground surface. They'll share that as a package. And then the other teams, in this case the civil team or the roadway team, can now preview and look at the information that has been shared by the survey team. In this case, it's going to be some of that existing condition data, the survey, the flood, the property maps as well.

Now in Civil 3D, that civil team can then utilize those consumed files. So they'll go into that packet, consume the files that they need to use. Then this information can act as a basis for the design that they're using. Then these files can be shared throughout the lifecycle project. Doing the same thing here, creating data shortcuts. This information can also be shared. So this works the same way that you're familiar with working in a LAN environment or on a local drive. It's just acting with the Docs icon-- or excuse me, the Docs server-- as a separate drive.

So now getting into more of the detailed plan, specs, and estimate design. Let's take a look at some of these. You're familiar with some of the tools in Civil 3D and what it's capable of doing. So in developing the alignment, that information is available for detailed design and development within Civil 3D. So this is done from both a horizontal and from a vertical standpoint of geometry.

I want to emphasize, there's been a lot of elements that have been added from a rail standpoint that really help to emphasize and to drive rail design forward as well. So these roadway assemblies help to contribute to a detailed corridor model. And this is going to contribute to determine earthwork quantities that can be calculated using some of those cross sections.

Designers can also use design automation. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Dynamo for Civil 3D is a powerful tool that really helps to complete complex tasks in a fraction of the amount of time. In some of these cases, some of these things just aren't possible to do, like creating these blocks, or creating some of these elements, in a fraction of the amount of time. It's just something that is a huge value-- so in this case, creating a vehicle envelope for either a train or for a car, something that's very valuable to do.

So some of the tools you can use within Civil 3D are to look at the different models and to view everything in all three dimensions-- talked a little bit about some of this, the bridge design workflows and how those are integrated together as well. This is a repeat of some of that information before. But, again, getting into how all of this stuff works together once we have our corridor completed and the geometry details have been sorted out, now we can start creating plan sheets.

We can store those online. The plan sheet organized-- they're all specified. And we can specify where those locations are going to be stored right on the Construction Cloud. So now these can act as a basis for reviews. So once we've uploaded all of those sheets, the Construction Cloud is intelligent enough to actually look at all the information of those sheets. It will number the sheets based on the information that is specified on the sheet. It will examine the sheet. And now this information is stuff that can be applied to and be made part of any sort of a review cycle.

So if we get into a review period. Now we want to create a review. All of this information, all this information that we've been working on, the model, the design files, the sheets, anything that we need to be part of a review can now be edited and submitted electronically. So now this will go out to the different stakeholders that are part of the project.

In this case, we've submitted, let's call them our 70% plans. And so now the reviewers can make markups and comments on these. They can point things out, identify something here. We need to show the proposed drainage features. And some of those things may have been left off.