Transcripts
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hello, my dears.
Speaker B:Welcome to another episode of Design Under Influence.
Speaker B:This is Alex with ARC it.
Speaker B:We're IT company that helps architecture, design, engineering companies do their work so we can take care of their IT so they can do their work.
Speaker B:I also have my friends from Aurora BIM here, which you have seen our previous episodes.
Speaker B:We've been on summer vacations.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Liz has been doing some things, Megan's been doing some things, but.
Speaker B:Hey, ladies, welcome back.
Speaker B:Today we're tackling a very important subject.
Speaker B:How are you doing?
Speaker C:Doing great, thank you.
Speaker C:Happy to be back.
Speaker A:Yeah, happy to be back.
Speaker B:Summer is good.
Speaker B:Now we're talking about BIM360 versus transition to ACC docs.
Speaker B:We've done a lot of talking pre show and I just said, okay, let's press the record button.
Speaker B:Let's just flesh it all out on the air and let our people who are interested because the subject is timely.
Speaker B:So Megan, maybe you can.
Speaker B:Or Liz, you can kind of introduce us into the subject.
Speaker B:What are the key differences?
Speaker B:Why this all of a sudden?
Speaker B:Now a topic?
Speaker A:Sure, I'll go first.
Speaker C:Yeah, please do.
Speaker A:So essentially there is a cloud platform that Autodesk provides its users for sharing of data and for hosting of live Revit models, AutoCAD files, things like that.
Speaker A:And they created the first version, which was called BIM360, about, I'd say, almost 20 years ago now.
Speaker A:15.
Speaker A:It was actually called BIM360 Team at one point and they migrated the name to just bim360.
Speaker A:So they like to do that, migrate and improve and change the name so that it is clear that there's a newer and better version of something.
Speaker A:So in the recent years, they have been putting a lot of effort and development into the new and improved BIM360, which is referred to as Autodesk Construction Cloud Docs, which has many different components in it that can be used for all aspects of the AEC industry.
Speaker A:Construction, consulting, design, all those.
Speaker A:The different parts of it are now all in one construction cloud.
Speaker A:That's why they've named it the Autodesk Construction Cloud.
Speaker A:And so basically all of the.
Speaker A:All of the features that we knew and love, know and loved back in BIM360 are in ACC docs.
Speaker A:But they are improving and making those better and taking in feedback from clients and basically developing that system further.
Speaker B:What a great marketing effort on naming things.
Speaker B:I mean, right?
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:BIM360 is quite sexy.
Speaker B:It's good.
Speaker B:It's good.
Speaker B:It's a good name.
Speaker B:Everybody can connect to it somebody left or something and then it's now acc.
Speaker B:Was it Autodesk Construction Cloud?
Speaker B:Yeah, Cloud Documents.
Speaker B:Anyway, it's probably going to be renamed something cooler later on, but let's talk about it.
Speaker B:So what is what some of the main things that are changing and how soon people should start?
Speaker B:Have you seen like bulkier clients migrating and engaging you for that purpose or have you seen kind of slow burn on migrations?
Speaker A:Well, Autodesk was pretty smart, I think in the way they set this up.
Speaker A:You essentially have access to both sides and they just flipped a switch as soon as ACC Docs was available and you got to see both.
Speaker A:So in the BIM360 platform there's a little button that says go to Unified Projects and that flips you over to the ACC Docs side where you still see your BIM360 projects.
Speaker A:They just have a little B beside them instead of a little globe.
Speaker A:So they made it really easy for people to just.
Speaker A:When you have a new project created on the ACC Doc side and you're seeing very similar workflows and like setup for projects, the like actual.
Speaker A:The interface looks slightly different so you can tell which side you're on.
Speaker A:And I do like the ACC Docs interface a little bit more.
Speaker A:It's more kind of the folders look more like a File Explorer folder.
Speaker A:They look less like bubbly and bim e, I guess from the Vim360 side.
Speaker A:So I know that's one change that I think a lot of people have found nice.
Speaker A:It's just a little bit easier to navigate around.
Speaker A:But essentially, yeah, they made it easy for people to not even have to say they're going to switch.
Speaker A:They just need to start creating new projects on this other side and.
Speaker A:And they get all of these other new features and Support from Autodesk versus.
