AutoCAD Civil 3D BIM 360 Collaboration for Civil 3D

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2020 PRODUCT FOCUS by: Bryson Anderson BIM 360 Collaboration for Civil 3D

Autodesk’s BIM 360 platform connects project teams with a suite of products, from design to construction, all working from centralized project data. This unified platform, centralizes data in BIM 360 Document Management, where BIM 360 products can utilize the data across the project lifespan. One product, BIM 360 Design, has been connecting Revit teams for seamless cloud collaboration. The cloud collaboration tools in BIM 360 Design has now been extended to Civil 3D! ➲

Project teams can now collaborate in the cloud with both Revit and Civil 3D through BIM 360 Design. Though the methods for collaborating are different in Civil 3D and Revit, both enable Realtime collaboration, Anytime, Anywhere. In this article, we are going to focus on the new tools for BIM 360 Design, Collaboration for Civil 3D.

CLEARING UP THE TITLES When it comes to BIM 360, there are quite a few product names and titles, many of which sound the same. It can be quite confusing. Before we dive into the nuts and bolts, lets clear up some of this naming.

First, BIM 360 is the name of the platform, a collection of products for different areas of the project lifecycle. As of December 2019, these products include, Docs, Design, Build, Coordinate, Plan, Layout, and Ops. The name of each is typically appended with ‘BIM 360’. Think of it like a car, which is typically called by its

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2020 PRODUCT FOCUS make and model name. BIM 360 is the ‘make’, and the product name is the ‘model’. Each product is a toolset, containing several sub tools or modules. The two products we will focus on, are Docs and Design. The core of the BIM 360 platform is the Docs, or Document Management product. This is the Project Setup, Administration and Document Management modules. The Account Admin module is where anything BIM 360 gets started. This is where projects are created and configured, companies and members are added, analytics are reviewed, Etc. The Project Admin module is used to configure and administer an existing project, and the Project Home dashboard gives you quick insight into project status and information.

The Document Management module is the data repository, where all project files are stored, folder access is granted, file viewing, markup and issue creation occurs, etc. You can subscribe to BIM 360 Docs by itself and take advantage of these modules, or by subscribing to any other BIM 360 product, access to the Docs product is included with that subscription.

BIM 360 Design extends the project data to Revit and Civil 3D for cloud collaboration and work-sharing. As mentioned earlier, a seat of Design grants that user access to all the modules of BIM 360 Docs, as well as the collaboration modules of Design.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2020 PRODUCT FOCUS This is where naming can really get confusing. The predecessor to Design, built on A360 Team, was called Collaboration for Revit. This enabled cloud work-sharing for Revit 2015-2018.3. Access to this legacy product is included with Design. For Revit 2018.3 and beyond, the module is called Revit Cloud Worksharing. This enables Revit real-time collaboration and co-authoring for Revit versions 2018.3 and later. The Design Collaboration module, who’s name often gets confused with the Revit Cloud Worksharing module or the entire BIM 360 Design product, enables organization and control of each project team’s data and how other project teams can see and consume one another’s data. I wish Autodesk would have named this module differently as they used very similar wording in marketing and help material about the BIM 360 Design product. Don’t be surprised if you see material from, Autodesk or otherwise that use the term ‘Design Collaboration’ for more than just this module.

The next module and focus of this article is Collaboration for Civil 3D. Using the Desktop Connector, a desktop service that connects Windows File Explorer with your BIM 360 data, extended project teams can collaborate on Civil 3D projects, with automated file locking, XREF and Data Shortcut support.

As the BIM 360 platform has evolved, names have been changed, and in some cases, very similar names used for different things. This has created quite a bit of confusion. This hopefully clears up some of the confusion with BIM 360 product and module naming

GETTING SETUP Before getting into the nuts and bolts of Collaboration for Civil 3D, there are a few things you need to do in preparation. The first step is to ensure your Autodesk User Account has a BIM 360 Design license assigned to it. BIM 360 products are single named user subscriptions. This means a subscription, or seat of the product needs to be assigned to your Autodesk User Account, so when you login, the system recognizes you are licensed to use the product.

THOUGH THE METHODS FOR COLLABORATING ARE DIFFERENT IN CIVIL 3D AND REVIT, BOTH ENABLE REALTIME COLLABORATION, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.

