IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

Clarity 2013.1 and Clarity Workshare

I asked Bryan Cowles, one of our Building Solutions Team Managers, to write up a quick post that talks about our Clarity 2013.1 release and a new flavor of Clarity, Clarity Workshare. After this initial post, we'll be looking to follow up with more in-depth technical information... but I have a question for you. Is there anything specific that you would like us to provide additional detail on? If not, we'll just keep on our merry way and may or may not touch on the topics that are most relevant to you. Leave a comment below and we'll get it taken care of! 

That being said, here's Bryan!

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Part of my job as a technical team manager is to provide our clients with software demonstrations. Lately, most of my time has been dedicated to the ever growing interest in our Revit Server add-on, IMAGINiT Clarity.

If you aren’t familiar, Clarity is a very powerful collaborative tool that provides project level security by enabling an admin to limit the visibility and editing rights of certain projects to specific users, something you can’t do with Revit Server alone.

But that is not all that Clarity does. Beyond the collaboration, Clarity offers task automation and the ability to provide key data to non-Revit users via a web portal. Imagine not having to deal with time-consuming tasks like exporting sheets to DWF, DWG or PDF. No longer having to provide room data sheets. All of that (and more) is possible with IMAGINiT Clarity.

The ability to create, extract, update and access all of your project information in one simple web portal has many of our clients very excited and planning how they could take advantage of such powerful functionality. However, a common response that often comes up at the conclusion of my demonstration is,

"Wow! Everything Clarity can do is very impressive and would fit nicely into our workflow but we don’t see ourselves using Revit Server anytime soon. Can I get the same great functionality without using Revit Server?"

Until now, my answer had been “Unfortunately no.” Well my friends, that is no longer the case! We here at IMAGINiT are happy to announce the release of Clarity Workshare which runs on Autodesk Revit (no Revit Server required).

This common concern summarized above led our developers to create this latest Clarity product. With Clarity Workshare, users will be able to point their Clarity Task Server to any Revit Project (that is workshare enabled) on their local servers and experience the benefits of allowing access to key BIM project data through the Clarity web portal. Automating the production of sheets, schedules, and other file types will save you not only time, but it will free up a Revit user so that they can continue working on the Revit model, not exporting sheets and views all day.

Are you ready to automate the production of your key BIM data? Do you want to allow your non-Revit users access to the data they are constantly requesting? If you are ready to take the next step in online project collaboration but don’t have a Revit Server, then Clarity Workshare could be right for you.

For more information, contact your local IMAGINiT account manager and visit imaginit.com/clarity.

How Do You Get Better?

A while back I did a presentation at our Know It.All online event about Process Improvements - asking the question, "How do you know how well you are doing (in this case, using your preferred design software), and how do you determine what you can do to get better?" The idea I was chasing down is to step back and think - you've already gone through some sort of technology implementation and things *seem* to be going all right... but could or should things be better? Are you getting everything you can from your investment?

If you've ever asked yourself those questions, your next follow-up questions to yourself should be:

• Was our last implementation successful - how did we do it?
• Can we do it again?

This gets back to the idea of repeating successes. Take the process that worked well in the past, and run through it again. But what if you don't have any recent implementation processes to pull from? Here's a quick implementation checklist that we've generated and promoted in various presentations over the years:

1. Create Your Technology Transition Plan
2. Select and Choose the Right Team
3. Choose the Right Pilot Project(s)
4. Optimize the Technology for Success
5. Perform the Right Training and Education
6. Provide Ongoing Support and Mentoring
7. Constantly Evaluate and Adjust as Needed

Getting beyond that initial implementation list, how does that fit into a Process Improvement cycle? Within IMAGINiT, we have a Health Check process that we go through with clients that identifies places of strength, opportunities for improvement, and identifies the current overall "health" of a specific reviewed project. Most of the ones we've worked on in the last few years have been focused on Autodesk Revit projects, but the process we work through is independent of the software you choose. Especially because this is a blog post, not a dissertation, I'll skip past the detailed breakdown, and instead put this list together - here are the basic steps you can follow to assess your current situation and make a plan for future improvements:

1. Remember what you did successfully before
2. Get a Devil’s Advocate
3. Assess
4. Prioritize
5. Plan for the Future
6. Document
7. Do It!

If you're interested in more information, you've got a few options - the first of which might be to reach out to us... IMAGINiT is here to help, so let us help. If you're not ready for that level of interaction, try listening to our presentation recording over at our IMAGINiT Client Portal (free registration may be required):

http://portal.imaginit.com/TechnicalResources/VideosWebcastRecordings.aspx

The presentation is called, "Process Change Considerations for Building Professionals"

...and as always, have fun!

joe

Revit LT… Why???

I have to admit, I’ve been struggling with this one. As an Autodesk partner I know we need to - at least publically :) - show a strong positive outlook to nearly everything that happens related to Autodesk and Autodesk software, but as I look at Revit LT, my initial impression was, “What?... Why in the world did Autodesk come out with that???”

For more information about Revit LT after you’ve gone through this post, you can follow this link and view additional product information including a couple of product comparison matrices:
http://imaginit.com/software-solutions/building-architecture/autodesk-revit-lt

The major limitations as I see it within Revit LT are:

1. no worksets
2. no rendering within Revit (only rendering in the Autodesk 360 Cloud)
3. no interference checking
4. no programming (i.e., no IMAGINiT Tools for Revit)

There are more (follow the link above to get to all the details), but those are the biggest ones to me. This really limits the use of Revit LT to people who work alone, or at least one at a time, on projects. So my initial reaction was, “Who does that anymore??”

After thinking about it for a little bit longer, I had no choice to arrive at the answer that there are plenty of people out there for whom Revit LT could work. Not an individual working in a larger firm, but what about all of the single proprietor businesses that are designers or architects that work alone… and probably use AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT? Regular Revit’s price point is probably out of the question, but what if those single person shops wanted to get more into a 3D / BIM world? Yeah, Revit LT is probably a good fit for them – in particular the LT Suite where you get both AutoCAD LT and Revit LT together.

Sure, the software has its limitations, but so does AutoCAD LT… Not knowing the full demographic of people that come here and view this blog, I can’t say if LT applies to you or not. If there are two or more of you working together on a project, this probably isn’t the software solution for you. If you work in a multi-person office and just want to poke around in Revit files, this is not for you. But of you work on projects by yourself, this is something to consider.

… and when in doubt? Give us a call. :)

don't forget to have fun while you're at it!
joe