Speaker B:No support versus no support.
Speaker A:If something goes wrong on the BIM360 side now you're in trouble.
Speaker B:Okay, what are some of the main features that are.
Speaker B:I know you're going to be bridging in here, but what are some of the main features that are advantage that maybe more of a leap forward rather than just a small improvement.
Speaker B:What are some of the good things in ACC Docs?
Speaker A:Well, you read my mind.
Speaker A:The big one for me is still bridging.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:The fact that it allows companies to work on their own hubs and collaborate so they can send projects back and forth files back and forth to each other and collaborate and not all have to go work on one company's hub that's still the big one for me.
Speaker A:That's the one that we are pushing clients that are on the BIM 360 side.
Speaker A:If they are collaborating with a large group of consultants, that it just makes more sense to do it.
Speaker A:On the ACC Doc side.
Speaker A:They have also improved features which we don't use a whole lot, but I know they've improved the coordination module.
Speaker A:They released it on the BIM360 side and I know there was a lot of cool quirks.
Speaker A:I used it on a couple projects over there and I know there was a lot of feedback that they got from that.
Speaker A:And on the ACC Doc side is where they implemented all of the updates and the upgrades in order to basically fix any of those errors or provide new ways of working that made it more like navisworks.
Speaker A:Those are the two main ones for me.
Speaker A:And the big one is being able to have support for autodesk.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And that support is also, as you mentioned before, since they're not supporting 360, all the new stuff shows up in ACC, like for example, content catalog.
Speaker C:If you only hang out in BIM360, you're never going to know that that has come out or be able to really use it.
Speaker C:You can use it through revit, but you won't be able to configure it and access it and stuff until you move over to that side.
Speaker A:Liz, you brought up a good point.
Speaker A:I totally forgot.
Speaker A:That's the other bonus of switching over is you when you're in revit.
Speaker A:Now, instead of having locally saved shared parameter files and locally saved BIM libraries, you now have a cloud hosted version of this, which is genius.
Speaker A:You should.
Speaker A:We should have had this from the beginning cloud hosted files because people are working all over the world.
Speaker A:You might not have all have access to that little shared parameter file.
Speaker A:So it's really nice to be able to use those features as well up there on the ACC Docs side.
Speaker B:Yeah, perfect.
Speaker B:So why aren't everyone just sort of jumping in with both feet?
Speaker B:Do you.
Speaker B:I'm just trying to surface this.
Speaker B:I'm just trying to like pull this out.
Speaker B:Is this, is this something that you, your you guys as consultants for bim, is this something that you do a lot of right now in the migration?
Speaker B:So from a migration perspective, are people migrating existing projects?
Speaker B:They're starting new projects, they're having trouble.
Speaker B:What is it that they're asking you your help with?
Speaker A:They are asking.
Speaker A:I think they're asking help with the new platform.
Speaker A:A lot of the new clients that we onboard, we start them out in ACC docs.
Speaker A:So we do a lot of training in how to set up templates and user roles and permissions and things like that.
Speaker A:That that side is also a lot more detailed than the old BIM 360 side was for roles and permissions and being able to access your data.
Speaker A:So that part.
Speaker A:Let me see.
Speaker A:Sorry, I forgot.
Speaker A:I forgot the question.
Speaker B:It's fine.
Speaker B:The question is what are you guys working on?
Speaker B:Where are you helping the most in this is.
Speaker B:Is like.
Speaker B:In other words, I'm trying to find what the potential issues are with this transition and what people are afraid of.
Speaker A:Yeah, the, the potential issues are for larger projects where there's a ton of data.
Speaker A:On the BIM360 side, there is really no easy way to just press a button and say I want to move all this data over to the ACC Doc side.
Speaker A:That is the biggest one that I'm seeing because the, there's two types of data.
Speaker A:There's the cloud hosted data.
Speaker A:That is a collaborative file.
Speaker A:So the revit files, that's the core of all of this.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And those files are linked to other files and they are, you have to, you have to post them up on the platform.
Speaker A:When you move everything over, you have to redo that.
Speaker A:It's not just a simple download and upload into this new side.
Speaker A:You also have to go and relink all of the files that were linked into that project to a different.
Speaker A:It's a different file path now because you're on the other side.
