Autodesk Model Coordination for Design and Construction Streamlines Process

EDWIN BAILEY: Hi, I'm Edwin Bailey with Skanska. I'm going to be presenting on how Autodesk model coordination for design and construction can streamline the process. We're going to be going over a fully cloud-based workflow. And I'm excited to share our lessons learned and best practices in addition to some project examples. So let's get into it.

I did mention I work for Skanska. We are a global company. We have offices within 11 countries worldwide. I am located in the Houston, Texas office. I work regionally in the central part of the US, and I work on a lot of cool, fun projects for Skanska. We do have 30 offices within the US as well.

Our journey is really how we came into the cloud, we started out in beta. We're going to go through what that example, what that looked like, and then move into our current workflow. So some of the benefits that I see with cloud-based model coordination is that the information is constantly updated. And so you always have the latest and greatest.

And so that really benefits the entire team, all stakeholders. And so the team members can upload their models as they make changes and then see how they are affected in relationship to all the other disciplines within the platform. And really, that makes for an overall better coordination experience, and it makes it much less siloed.

And so you can have almost near real-time access to the information, which is pretty powerful. With that comes increased stakeholder participation. And so we like to start off early on with constructability reviews with our design team, but also, we'll see increased participation from owners within our own company from general contracting and then subcontracting.

And so the nice thing about this platform, too, is that you don't have to be an expert in the 3D modeling programs to utilize it. Once it's kind of set up and it's running, that might be a little bit more technical, but once it's up and running, pretty easy for any user to get in and to add their expertise, their know-how to the conversation. And this is a great platform to enhance communication.

There's auto-generated issue reports. Email notifications go out as issues are created. There's an awesome instant messaging platform that is fun to see when people utilize that to communicate back and forth. And being able to see and resolve their issues directly in the applications where they're modeling them is pretty powerful.

So here's an example of model coordination. Right now, there's three primary tabs in that. You get your Models, Clashes, and Views. Here, we're looking at the models, and we can go in and add them individually and combine them so you can see a holistic view of your project. You can turn on and off different models. Navigation is pretty simple. You've got your standard view cube as well that's there. And so like I mentioned, it's pretty easy for anybody to get in and start looking at it.

A very, very powerful feature is this automated levels tool, which is generated from the Revit models. And so it allows you to slice and dice the model and get in and analyze it. One caveat, though, is that you'll notice that in this level selection tool, there's multiple level fours. Now, those are probably set up as working levels for modeling purposes. Sometimes, you get a really thin slice. So I'm going to go in and explain later how you can turn those off.

As far as navigation goes, first person perspective is a great tool to get in and look at the model from an interior perspective, although not entirely necessary. With the standard navigation controls, you can click and zoom in and rotate around objects pretty easily. There's also a great measure tool. So as you're doing an analysis of just looking at the model and stuff, you can measure things out. And then as always, the properties from the BIM models get carried over. So you can click on elements and see what those properties are.

And so all in all, it's a great visual tool of combining the models, but the information is accessible to everyone at that point. And it's really easy to navigate, really easy to get in and look at the models and dissect them. And that really increases stakeholder participation across the board, and we're excited to use this platform.

So when we first started to utilizing it, we had a campus project. It was kind of ambitious, being that it was just barely out in beta. And we primarily used Glue and Navisworks so the coordination on these projects. But we did pull them in to the software, and we started to analyze, well, what can we do with this?

And it turns out that we weren't super successful with this. We did do some internal reviews, and we found some things that we needed to fix on the models. But we primarily used those other platforms. About the same time, however, we were working on another project, and this one, we decided, you know what, we're going to see what we can really do with this platform. So it was about 2008, and we wanted to utilize this for design coordination.

And so the platform was still pretty beta at that point. And we wanted to find a way to have the design team collaborate because being a culinary arts building, there was a lot of equipment and things that needed to go in there and a lot of services to those equipment that needed to be properly coordinated.

And so during that design process, this was a great valuable tool to be able to run clash detection. We could group classes based off of specific models. And the only thing that it really lacked was a way to document that. And I know there's multiple ways of documenting that in some other platforms.

But we ended up using more of a copy-paste method. And so we did screen captures, and then we would copy element IDs out of the coordination model as we were creating assigned clashes. So let me show you what that looked like. It looks like it may have been a lot of work.

But on a weekly basis, our project engineer would go in, and she would extract out the screen captures and the element IDs for the design team. And then we would talk about those in our coordination meetings. So this was a weekly process, and it worked. But once we were able to get the actual issues, it became a game changer.

