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Starting the Journey from C4R to B3D (BIM 360 Docs)

April 19, 2018April 24, 2018 Luke Johnson

If you are already a C4R user, for a while you can keep working as you are. But the entire platform is shifting from C4R to B3D (BIM 360 Docs), and you will eventually have to make the leap. In the long run, it will allow for more control, like folder-level permissions, so for big projects it is going to make a lot of sense. For now, there is some confusion out there (like in this Twitter thread), so here are some basic steps to activate a new BIM 360 Docs account, setup a Project, and then invite some collaborators into the project.

First, you can go to your account and use the special link to create a new BIM 360 Docs workspace. That is, if you are starting fresh in the new platform.

Here is the activation form notes (read carefully). Note: the links are different depending on how you activate it. For example, if you have an existing C4R account and you want to ‘transition’, you would use the relevant activation link for existing C4R customers :

Once done, you should have a new BIM 360 account:

And you just have to click the activate link in your email:

After that, you should be able to login to your BIM 360 workspace and start setting up some company settings, like adding a Logo and Business Units:

Setup a Business Unit:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/BIM360D/ENU/?guid=GUID-6A8990E7-A640-4267-83AF-64003B015F98

Finally, you can go ahead and Setup a Project:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/BIM360D/ENU/?guid=GUID-9C991F4C-7012-4770-B8F7-A1D45F5D9197

Then,

add Companies to your Workspace
Add Users to Companies.
And invite these Users to specific Projects.

In Revit 2018.3, after clicking Collaborate, you should be able to choose from 3 options:

You should see this in your Open dialog (if you have both a Team and a Docs entitlement):

Finally, you should be able to access Document Management, add folders, apply Permissions, and generally start work:

BIM 360 Design Released

April 10, 2018April 10, 2018 Luke Johnson

BIM 360 has just changed in a fundamental way. The trust environment is now more controlled, and it is sharing base technology with BIM 360 Docs. So instead of talking about C4R bolted onto A360 or BIM360, we will now be talking about ‘Revit files in this Docs module in this Team Project on BIM 360 Design’ (I think).

Revit 2018.3 is required and direct download link can be found here.

I’ll follow up with some more detailed information in the coming weeks.

Here is the post from Kyle:

All,
I wanted to welcome you, on behalf of the team here at Autodesk, to the Design Collaboration forum. This forum exists for conversations about the design collaboration workflows possible in the BIM 360 Design product, which released today. We look forward to the conversation. First though, I’ll try to answer some likely questions you all have.

What’s BIM 360 Design?

BIM 360 Design is the next generation of Collaboration for Revit (C4R). It enables the cloud worksharing you’ve come to love in C4R, but connected to the next generation BIM 360 platform. You can learn more about it here on our new product center, and below is an image that captures what comes with it.

You can see that within BIM 360 Design there are 2 next gen modules that are included, Design Collaboration and Document Management. Together with cloud worksharing, they represent the most seamless way to collaborate on Revit data across the globe. We’ll talk more about the new workflow in subsequent targeted posts.

What Happened to C4R?

C4R just became BIM 360 Design as of today. If you’re an existing subscriber, you’ll see the branding update in manage.autodesk.com shortly. If you have existing projects in-progress, working against BIM 360 Team (aka Classic), nothing really changes aside from the branding you see in the account portal. You can continue to work on those projects, and new subscriptions to BIM 360 Design can be allocated to new team members, who can then start to work on those existing projects. More detail can be found in this FAQ.

What Can I Do With BIM 360 Design?