Speaker A:And so if you have large, large projects with multiple consultants, all in one, one project, working as a team, it is kind of a daunting effort to move over to the other side.
Speaker A:There is a tool that Autodesk has, I forget the name of it, but we've tested it and it does duplicate the files.
Speaker A:And basically anything that, anything that exists on the BIM360 side, it will copy and move to a new project on the ACC Doc side.
Speaker A:But it does not maintain any of that cloud hosted proper, any of the cloud hosted properties or any of the.
Speaker A:It doesn't redo any of the links within the model.
Speaker A:So you still have to manually download those files, post them and relink.
Speaker B:Is it generally beneficial to move a large project?
Speaker B:Would you.
Speaker A:No, the only reason I would.
Speaker A:And actually we have one team right now that would really benefit from bridging because of integration with other teams on different hubs.
Speaker A:So it would be a huge benefit for them to move over because right now, in order to get data.
Speaker A:There's a network of projects that are happening on the ACC Doc side that are using bridging and that's great.
Speaker A:Everyone's just sharing files and there's no sending, there's no downloading and uploading and except four, to copy these files into this one project that's still stuck on BIM 360.
Speaker B:So from what we were able to find, doing the little research, that BIM360 is not going away, so people will still have access to previous projects.
Speaker B:But are you advising clients now to start all the new projects in ACC Docs?
Speaker B:Is there a reason why they wouldn't?
Speaker C:I don't think so.
Speaker C:Even though the way like the user interface is a little different, but it's not wildly different.
Speaker C:Of course there's always the.
Speaker C:I'm used to what I know you like.
Speaker C:When they reorganize the grocery store, there's a little bit of that.
Speaker C:But otherwise I can't think of any reason not to.
Speaker B:Okay, all right.
Speaker B:Any other last advice as to how to approach this?
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So from what I see is like, hey, okay, A, it's not being supported.
Speaker B:B, the bridge is wonderful feature that allows people to work on the projects, you know, in.
Speaker B:Within the individual companies instead of otherwise.
Speaker B:And then the third feature is the content library.
Speaker B:Is that what you called it?
Speaker C:Yeah, Content catalog.
Speaker A:Yeah, content catalog and the shared parameter cloud version.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:There's no future in creating projects in BIM360, is there?
Speaker B:Like, okay, I was going to wrap up, but I do have one more question.
Speaker B:Is there a use case where creating your project in BIM360 is still beneficial and valid decision?
Speaker A:No, no, there's no reason there's.
Speaker A:All of the features of BIM360 exist on the ACC DOC side plus plus more.
Speaker A:So there's no reason that you would want to go with a side that's limited when more more exists.
Speaker B:Okay, ladies and gentlemen, you've heard it here first.
Speaker B:Maybe not first, but you've heard it here, definitely.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And we have the resources for you.
Speaker B:So Aurora bim, they're busy, they're growing, they're fantastic.
Speaker B:But I think they can still find their hearts to help you if you're looking, if you have issues with all the granularity setting up the new, you know, roles, permissions, users, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:I think that gets.
Speaker B:That's important stuff to get it all set up right.
Speaker B:And if you have any questions, check them out.
Speaker B:Aurora Bim.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:You can find them on ChatGPT or your preferred AI search tool.
Speaker B:And don't forget about ARC IT.
Speaker B:We do help you with your IT issues if things don't work.
Speaker B:We're right there for you.
Speaker B:And Yvonne, thank you very much for your time.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:I have one more thing to add.
Speaker A:Oh no, can I add one more thing?
Speaker B:Come on out with it.
Speaker A:Some people think that it requires an additional license to work on the ACC Doc side and that is not true.
Speaker A:You have same access.
Speaker A:There's no additional cost.
Speaker A:So that's another reason why there's no reason not to use it.
Speaker B:That's a big one.
Speaker B:So no cost?
Speaker B:Yeah, no, no difference.
Speaker A:Same cost as BIM360.
Speaker A:You might as well be using ACC docs.
Speaker A:Sorry, I forgot about that earlier.
Speaker B:No, it's perfect.
Speaker B:Zero friction.
Speaker B:Alrighty, we'll see you all next time.
Speaker B:Thank you very much for watching, listening.
Speaker B:Thanks and hopefully we helped you out today.
Speaker B:See you on the next one.