Here's a project where it's another campus project. It's one of our biggest projects in Texas, a lot of new buildings, additions, renovations. And we thought, OK, after that experience and after some of the new features in the platform had built out, and we had successfully done this multiple times on coordination for design projects, we thought, OK, the software is now ready that we could implement this not only for the design coordination, which is what we did on these buildings, but also, for construction coordination.

And so these were the first two projects where rather than just doing design coordination between the architects and engineers, we started out with that process. So during the design process, we had one of our main experts in the field go in and provide constructability feedback to the design team throughout the process. So that way, the documentation, there was a lot of issues that were precoordinated and preworked out before we ever got to the construction. And so that really streamlined the process downstream with our subcontractors.

And on these two projects, we were able to bring in all of our subs and have them work directly in the software versus more of a desktop application. So we're all in the cloud. We're all collaborating, assigning issues. And I will say that none of the team had previous experience with this, but they were all able to pick it up and utilize this new platform. And these two projects were a great success through our coordination efforts.

So the other cool thing about this is that we were able to set up a single project for model coordination, and we had kind of two separate spaces. We would have the design coordination folder with all of our buildings and all of their files in there, and then we would have our construction coordination folder. And so those are two separate spaces.

But what was cool about that is we could set up the separate spaces for the different phases of coordination as well as all those buildings in there in a single project. And that's a pretty powerful tool to be able to bring an entire campus into a single platform and then assign per-- we had different subs on different buildings, and we were able to go in and assign each one of those subs and those companies to the correct access for the projects as well as for the design team. So this was a phenomenal way of organizing the project and coordinating it for during the design and the construction phase.

So once we had completed those two projects, we thought, OK, what's the next big thing that we could utilize this on? And since we had a proven workflow, we decided we would use it on one of our large commercial development projects here in Houston. The interesting thing about this project is that it is one of Skanska's own commercial development projects. So we are both the owner and the general contractor on this project.

And just a quick little overview-- the cool thing about this site is that it's wrapped around essentially like a boomerang around an existing hotel. And so there's all these views that face out towards this Discovery Green Park. And so it's a fun design, a very challenging design to build, footprint to build on.

And just a little bit of extra detail, there's multistory level parking, multiple terraces for the building. There's some retail on the ground space, so a very fun and unique Class A office space building. And I think the most interesting thing about it is how it stands around that existing building. And the core of the building is on the back side. And so a very fun project, a fun one to coordinate with a lot like high end, we had a design architect, architect of record, engineers on the project.

So we were all collaborating in the cloud, and we would do this for both the design coordination-- so we brought in Skanska CD as the owners, the design architect, architect of record, engineer, general contractor as ourselves, and we were doing this during the pandemic. And so the design coordination was all done virtually. And again, this platform was phenomenal for being able to coordinate together as a team.

And again, none of these individuals had previously utilized the software, but they were all able to pick it up quite successfully. So on this particular one, we had another MEP specialist that ran our design coordination meetings as well as the construction coordination. And he's done a phenomenal job. And this is the first time he's ever even been in the platform. So my hat's off to Him

How it looks on the design coordination is a little bit different than construction coordination. So we had about 10 Revit files, 12 model views that get extracted. So we'll go in, and we'll take the MEP, which is depending on how the project's split out engineer-wise can be in a single file or not, and the software is able to allow us to separate it and subdivide the models so that we can run clash between those individual disciplines.

We had zero CAD unless you want to count some of the site stuff, but we didn't really pull that in for the actual 3D coordination for the design coordination. And we really utilized that level selection tool as we were going through and looking at the models. In total, there was about 12 models that we were clashing between disciplines. On the construction side, however, it gets a lot more complicated.

The thing that I found that was interesting on this project is that it's primarily between general contractor and subcontractors, the coordination process. But because of the experience through the design coordination, the design architect, our architect of record, and the engineer, as well as Skanska CD as owner were all still very much engaged in this process with our subcontractors. And the communication back and forth was better than I've ever seen on a project.

As far as Revit files, we had about six different Revit disciplines per level. We had four CAD files. So now we're integrating some other software into this, other data sources, which complicates things. And on average, we had about 10 models per level. And so we had to split the model out, or at least, we chose to split the model out per level based off of those CAD files. And rather than just 12 design models, we ended up with 300 plus. We're actually still in the process. So we're not 100% done with the coordination, but we're getting close.

So what does that look like compared to design and construction coordination and the actual construction coordination setup? And we're able to work on either our own account, or if we want to work with design and they already have a platform set up, we'll jump in on theirs and provide feedback.

