Sometimes you have to say goodbye to old technology to welcome in new ways of doing things. This is the case as BIM 360 Team basically almost dies in 2 weeks…
The key message here is:
A360 and BIM 360 Team will no longer be available in Desktop Connector after August 15, 2024.
What does this mean? To easily backup files now, while you can, you should:
login to Autodesk Desktop Connector,
browse to BIM 360 Team, and
drag-drop any files you would like to save onto your local PC somewhere.
The dialog should pop up as each file copies over:
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.
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
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)
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.
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…
I have posted many times over the past few years about Project Skyscraper, which then became CollaborationforRevit (C4R). Having used the cloud service in beta, I was keen to get it going on some live projects. Unfortunately, CollaborationforRevit was only available in the USA…
Until now, that is! Check out this press releasefor details on the global launch. Quote: Released and available in North America only since December 7, 2014, CollaborationforRevit will be available for commercial global use as of January 7, 2016.
AutodeskA360CollaborationforRevit 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 CollaborationforRevit, and the improvements in the Glue – Navisworks connection in 2016 products, my Federated Model Streamer concept is one step closer to reality 🙂
I’m pretty sure this is what Revit Skyscraper is going to look like when it gets released, and I’m guessing it will be called “Collaboration for Revit” or “Revit Collaboration” (sounds like an addin, yeah?). Check out the image:
After joining and logging in, access the downloads section, download the ZIP file and run the EXE. You should be greeted with something like this as the Citrix hosted solution starts up:
Once you have joined and have access to Revit Skyscraper, please feel free to comment below and I can add you to a Sandbox Project I have set up, and also add you as a contact for chat. Have fun!
I recommend you join the project and read some of the early forum posts, particularly if you pondering issues of IP, who owns the model, permissions and the like.
I’m very interested in where Paul is heading with this: The QR Code pictured below, when scanned, will pull up the website, triggering the data in it to be sent to Revit. Picture a QR Code with info on a HVAC Unit, you scan it and the data is passed to Revit for when it was installed or serviced.
Sending Data in a URL to Revit. Data can be parsed to update parameters of object.
This project fits into the larger scope of connecting our desktop Revit content creation with actual site information and making all of this accessible to entire teams on the cloud.
EDIT: Paul provided the code in the comments below: I found the code for this example. It is not pretty, but should be very simple. There are two files: the Revit Plugin and the Website.
REVIT PLUGIN using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Autodesk.Revit.DB; using Autodesk.Revit.DB.Architecture; using Autodesk.Revit.UI; using Autodesk.Revit.UI.Selection; using Autodesk.Revit.ApplicationServices; using Autodesk.Revit.Attributes; using RabbitMQ.Client;
[TransactionAttribute(TransactionMode.Manual)] [RegenerationAttribute(RegenerationOption.Manual)] public class RevitRabbit : IExternalCommand { public Result Execute( ExternalCommandData commandData, ref string message, ElementSet elements) {
string msg = null; var connectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory(); IConnection connection = connectionFactory.CreateConnection(); IModel channel = connection.CreateModel();
BasicGetResult result = channel.BasicGet(“hello”, true); if (result != null) { msg = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(result.Body); System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(msg, “Status”);
So, maybe its not Glue… with the benefit of current knowledge, maybe its Project Skyscraper, or some combination of these. But the External Reference possibility starts to make some of these things truly achievable. Watch this space!