With BIM 360 Design, BIM authoring teams can say goodbye to “high trust” as the only way to work, and hello to flexible dynamics between multi-discipline BIM authoring teams. Along with those improved access controls comes a whole new web and mobile experience delivered by Next Gen BIM 360. Across Document Management and the new Design Collaboration module, teams can:

Quickly and easily set up teams and define the data spaces they will work in.
Easily understand the current state of the project, with an aggregated view of the project data that can be navigated the way they think about it, not how our beloved authoring tools structure it.
Exchange data between teams in a controlled way, on the back of our new currency for data exchanges: Packages. These are like transmittals on steroids, allowing teams to curate the versions of Models, 2D Sheets, and 3D Views needed to communicate process.
Understand how data has changed over time. Change visualization can be enabled with the touch of a button on any BIM artifact contained in a Package. No more hunting for revision clouds or exporting the 3rd party tools.
Provide feedback on those BIM artifacts, with Markups and closed loop Issues created in Document Management (Issues are on their way to Design Collaboration).
Use the Preview version of Desktop Connector to collaborate on non-Revit project data, centralizing the data platform used for all Work in Progress (WIP) project data.
Use those BIM artifacts downstream for construction workflows across the Field Management, Project Management, and Model Coordination modules.

How Do I Get Started with BIM 360 Design?

If you’d like to start a new Project in this new way to work, you need to:

Get a BIM 360 Account
1. If you have an existing next gen BIM 360 account, you should automatically get the Design Collaboration module enabled tonight (April 9th US time zone)
2. If you don’t have an existing account, your Contract Manager should receive an email shortly with instructions on how to get one created.
Install the Revit 2018.3 Update
This update released today, and should be available in the Autodesk Desktop app. A direct download link can be found here. This is required for Revit 2018 to know how to communicate with next gen BIM 360.
Start a New Project and Enable Document Management + Design Collaboration
With these two modules enabled, along with the latest update of Revit, you have what you need to get started. We’ll have a separate thread that walks through the process to get up in running in more detail.

Hopefully, you all are as excited about this as we are. We’re biased though; we’ve worked hard based on lots of feedback and customer engagement to deliver this new way to work, and your continued feedback and engagement will make sure that we deliver on the needs you all have. Look out for subsequent discussions on specific parts of the overall product experience, and we look forward to hearing from there. Post here in this thread with general questions.

Cheers,

Kyle & the Team

Kyle Bernhardt
Product Line Manager
BIM Project Delivery
Autodesk, Inc.

Secrets to be Revealed in the next BIM360 Webinar

January 29, 2018January 29, 2018 Luke Johnson

I have been chatting with one or two industry insiders over at Autodesk recently, and there are some pretty big changes coming to the BIM360 fraternity of products. For the most part, it seems like these will be very welcome improvements. However, it may have an impact on how you run projects through BIM360, and so it might be advisable to check out the upcoming BIM360 webinar (link). Details below:

Stay up to date with everything new in BIM 360. Each month, join us and the BIM 360 Product Team to find out how you can take advantage of the most recent and upcoming product updates.
• Learn how BIM 360 can help you improve project delivery
• Stay up to date with the newest features
• Get early insights into what’s coming in the next updates
• Participate in Q&A with the BIM 360 Product Team
• Get the resources you need to be successful

If you are new to BIM 360, check out our product overview before the webinar and bring your questions.
Copy & Paste the following url into your web browser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bDXLJzga8&feature=youtu.be

How To Use Link Files with the Autodesk Desktop Connector

November 30, 2017December 1, 2017 Luke Johnson

The whole C4R thing with link files is a bit of a challenge at the moment. It will get better, but for now, there are at least two things that don’t match typical desired project delivery:

We essentially have a ‘high trust’ environment, which applies to everyone who is invited to a C4R project. High trust in this context means anyone can edit anything, if they have Editor permissions for the project.
Also, we don’t have folder structures for Revit files that have been initiated on C4R – they are all in the root folder. However, we can store Revit files in subfolders as a kind of dumb link file (not a collaborative model).

So, until it does get better… how do we use the Desktop Connector to link files from a non-C4R folder structure, into a C4R initiated file?

Basically, you take these steps:

Use Windows Explorer and the Autodesk Desktop Connector to manage your files and folder structure. Navigate to your BIM 360 Team project, add folders, and drag and drop Revit files into those folders.
Then, in Revit, in the Import / Link dialog, you can select the ‘BIM 360 Team’ link from the drop down list. You will notice some special things happening after you link one of these files.
Finally, you can observe the new ‘cloud’ pathed Revit models in the Manage Links dialog box. The saved path should start with Autodesk Drive:// and the Path Type is Cloud.