Licenses are assigned by your Autodesk Account Administrator via the Autodesk Account.

Before you can start uploading files, you need a place to put them, a BIM 360 project. If you are a BIM 360 Account admin, you can create a new project, or if you are joining an existing project, you will need to be invited by an admin of that project. This project could be on your company’s BIM 360 Account, or a different company’s BIM 360 Account.

The BIM 360 Account is the overall storage container for a company’s BIM 360 projects, and configurations. You will likely be invited to projects on multiple accounts. Projects in both Desktop Connector, and the BIM 360 Web interfaces are listed under their associated account name as the parent folder. When someone

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2020 PRODUCT FOCUS

invites you to a project they have setup on their Account, and you accept the invitation you receive via email, you will then see that account, and any project(s) from their account you are invited in your project list. Figure 3

A quick note on BIM 360 Design licensing. A seat of BIM 360 Design assigned to your Autodesk User Account allows you to use the BIM 360 Design tools on any and all Accounts/Projects you are invited to.

The last step is to install and sign into the Autodesk Desktop Connector. You can download the Desktop Connector from: https://www.autodesk.com/bim-360/desktop-connector The installation is simple, run the .exe file that is downloaded, and click Install. Once the install finishes, sign in with your Autodesk account. This will put a ‘BIM 360’ location in ‘This PC’ in your Windows File Explorer. You will then be able to access any BIM 360 accounts, and projects you are invited to via Windows File Explorer.

The Desktop Connector functions in a ‘Files on Demand’ method. This means though you see the entire set of files/folders, they are not all stored on your local system. When you access a file, it is then downloaded to your system and cached locally until it has been unused for 15 days, after which it will be automatically removed from your local cache.

Now that you have Desktop Connector installed and connected, a license to BIM 360 Design, and are a member of a BIM 360 project, you can get started with setting up and using Collaboration for Civil 3D. not accessible through the Desktop Connector, making it also not accessible through Civil 3D. All Civil 3D project files need to be placed in the Project Files directory. Copy your project data in by dragging and dropping, or CTRL-V to paste. Currently, there is no right click context menu in the Desktop Connecter for Copy/ Paste etc., only ‘New Folder’.

Once you have pasted or dragged and dropped in your data, a ‘Transferring Files’ window will appear to let you know your files/ folders are being uploaded. You can also monitor the upload status via the Pending Actions dialog. In the System Tray of Windows, you will see the white Autodesk ‘A’ Symbol of the Desktop Connector. Right click on the icon and select ‘Pending Actions’ to open the dialog box.

CONFIGURATION AND ACCESS The first step is to setup the project folder structure in BIM 360. This can be done in the BIM 360 Docs web portal or using the Desktop Connector folders. If you have a folder structure already created you want to copy to this project, use the Desktop Connector as there currently is not a folder upload in the web portal. There are two default parent folders in Docs, Plans and Project Files. The plans folder is a special type of folder, with uses cases, like a digital equivalent of printed contract drawings. However, it is

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2020 PRODUCT FOCUS

Figure 4

As you are working in the Collaboration for Civil 3D environment, it is a good idea to have the Pending Actions dialog open to monitor for any sync or other problems that may occur.

Now that you have your data uploaded, its time to open Civil 3D. Currently, only Civil 3D 2020.2 and later is supported. If you do not have the 2020.2 update installed, you need to install the update before continuing. The start screen for Civil 3D 2020.2 now has a ‘BIM 360’ location where you can browse the Accounts/Projects you have access to. The dropdown at the top of the screen allows you to switch which projects folders you are browsing. Clicking ‘Change Account’ will show you all Accounts you have access to, selecting an Account will then list the available projects.

On the metadata ribbon, to the far right is a gear icon that lets you select what meta-data you see about the files. I like to turn on at least Locked State, Local State, and Locked By fields. Click on the file you want to open, or right click to select between Open and Open Read-Only. As the file opens, the file is automatically locked so no one else can modify the file while you have it locked. (Unless of course you selected Read-Only, or it was already locked, and it forced Open Read-Only) You can also manually lock a file without opening it by right-clicking on the file in the Desktop Connector and clicking ‘Lock’. You can also manually unlock files you have locked in the same way. Be careful not to unlock a file you have open in Civil 3D; another user could lock the file and cause you to lose your work. Its best to let the lock/unlock happen automatically by the software.