And typically, you'll go in, and you'll see your models separated out, again, if there are multiple disciplines within a file on the design side. On the construction side, a lot of times, those disciplines get reworked for shop drawings and prefabrication and things like that. And so those will be separate files a lot of times. And so there's less of subdividing the models, but again, it just depends on how things are bought out and subdivided.

But the amount of players and individuals, it grows almost exponentially it seems. So that setup, again, it becomes a little bit more challenging on the construction side. And I think the software, previously, you couldn't handle a construction coordination workflow, but the way that it is currently, I think it works phenomenally for that as well.

So let's just go over a little overview of the design coordination. And we're going to show a quick video here. So right now, you'd need to go in and set up a model coordination, and it's based off of a folder. So underneath Project Admin Model Coordination, you'll set up a separate folder. We set it up for the design coordination.

All of the documents lived underneath Document Management. And so it's a separate folder that the design team or ourselves could go in and upload models. And then those models would extract out the geometry and model views based off of the settings that we would set up.

And so once those are extracted, they show up in the Model Coordination. And so here, you'll notice I'm selecting the MEP. So that single MEP file gets subdivided into those three discipline files. And so that's set up within the Revit file itself. You also have views here.

This is a way of combining which models you want to see. And on the design side, you typically don't have too many models. And so you can just select them all and click View. Interesting thing is we actually did kind of more of a logistical model as well with our crane as well. So we pulled that in because the site footprint was so tight. But it's able to handle all of this geometry from all of those design disciplines quite well.

Again, during design construction, we're utilizing that level selection. And from here, we're able to go in. The users, whether it be owner or architect, engineer, or ourselves, we can go in and analyze the model visually as well as go into clash mode. And so clash mode is super powerful in this program. I really loved the way that it works because it allows us to specify what our primary model is and then turn on or off the clashes that we want to see and focus in on based off of all those other models.

And here, I have all the models loaded, but I can go in and say, hey, clash just the mechanical model with some of these other disciplines. And it then isolates and highlights just the clashes of those models. And so we were able to do this per level. And so we would run clashes, and we would swap out what our primary model was, and it would group those clashes accordingly. And we could jump from level to level and go in and see, how is the coordination stacking up from level to level?

And then also, we could see it from an entire model perspective. So if we wanted to go in and look at the design model and say, OK, how are our risers working out? Where are our issues? We could go in and see the model in its entirety and quickly hone in on those key major focus areas where we have issues and whether it be clashing with structural or anything else.

And then, the fact that the software had evolved to where there was the issues capability where we could go in and start to document, identify, and assign who needed to do what. And so on this project, we ended up, I think there was over, I'd say about 80 to 90 issues that we had identified and assigned. But a lot more of that, too, was just visually getting into the model and having the designers be able to look at their models compared to the other ones and say, OK, we have some issues here, and we're able to work out a lot that didn't even get documented.

On the construction side, let's go in and take a quick brief overview of how that process worked. So the construction coordination is very similar. We're going to set up a separate coordination space, keep that separate because we have different parties that are involved. And so it's another folder within Document Management. And then you'll want to go in and create your subfolders.

So on this particular project, rather than multiple buildings on a campus, this was multiple levels because we had a lot of different files. So we kept the Revit files in the root of the project folder. And on the different level files, we used that to organize all of the CAD files because those were typically modeled per level anyway.

So we wanted to just have a nice organization. And so it's just the coordination space is set up on that main subfolder, and then it's able to extract and pull all of the files from the subfolders. And so you'll see that you have hundreds of extracted models, whether they're from CAD or from Revit.

Again, on the Revit models, we actually ended up subdividing the discipline models per level as well. And I'll show you why we did that. But this is where having a good naming convention is key. So I'm able to do a search here based off of a level, highlight those, filter out those models, and then save them as specific views.

And so views are essentially just a list of models that you want to have loaded. And so you can jump between those views and say, I want to go from level 1 to 2 to 3 or whatever. So on the left, you can see all the different models that have been loaded in and then quickly jump in from regular mode to clash mode, again, specifying what is my primary model that I want to look at and then clash compare to any other discipline, whether it be structural or anything else?

And really powerful to jump between levels and issues were huge, so very beneficial. It's a very simple system. You've got open, answered. In this example here, I'm going in, and I'm reviewing a thumbnail of what the original clash was to what was answered. It turns out that one of the lights was missed, and it didn't get lowered like the rest of them.

So what I'm quickly doing is I'm reopening that issue. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to type in a little note and let them know, hey, you missed one essentially. So pretty powerful to jump back and forth through that system. So your color coding is orangish, blue when it's been answered, and then gray when you've closed it out.

Here's another quick example as far as we're in clash mode. We're going in and reviewing some duct work. And we want to isolate that and say, hey, let's just make sure that we're out of the structural model here first. So I'm going to isolate the structural model. We'll notice that there is some issues with the duct work clashing with the structural beams.