What does this all mean? Really, it just means the workarounds are getting slightly better. We don’t need to maintain a separate cloud storage repository for Revit models (like Box) just for the link files. And we shouldn’t need to go through too much pain to update the link models. Just drag-and-drop the new Revit link model into the correct folder in the Desktop Connector to update the link for everyone in the team.

This feature also works with things other than Revit files. So you can use the same process to store DWG files on BIM 360 Team and link them into your Revit model.

And the same process can be used for things like:

Keynoting Settings
Shared Parameter files
Assembly Code Settings
Material Libraries

Pretty much any project-linked resource can now be stored in the cloud, shared with a team, and linked into Revit.

C4R Best Practices for Performance and Improving Sync Speed

November 27, 2017November 28, 2017 Luke Johnson

A while back I posted about how to setup and deploy Collaboration for Revit. Things are moving quickly in this space, as more projects now need concurrent access to centralized models from a distributed team (say that quickly 5 times!)

Here is an updated list of a few best-practices for initial C4R project setup:

generally its a good idea to do a Reload Latest before Sync with Central
its best to be on the most current versions of Revit and their C4R extensions
baseline all workstations to the latest ISV certified drivers, reinstall the C4R v6 components using the .exe installer and flush all 4 caches being – CollaborationCache, PacCache, Communicator, User Temp Dir. This will ensure all workstations are at exactly the same Revit environment.
confirm that traffic to/from pubnub.com is successfully moving across your firewalls to/from the C4R workstations? That’s an important requirement for the Communicator panel; a key reliability and performance enhancement depends on this connectivity and without it the Communicator will fall back on an earlier implementation behavior which is known to be less reliable.
ADSK recommends that all users should use the personal accelerator.
To the best of each user’s ability, ADSK recommends self-scheduling SWC activity by using the Communicator timeline to avoid syncing when another user is syncing. See images below to help the team understand why this is important.
The success of this project likely hinges on the team’s ability to develop a way to coordinate SWC activity, as poor SWC scheduling is responsible for the major pain point for project teams. It should also be noted that the most egregious cases of poor SWC performance are due to users failing to self-schedule their SWC activity. When multiple SWC operations are in-flight simultaneously, Revit must go through multiple RL phases to maintain model and data integrity. this has the effect of greatly expanding SWC time, which is why we recommend that users check in the Communicator panel to see if a SWC is already in progress before attempting one. See the attached pptx for an explanation of why this is important.
Please review this Link here to understand the Proxy Server settings to unblock Autodesk A360 services
Please use this Link here for Proxy Server and domain exceptions for A360
The table below provide further information on minimum system requirements.
Note the connectivity speeds:

Sync with Central diagrams

As you can see below, when SWCs ‘overlap’ there is a performance hit. Good C4R management will require:

attempting to sync on a schedule… because modelling projects are easy to schedule, right?
using the Communicator (or some other IM tool) to keep team informed that you are syncing / about to sync. You could use a Slack channel per RVT for this?

I have added the above information to the Best Practices section of the Revit Collaboration Public Help notebook I created:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmvJg0j4a7kRo61EJKCpdkr3lhTecg

RTV Xporter Pro Updated to Support C4R, and How to Batch Upgrade Any Revit File Type

March 24, 2017May 9, 2017 Luke Johnson

RTV Xporter Pro is one of those addins that I can safely recommend to every Revit user. If you ever need to print more than one sheet, or export a model multiple times, or to multiple formats, this tool is going to save you time. In fact, I think a large percentage of Revit users probably already have it! So, what’s the latest?

As you probably realise, Collaboration for Revit (C4R), Autodesk’s ‘Revit Server in the Cloud’ solution, is gaining popularity globally. It is genuinely a good way to get a team of people in different places to work together in real-time on a Revit project… provided you have good internet that is! So, it is great to see that RTV have now supported batch exporting from C4R projects using the local desktop application. Nice work!

