Concurrent Design and Collaboration challenges
Full service architectural and planning firm Newman Architects works out of New Haven, Connecticut and Washington, DC, connecting Revit users in the two offices with its own virtual private network. While this solution enables designers using Revit worksharing to work concurrently on a model, users were finding the VPN network was slow and delays were frustrating. The firm investigated speeding performance by adding network appliances, but that solution was costly. Other workarounds they investigated included a significant IT burden as well as security risk. Knowing that joint venture projects with other architectural firms are becoming the norm, Newman architects sought a scalable solution and looked to Autodesk cloud coworking and collaboration solutions to meet these challenges. That’s when they found Collaboration for Revit.
The Solution
Newman Architects began using Autodesk’s design collaboration solutions, BIM 360 Team (formerly A360 Team) and Collaboration for Revit. They were amazed to find that partners and consultants working in those services were able to access Revit projects as if they were on the local area network.
BIM 360 Team is a design collaboration tool that enables design partners to work together with the project at the center. Collaboration for Revit is a cloud subscription service, built on the BIM 360 platform, that works with Revit software to connect building project teams with centralized access to BIM project data, enabling concurrent work on Revit models.
Co-location and Coworking Challenges
Collaboration for Revit met Newman Architects’ design collaboration and co-location needs without causing any additional burden on IT, collaborators, or Revit users: “What we needed was a scalable solution that would not pose an undue load on our own IT resources, and would satisfy the financial constraints of management as well as the performance needs of our project,” says Leo Gonzales, an architect and the firm’s BIM manager.
With the software’s subscription licensing, Newman Architects is able to equip users with Collaboration for Revit on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis, so the firm pays only for the access it needs for as long as it needs it: “Collaboration for Revit enables us to add additional staff to the project in just a few days, with no extra hardware or IT involvement,” says Cap. The firm expects most of its Revit project files will be moved to the cloud.
Seamless information sharing between joint ventures and project partners is the future of doing business. Collaboration for Revit gives us that future, today.
— Leo Gonzales, Architect & BIM Manager at Newman