And so the nice thing is that it does group these depending on the perspective of what your primary model is. And so I'd like to keep the models that I know want to assign the issue to as the primary, but that's not always the case. And the nice thing is you can group clashes.

And this is important here is you want to make sure that your thumbnail as you save this out is what you want because that's what's going to be presented later on to do a comparison between, hey, did they actually fix this, or is there still work to be done? And so another thing I like to do is go in the title and give them direction right there rather than put it down in the description below so that it's very direct. Hey, you got to lower the duct out of the beam.

We'll go in and assign that to a user. We'll give them a specific date. And the location, we'll set it up so that the reports know what level this is associated to. And once we click Create, the user that we assigned will get an email notification, and they can actually see this in their authoring software as well. And so this is a very powerful tool. I didn't really show you the instant chat messenger that's built into that as well, but you can have a conversation back and forth on those particular issues. And so hugely beneficial and very powerful communication tool.

So if that wasn't technical, get prepared because I'm going to do a little bit of a deep dive on some of these technical things. I'm probably going to have to go quick for timing here, but if you're not into the technical details, now would be a good time to check your phones. So I mentioned clash groups, and I would definitely say that this is way more powerful in the fact that it auto clashes the groups. And I love the way that it does it in the fact that depending on where your primary model is, you're going to have groups clash.

And so in this example, if we would have had the structural being set as the primary model, all of those ducts would have been grouped underneath a single clash, and we could have assigned it that way. And you may choose to do so. It just depends on how you want to work. And so there's a lot of flexibility there. And then you still, like I said, you can combine groups of clashes even further as you go in and assign them. So very powerful with the way that the clash groups work.

Issues, we love them. We love issues. Now that we've got them, I definitely think we're able to say goodbye to Navisworks for construction coordination because beforehand, I mean, it just wasn't possible. And so again, we first started utilizing the Issues tool and assigning them during design coordination.

And then after that was so successful, we were like, you know what? This is a game changer in the way that we can really combine information and have things much more accessible and way, way better workflow in my opinion than the desktop software. And so the fact that we're able to assign a single individual to a user or an entire company of multiple users if you have multiple people working on this project, It's just super powerful.

Admins, they're able to-- so as an admin, we're able to see everything. We can go in and filter things out by trade or company or whoever we have it assigned to and then what the status is, whether it's closed, opened, or answered. And so just a phenomenal, very simple, easy-to-use solution that works great. And this ties into the 2D documentational markups as well. So it's platform wide, and so just the way that it's been pulled into the model coordination, I think, is really, really powerful.

OK, one thing that kind of threw me off when we first started utilizing it was locations. So we were like, how do you edit these? OK, so these are set up underneath the Project Admin, and you can set these up however you want. Basically, you can say, hey, here's my building one. Here's my level 1, 2, 3, whatever, or even subdivide that even further based off of area.

So you set this up manually. And really, all it is is a way to help you filter out your issues as you've created them per location. And so you set them up in Admin. And then you do it once at the beginning of your project, and then they're there throughout the process. So that's just another key piece of information for you.

Project members are also important to set them up properly. So it's good to have them assigned to a company. And then as you're going in, and if you have a large project, you can go in and create your subfolders for your coordination spaces and assign different companies to that. And so it's a lot easier to assign company than individuals as well as manage the permission levels.

And so we like to be able to let the users be able to view, download, upload, but not delete. And that way, people aren't going to be able to delete other people's files by accident. And if they do happen to upload the wrong file, they can just notify us, and we'll delete it for them and clean things up. So that's a good workflow as far as project members.

Reports, I would say the reports are really beneficial for those that aren't assigned to the Issues because that gives everybody access to all issues within a project. And you can see how many of them are opened, how many of them are what phase or what status. And unfortunately, we have to do two reports. One is there's a very detailed report that has your thumbnails of the issues as well as the details on everything you've assigned. But you can't group by company, which is kind of what I would like to do.

So I ended up having to make another report. And that one, I have, instead of listed out in issues numerically, I have it grouped by company, and it doesn't have all the detailed information, but at least it lets each company know how many issues they have on their plate. And then for detailed information, they go online into the software itself, or they can access the other report.

All righty, so some best practices for Revit Views, Model Geometry-- as you're extracting out your views, what I found is that the default 3D view, the one with the little 3D squiggly brackets, that is the default one that gets extracted. And we all know in a work shared file with multiple people, that that either gets deleted or neglected, and there's always some random stuff going on in that view if it survives your project. So if you have visibility settings, work sets, phases, options, whatever's going on in that file, unless you specify a different model or different view, that's what's going to get extracted. So just be aware of that.

