IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

NEW Home for the IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

We truly enjoy writing blog posts and sharing them. But that’s not all we do. Our new blog site lives on the IMAGINiT Resource Center. 

The IMAGINiT Resource Center offers a searchable index of our older posts, on-demand webcasts, tips and tricks, case studies, whitepapers, and more.

Content from our amazing technical team will continue! We hope you’ll join us: https://resources.imaginit.com/building-solutions-blog 

Trade In and Save 20% on Autodesk Software

For a limited time, you can trade-in your qualifying* perpetual licenses and save on any eligible Autodesk software including the Industry Collections, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit, Inventor, 3ds Max, and many more. Trade-in before October 25th.

*Qualifying licenses are perpetual licenses with release year 2014 through 2019 that are not on an active maintenance plan.

 

Trade-in and save 20%

 

Ready to upgrade? Let us help! Contact us here. 

BIM 360 Team vs. BIM 360 Docs – Cloud Based Markups

by Todd Behning

Many of us are currently gathering information on the many cloud based tools Autodesk provides. I wanted to give you a small slice of the differences between BIM 360 Team and BIM 360 Docs for online markups and document compare.

Although there is really, no limit to the different file types that can be stored on both cloud environments, there are limited types that can be viewed from within the web browser and marked up. Let us start-off with getting to know which file types can be viewed online by both platforms.

Take a look at BIM 360 Docs

Plans folders can view & markup the following file types:

• PDF, DWF, RVT, and DWG

Markups can be in the form of Square, Circle, Cloud, Freehand, Text and Arrows

Project Files folders can view only (no markup) the following file types

• PDF, DWF, DWG, RVT

All past markups will be stored

• Each markup is linked to the file and version that it was created on. Now you can trust the markup matches up with correct file version.

Now take a look at BIM 360 Team

Similar to BIM 360 Docs’ Project Files, Team has the ability to organize the files in to folders and sub-folders.

The files that can be viewed is a much, much longer list. I am going to give an abbreviated list

Viewable 2D and 3D design file formats (View and Markup)

3DM, 3DS, ASM, CAM360, CATPART, CATPRODUCT, CGR, DAE, DLV3, DWF, DWFX,DWG, AutoCAD Plant 3D, AutoCAD® Civil 3D, DWT, EXP, F3D, FBX, G, GBXML, IAM, IDW, IFC, IGE, IGES, IGS, IPT, JT, MODEL, NEU, NWC, NWD, OBJ, PRT, RVT, SAB, SAT, SESSION, SKP, SLDASM, SLDPRT, SMB, SMT, STE, STEP, STL, STLA, STLB, STP, WIRE, X_B, X_T, XAS, XPR

Viewable media file formats (View Only)

3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVX, AVI, BMP, DIVX, DV, DVI, F4V, FLI, FLC, FLV, GIF, JPE, JPEG, JPG, MOV, MOVIE, MP4, MPE, MPG, MPEG, MPV2, OGG, PNG, PPM, QT, RM, TIF, TIFF, WEBM, WMV

Viewable office file formats (View Only)

CSV, DOC*, DOCM, DOCX*, ODP*, ODS*, ODT*, PDF, PS, POT, POTM, POTX, PPT*, PPTX*, RTF, TXT, XLS*, XLSX*

I have included a link that give you a complete list of supported file types.

BIM 360 Team supported file types

BIM 360 Team Markups

In addition to the similar markup tools of BIM 360 Docs, Team has a few additional features. BIM 360 Team has the option to add custom shapes and clouds.

All Markups are permanently stored with the file and version

Still not sure which one is right for you? Contact the IMAGINiT team and we'll talk about what your underlying needs are and help you figure out what might work best for your processes.

 

Clarity 2015 - and have you met Matt or Beau?

You may have seen the recent IMAGINiT Clarity 2015  and Clarity Connect 2015 new release information that has been making its way around, but do you know two of the biggest forces behind the planning and development of IMAGINiT Clarity?

Meet Beau Turner, Director of Business Development, and Matt Mason, Director of Software Development. You may recognize them from other events like Autodesk University or the Revit Technology Conference, and we've used them to help put together a quick informational video about what this Clarity software is all about (below). Take a look and if this seems like it might be something that would be worthwhile to you, give is a shout and let us know how we can communicate with you best.

If you browse through this blog a little, you'll notice that there are some other informational posts in here about Clarity and SSL, and other tips and tricks on how to get around in the program.

Enjoy!

joe

 

Sniffing the New Glue

... also known as, "New Clashes Overview Feature, Part of the latest BIM 360 Glue Update – Plus new Field iPad app V4.3" Not nearly as exciting. :)

If this second post doesn't make it apparent, Carl has his eye on anything and everything Glue and Field. Here's a follow up post that he put together for us about the next update Autodesk has released. Thanks Carl!!

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

On January 27th, 2014 Autodesk released a small update for BIM 360 Glue with 3 new features. Now for those of you that read my (Carl's) last post and didn’t do your homework, (see here) have no fear, you have an extension. Autodesk must have realized what all good teachers already know, that no one does their homework the first time they are told. Instead there is a reminded at the bottom of the list of updates, reminding everyone that Microsoft .NET framework 4.5. must be installed before the next desktop update.

Enough about homework, let’s talk about the update. There are 3 features that have been updated or added in this release:

1. Insight Across Projects - this is a new report feature for Host Administrators that’s only available to Enterprise clients, and only on the web access site (not from the desktop icon at this time)
2. Easily Track Project Members - this is another new report feature for Host Administrators, but this one is available to all client types (not just Enterprise). This is also only on the web access site (not from the desktop icon at this time)
3. Readily Review Clash Overview - this is the new feature I like the best, it provides an easy to use and quick breakdown of all the clashes in your clash set in a model vs. model layout

You can see the full list of the updates here.

There should be a BIM 360 Field update not far behind this one. Sounds like it’s just in Apple's App approval process, so it should be out any day now.

UPDATE

The updated BIM 360 Field iPad app V4.3 was released today (January 28th) and brings with it a BIG improvement of PDF function on the iPad. You can see all the updates here.

Some of the highlights are:

• No more waiting for the while the PDF is “Optimizing”
• Multi-page PDF navigation by thumbnail as well as by Table of Contents
• PDF text is now searchable

You will need to do a onetime upgrade to any project libraries on your iPad currently so this may take a little longer than normal to sync the first time. But don’t worry they give you a nice pop up reminder about this until you actually do it.

Enjoy the Glue & Field Updates!

Carl

The First Glue Update of 2014 comes with Homework!

Here's a guest post from Carl Storms out of our Calgary office:

On January 14^th, 2014 Autodesk released their first BIM 360 Glue update of the year. Well this in of itself is not a surprise as Autodesk tries to push out an update for this cloud based software every 2 – 3 weeks (or at least monthly). The bulk of this particular update is the standard bug fixes and usability improvements. You can see the full list of the updates here.

However the part of the update that caught my eye was the “Homework” required before the next update can be installed. Autodesk is updating the software to require the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 before it will run.

 

They do provide a direct link to the download location for the latest version of the .NET 4.5. so as far as homework goes this is pretty easy.

Enjoy your homework!

Carl