At Autodesk University in New Orleans, the company announced enhancements to its Autodesk Construction Cloud software platform that drive building information modeling (BIM) deeper into the construction project, making BIM-derived insights more accessible to those managing production in the field.
IronPros caught up with Christine Acker, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Autodesk to get deeper context on what this means for contractors using or considering Autodesk Construction Cloud.
IP: What problems in the field are these changes addressing? What pain will go away thanks to the launch of:
CA: Model-based workflows in assets are addressed. There is rich data in the model that does not always make its way to construction and asset tracking. If it does, it requires a manual process to extract the model data and import it into the equipment tracking tool.
With the release of model-based workflows, teams can link models to the assets tool and extract data directly from the model. This reduces the manual time spent, decreases the loss of data between phases and ensures that changes to the model will be captured in Assets. Additionally, since Assets leverages the models, users will be able to view their asset information in the model itself – giving teams a clear context in 2D or 3D of where things should be going.
The application now also offers a model property breakdown.
As buildings are becoming more and more complex, so are the models, but often teams don’t need to see all information in the model. For example, they may only want to look at certain trades or perhaps a floor of the building, because if they look at the whole model it may be unwieldy, have more project information than just the trades needed for the coming weeks or have too many clashes or issues to focus on for their specific meeting. Today, to deal with that, BIM managers end up going back to the design authoring tool to break them down, but this takes time and risks having out-of-date models floating around.
With Model Property Breakdown, BIM Managers can now create views that focus on the specific project elements. Once this view is made, teams can view only the clash results or issues for the view – allowing the team to focus on the part of the project that is most important to them. Additionally, custom model views provide teams onsite with focused data for the job at-hand.
It is now also easier to publish models to the field.
Today, to get models to the mobile application requires multiple applications, multiple stakeholders, and often a change in file format to make is easily consumable onsite.
BIM Managers can now save custom model views directly from BIM Collaborate to dedicated mobile folders in Autodesk Docs. This provides a quick way to publish custom views requested by teams onsite.
IP: Does the Reality Capture in Autodesk Construction Cloud move Autodesk further into the OpenSpace, Constru, RedTeam space? Is there progress tracking or other functionality to turn images into structured data for decision support?
CA: There is a lot that can be done with the Reality Capture files in ACC. They can be used to set a container file, measure existing conditions, aggregate and align with renovation models, or assign issues. Additionally, with a Navisworks Add-in, teams can run clash detection using the existing conditions from the reality capture file. And as a project progresses, site leaders can take floor-by-floor laser scans to capture work being done or as-builts.
IP: Are these features released in the cloud product now, or are some of them net new SKUs an Autodesk customer will need to buy up to?
CA: These features are all in existing Autodesk Construction Cloud products. Model-based workflows in Assets is included with Autodesk Build. Model Property Breakdown will be in Autodesk BIM Collaborate, Autodesk Build and Autodesk Docs. Publish to field will be offered as a public beta for Autodesk BIM Collaborate users.
