This blog follows on from the earlier blogs showing how to sign up for the BIM 360 Design Trial and to administer the account, create and administer the project.

• Lockdown with Autodesk BIM 360 Design – Extended Trial
• Lockdown with Autodesk BIM 360 Design – Account Administration
• Lockdown with Autodesk BIM 360 Design – Project Administration

The folder structure of a BIM 360 Project is important. There is no “right” way of setting up the project structure, but care should be taken so that it integrates with the protocol that is rolled out across the supply chain. Why is this important? Well, if you are about to use your Design license, you want to start the file off in your team’s folder. I use a special folder structure for this. You are welcome to set the Teams up after creating your design files. In the next blog, we will look at setting up the teams and sharing models between them.

It is confusing at first to realise that the design file is never visible on the BIM 360 platform in the cloud. When the file is initiated it appears there, with exactly the right name, but it is the published file, not the unpublished file that the Revit users using the Design license see. On initiation the file is therefore automatically published for the first time. That is why everyone else can see the latest version of the file. At any other time, the file must be published.

In Revit, start with a project blank project. If it is not yet a workshared file, click on the “Collaborate” button on the “Collaborate” tab.

If you have not yet saved the model, do so now.

Collaborate in BIM 360 Document Management

Browse to your Team’s folder and initiate the file.

When files are initiated, they take longer to process than usual, so one must be prepared to exercise a little patience.

Close the file if you want, and when you need to open a Design file, use the Home tab to browse to it and then just open as normal.

In the blog following this one, we will look at how to share our design files with other teams using Design Collaboration in BIM 360.

If you need help adopting BIM 360 Design, please contact Micrographics so we may be of assistance to you.