Your MEP should be separated out, so separate views. And then also, if you choose to, you can subdivide your model by level. So these are all separate views. It's what you see is what you get as far as being extracted. And you want to go into your publish settings, and this is where you want to create a separate set. You can call it BIM360 or ACC for Autodesk Construction Cloud. Specify which views you want that you've already set up in your project. Make sure that they both stay checked. And then as you upload your version of the model, it's going to continually extract those models.

So the only type of user error you might find is that somebody might uncheck a file, or they might add some extra views in there. And if you add too many, we had one instance where one of our subcontractors, they ended up loading like hundreds and hundreds of shop drying 3D views into their published set, and it bogged things down until we figured it out. But easy fix, you could just come in here and manage your publish settings again, and you're good to go.

So the other important thing I mentioned is the levels. And so you may not be aware of this, but there's a couple of different settings you want to have in there. So the key thing is I think it's good to have whatever the architect levels nomenclature is, follow that for your design disciplines so that you're consistent inside of BIM360.

Then if you have extra levels that you need to create for modeling purposes, whether it be structural MEP or whatever, you want to go in, and you want to go to the Settings and turn off building story. So that way, it doesn't think like, hey, this is a separate building story. I need to subdivide this and split the model out from level to level.

And so if you have a mezzanine or something that you need to have a specific level for for modeling purposes, but it doesn't actually make it out as a building story, you want to turn those off. And that way, they don't show up, and you're not going to have these weird thin slices in your model. You can also set your story above if it's not just the next level above where you have to skip one. You have a feature for that as well. So something to be aware of, and that's how you control that. And that's my recommendation as far as best practices for levels.

Naming conventions are huge. Everyone has their own set of standards here. So here's an example that we utilize. I won't get into the details here. I'll let you come back and look at these. But just know that they're important to be able to set up here properly so you can filter out building, company, trade, as well as levels. And it really helps out in managing and setting up your views with the different pieces of the models that you want to see as you're working.

Revit best practices, your levels should be-- or excuse me-- your file should be linked in internal origin to internal origin or project base point to project base point. But the way that the models are extracted, they're based off of the shared coordinate. So if you have a site plan that's a million miles away-- and well, being facetious here-- but if it's a far, far distance away from the actual true origin point, your models get extracted like that.

And so when you're working with CAD, I find that it's good to link those origin to origin as well. And then I'll show you on the next slide how we handle model alignment. But you do want to-- in the Revit files, you want to make sure that you got your level names, you manage your building stories, and you manage your publish settings so you know what's being extracted.

On CAD, this platform originally didn't work out too well with CAD, but as it continued to develop, it got really, really quite powerful. So like I mentioned, you don't want your CAD files to be linked to the origin, your Revit files based off of a shared coordinate. It's easier to keep those much closer to the true origin of the project and say, hey, model alignment is origin point in CAD to project origin in Revit.

Then, what you can do is align those within the software. And so we found point to point with cubes that the origin points of the files allowed us to initially align it up. And then as you add your new files, you can just copy over those settings from file to file. And it's a very speedy process to align all of your CAD to your shared coordinate from your Revit files if it differs from your project origin.

So I mentioned you can see these issues and things within the Revit authoring software. So here's a quick link for you. It's a little bit behind. You have to log in, access it through your products and updates. It's available, and it's great for updating and changing models. There's also a Navisworks plugin. I really tend to shy away from this just because I think the cloud platform is so powerful. I think this is a crutch for some people that just can't get away from Navisworks. But it is available.

And our workflow is not to create clashes or issues within Navisworks and uploading to the cloud, but more just to allow those that are comfortable in navigating in Navisworks to load the files, open it up, see the issues. We do have a few users that they would upload a secondary version of their models and make some slight tweaks and stuff before they would officially upload to the cloud. So that's a potential workflow that I think is good.

So who's ready to enter the matrix? All of you, right? OK, so if "you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Just a little side note there for Matrix fans. There is a clash matrix in the software. I find that it can be a little bit overwhelming as your project grows.

And I think as powerful as this could be, your best bet is to set up your views, go into clash mode per level, and really do a deep dive because you're always going to have false positives on clashes. You're never going to clear everything out 100%. And the way that our workflow is, just dive into those models.

The software is pretty phenomenal, pretty great. And we like utilizing it here at Skanska. So if there's any questions, I'll take those now. I really appreciate everybody's interest in this and appreciate everybody's time. Again, thank you, Autodesk, for having us. And we're looking forward to what the future holds for this platform.