Another interesting feature is that you can now reference additional Revit projects to the current Document Issue / Transmittal record, which is pretty cool.

The latest build for Revit 2017 is 1.0.740.

Oh, and one final thought… if you haven’t tried RTV Xporter in a while (perhaps you recall the days of working with SQL Server and so on), I recommend you give the latest version a try. On almost every project I do, we do not need to use a SQL server because the addin just integrates so well with the information you already have in you Revit model.

How to Batch Upgrade Any Revit File Type
A while back, I posted about an admittedly circuitous method to upgrade Revit files for free using eTransmit.

However, this is a much quicker and easier way, and its pretty affordable too… using RTV Xporter Pro. It supports batch upgrading of every Revit file type: rvt, rte, rfa, rft

To use it, just click the File Upgrader button and fill out the dialog. Easy!

Screenshot:

Heads-up:
RevitworX: Upgrading Files to 2016

Here is the full list of the latest updates, from the newsletter:

We have been busy working hard to integrate Collaborate for Revit (C4R) with our RTV Xporter PRO App for Revit. It is our pleasure that we are now able to provide C4R access via the desktop application (only). At this time our Remote Processing (Server) doesn’t support C4R but we are working hard to get this functionality added as soon as possible.

The updates are now available for download from our website and can be found here:
RTV Xporter Pro 2016 (Build 709)
http://www.rtvtools.com/downloads/2016_RTVXporterPro_64B.zip ;and
RTV Xporter Pro 2017 (Build 740)
http://www.rtvtools.com/downloads/2017_RTVXporterPro_64B.zip

The following is a list of new features, updates and fixes included in the above software updates.

Updates:
1. Scanning for PDF printers will only be performed on Export start up, if no registry printer or xml printer list is empty;
2. Multi-line parameter used for the export filename, New Line replaced with a Space;
3. Separate group for Title block Revision schedules in Views list;

Resolved:
1. Fixed DWG layer mapping file selection dialog displaying twice and multiple mapping files added to drop-down list;
2. Fixed Remote GUI when the root shared folder is defined as the watch folder;

New Features:

Export
1. Checkbox option to Reset Adobe PDF print queue prior to export;
2. Delete button added to Export Folder and Export Filename template drop-down lists;

Issue
3. Issue, Reference Projects option now added. Users now have the option to reference additional Revit projects to the current Document Issue/Transmittal record. User can browse to select the project or used an existing (loaded) linked Revit project;

Note: Issue Reference Projects support linked models including C4R and Revit Server.

Web Update
4. New registry key added to disable check for updates by the users (restricted to system administrators);

C4R
5. C4R Support added – limited to current model, not available with the Remote (Server) function;

How to Access Your Local Backups of A360 Collaboration for Revit Projects

March 1, 2017January 2, 2018 Luke Johnson

The internet is bleeding hard today due to the well-publicized Amazon S3 outages. Autodesk services are also severely affected.

Collaboration for Revit (C4R) users may be wondering how to get access to their files when the service is down. Your best bet is to find the most recent local copy and possibly use that for the day.

You can find it by going to Windows Explorer and copying this address:
%localappdata%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2016\CollaborationCache

or for Revit 2017:
%localappdata%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2017\CollaborationCache

Then, go looking for your RVT files. They will have a long name with letters and numbers.

I recommend you open this file ‘detached’, and be fully aware that your project will not sync to C4R after you do that. You could isolate your work to part of the project only, and then possibly copy / paste back to the C4R project when it comes back.

Alternatively, save it as a new Central to your local file server, and then overwrite the C4R project later when it comes back online.

None of this is ideal of course, but if you want to get any work done today, you may have to try the above workarounds.

Collaboration for Revit – C4R Installation and Setup Made Easy

August 22, 2016October 9, 2017 Luke Johnson

The fact that I’m posting about it means that it probably isn’t really that easy, right? There are a few challenging pieces of the puzzle that all need to come together to get C4R or Collaboration for Revit working on a real project. I just went through this process with a mechanical firm so it is all pretty fresh in my mind.