DATA SHORTCUTS AND XREFS Next you need to set your Data Shortcuts working folder. Data shortcuts in BIM 360 Design use the same Data Shortcuts in Toolspace, on the Prospector tab as when your working locally, but you will now select a BIM 360 location via the Desktop Connector. If you do not yet have a Data Shortcuts Project folder in your BIM 360 project folder structure, create one. Then set the working folder to that location. Right click on Data Shortcuts, and select Set Working Folder, then browse to the BIM 360 location for your shortcuts. Once selected, you will see a Blue cloud icon, as well as a BIM 360:\... location set.

You can then create and reference Data Shortcuts the same way you are used to working locally.

Civil 3D X-References are also supported. When dragging and dropping / pasting files through the Desktop Connector, XREFS are automatically checked, uploaded to BIM 360 and paths updated. Even if you only copied in the host drawing, the XREF check will see that drawing has a reference, automatically go get that reference file if it can be resolved, and upload it, updating the path to a BIM 360 path. The referenced file will be copied to the project location, replicating the directory structure where it was found. If it is not able to resolve the reference, you will get an error message saying ‘Failure Gathering References’ and the missing

XREFS will be ignored and the host drawing uploaded with a broken reference.

To create a new reference, you follow the same procedure you normally do, but select the file to be referenced from the Desktop Connector folder structure. If you look at the absolute path for a reference you will notice its pathing to your C:\Users\UserName… Folder. But don’t worry the BIM 360 Design system makes the translation in the background to the cloud. Even though it shows a local path, when another user opens, it shows their local location of the desktop connecter, the translation from local folder to cloud is being made in the background.

To check for any updates to References and Data shortcuts, on the Collaborate tab, Cloud Collaboration panel of Civil 3D is a ‘Check Reference Status’ button. Clicking that will check for any updates and give you the pop-up message to reload to see the changes.

SHEET SET MANAGER We’ve covered several great features, that are working very well. But there is one feature often asked about, that is not yet supported in Collaboration for Civil 3D, Sheet Set Manager. It is on the road map, so expect to see this feature add at some point.

This can be a road block for those that rely heavily on sheet sets in their workflow. If you will be migrating to BIM 360 Design immediately, I would advise a workflow without using SSM until it is working and supported. Though you can create a .dst sheet set file, upload it to BIM 360, and open it from the Desktop Connector, it will not function correctly. Most features will not work, but worse, can cause you to lose work.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2020 PRODUCT FOCUS Because SSM is heavily relied upon, many people want to attempt work-arounds to use SSM in BIM 360. I want to give a word of caution on attempting this, and explain some of the pitfalls you will encounter. If you open a CAD file from the sheet set manager, it will open it from Desktop Connector, but it will not lock the file! As SSM is not supported, it does not have the capability to lock/ unlock files. You will also run into issues when attempting to publish from a sheet set. If you recall from earlier in this article, Desktop Connector only locally caches files you have opened in the last 15 days. When attempting to publish, any file in the set that you have not opened in the last 15 days will not be resolved and thus, won’t be able to publish. You would need to open every file referenced in the sheet set before being able to successfully publish.

Because each user is working on a separate locally cached copy of the sheet set, the Sheet Status data is not available. You would also need to manually lock the .dst file before adding any sheets or changing any properties so multiple users don’t overwrite one another’s changes.

CONCLUSION The Collaboration for Civil 3D module of BIM 360 Design is a great addition to BIM 360’s collaboration capabilities. Allowing collaboration on Civil 3D workflows, anywhere, anytime. Initial reports, and our testing show it is working well, but lacks a key feature support, Sheet Set Manager.

Bryson Anderson has worked in the IT industry since 2008. During this time, he has been involved in many aspects of IT including, Systems Administration, Networking, Telecom, Hardware, and IT consulting. He has supported large and small companies in a variety of industries including healthcare, software development, engineering and architecture; plan, implement, upgrade and maintain their IT infrastructure.

At ProSoft, Bryson admins all aspects of the internal IT infrastructure, and oversees ProSoft’s custom workstation and server division. With his knowledge and experience in IT, he consults with companies worldwide on the planning, implementation, and training of Autodesk data management and collaboration software. As well as assisting customers with the licensing, installation, and deployment of Autodesk products.

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