Firstly, note that A360 Team has been rebranded as BIM 360 Team and will be migrated, more details at this post.

Secondly, Autodesk really wants your whole team (like everyone, every consultant, every Revit link) on Collaboration for Revit. However, out in the real world it is just happening bit-by-bit, and in the meantime some hacks and workarounds can make the process a little bit easier.

A Quick Overview
Ok, so Collaboration for Revit runs on top of BIM 360 Team. What this means is that you need to have an active BIM 360 Team license if you wish to run projects. Then, you need a Collaboration for Revit license for each Revit user who will be connecting to that BIM 360 Team site. You still with me? This also means that persons outside of your firm may connect to your projects, provided they have their own Collaboration for Revit entitlement applied to their Autodesk account.

Once you have the BIM 360 Team license, and the Collaboration for Revit licenses, you then need to “Assign” the Collaboration for Revit licenses out to the users (using their Autodesk login details).

Finally, you need to actually do some stuff, like:

make a BIM 360 Team project,
invite the users,
initiate Revit models, and
get the links working.

Its a lot to take in, so you can see that the blog title is actually a half-joke 🙂 However, we were able to get all this up and running in about 4 hours for one firm, so you can too. Hopefully.

Something that will help
Given that there are a lot of moving pieces, I turned to my favourite research and documentation tool, OneNote. I have created a public notebook that you can view at this link:
Revit Collaboration Public Help

Basically all of the steps involved in getting the licensing setup, inviting users, installing the addin, and initiating models onto Collaboration for Revit are in the notebook linked above. I will continue to update and add to this over time.

Any Questions?
Just comment to this post and I will endeavour to answer your question in the notebook, or point you toward the answer.

Now, here are a few other bits and pieces that may be useful, if the notebook doesn’t answer your questions…

new help documentation:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Revit-CAR/files/GUID-5A7EA270-AE79-447B-B12C-4C6B59D2F894-htm.html

moving models to folders:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Collaboration-for-Revit-How-to-use-and-access-subfolders-on-A360-Team.html

You can move projects from A360 Free to a paid BIM360 Team hub by using the Transfer function:

Taking models offline and replacing later:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/a360-collaboration-for-revit/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/how-to-work-c4r-when-others-are-not-using-it.html

using local linked files
http://www.revitforum.org/worksharing-revit-server-c4r/28351-c4r-updating-links-6.html

Download links:
Collaboration for Revit 2017
Collaboration for Revit 2016

Known Issues

Collaboration for Revit 2015

Recent chat with Autodesk

Autodesk A360 Collaboration for Revit Goes Global on 7 January 2016

January 7, 2016May 8, 2017 Luke Johnson

I have posted many times over the past few years about Project Skyscraper, which then became Collaboration for Revit (C4R). Having used the cloud service in beta, I was keen to get it going on some live projects. Unfortunately, Collaboration for Revit was only available in the USA…

Until now, that is! Check out this press release for details on the global launch. Quote:
Released and available in North America only since December 7, 2014, Collaboration for Revit will be available for commercial global use as of January 7, 2016.

Autodesk A360 Collaboration for Revit is a service that works with Revit software to connect project teams with centralized access to BIM project data in the cloud. Image courtesy of Autodesk

I, for one, am very excited about this. I have been involved in at least one geographically distributed vanilla Revit Server setup, and I think that the necessity to have ‘my IT people talk to your IT people to set up a DMZ between our VPNs’ is a bit counter-productive. In these situations, the global availability of C4R will really shine. Now, firms will be able to spin up a C4R instance very quickly and get working together, on real projects and in real-time.

You can hear Ralph Bond interviewing Sylvia Knauer on the Autodesk AEC Channel Podcast here in this mp3.

Between this global launch of Collaboration for Revit, and the improvements in the Glue – Navisworks connection in 2016 products, my Federated Model Streamer concept is one step closer to reality 🙂

Tag: c4r