Performing a Drawing Review with BIM 360

Want to make the process of reviewing drawings easier? Watch the video below to see how BIM 360 handles it. Or skip the video and read the step by step below, if that’s what you prefer.

Define a Review Workflow

1. Go to the Project Admin tab > Services tab > Reviews tab. Here you can create an approval workflow or edit one that already exists.

2. Choose the number of steps.

3. Select an Initiator and configure the individual steps to be Single or Multiple reviews. Assign people, roles, or companies to each review step.

4. Configure the Document Approval Status to show the messaging you’d like to use.

4. Save the Review Workflow
5. If you are the Initiator of the review, select the documents and click Submit for Review.
   

6. Select an approval workflow (what you defined in the previous steps), enter a name for the review, add or remove documents, and click Submit.
   

7. You’ll then be prompted to notify the first person or group of people in the review process. Choose additional people to notify or add a note, if you like, and click Send.

8. The reviewer(s) associated with the first review step will be notified by email. If any one of them clicks the link in the email notification, they will be taken straight to the review. To begin, they should click Start Review.

9. The reviewer can open each of the documents and add comments and mark-ups.

10. Once the reviewer is finished adding comments, they can click Submit Review. They will be prompted to notify the people involved in the next step. If the step is configured for multiple reviewers, the process will not move on to the next step until the minimum number of reviewers has been met. The minimum number of reviewers is configured when setting up the review workflow.

11. Each reviewer adds comments and markups until their review is complete, at which time they’ll click Submit Review. When the process arrives at the final review step, the additional Approval Status column will be available. The final reviewer can use this column to indicate whether each drawing is approved or rejected (or whatever choices were provided while configuring the workflow).

11. Once the final step is submitted, the review is Closed and the approval status is recorded for each document.

BIM 360 Basics Quick Tip: Restore a Previous File Version

Oops! Something went wrong with your current file and you need to go back in time to try again. That’s easy to do with BIM 360 Docs. Just click on the version number:

That will open a window that will list out all of the previous versions. For any version you choose you can make it current, download it, or copy it to another location.

Check out the video to see how it’s done:

Sharing Method #2: Live Linking

So maybe you don’t want to workshare with another Revit user (i.e. work in the same Revit model together, maybe even at the same time) but instead you just want to link to a file that’s being actively worked on by a design team. That’s live linking and you can watch the video below to see what that’s all about or you can skip to the lower section and just read about it.

So the first step to linking to any Revit file is to launch the Link to Revit command from the Insert tab of the Ribbon.

BIM 360 Design Sharing Method 4: Consuming Packages

Linking to the Shared folder is handy but what if you don’t want to automatically incorporate another team’s changes as soon as they upload them? That’s where consuming packages comes in. This gives your team the power to decide when any changes from other teams are incorporated into your design environment. Watch the video to see how it’s done or just scroll on by and follow the steps if you’re too impatient to watch the video. You should know, however, that the video contains lots of extra insight in addition to the technical steps.

So how do you consume a package? It’s actually really easy.

BIM 360 Design Sharing Method 3: Using the Shared Folder

Sometimes you don’t want to see every change that’s happening on a Revit model while you’re linking it in. Or, if you’re the author of the model, you may not want other teams to see and use your work until you’re ready. By using Packages and the Shared folder in BIM 360 Design, you can get control over what other teams see and when. To find out how, you can watch the video below to see how it’s done, with lots of play-by-play and discussion. If you’d rather just skip to the steps, just scroll on by the video.

The first really important thing you need to know is that syncing with central does NOT automatically update what you see in BIM 360. In fact, you can think of the storage location for Revit worksharing to be separate from BIM 360. However, there is an easy way to push your latest model from Revit into BIM 360, two ways actually.

BIM 360 Design Sharing Method 1: Worksharing

Perhaps the most powerful capability of BIM 360 Design is that it enables Revit worksharing via the cloud. How does it work? You’ll be surprised at how simple it is. Watch the video below or skip to the section below for a quick tutorial.

Once a model has been initiated for cloud worksharing, getting access to it is as simple as just opening a file. The key is to make sure that you’re not opening from BIM 360 via Desktop Connector so that you don’t inadvertently get access to the published model (not the cloud workshared one).

BIM 360 Design – Day One

So your company just purchased BIM 360 Design and it’s your job to get it up and running in your office. Where do you start? What do you do?

Have no fear! Use the links below to take you through the steps of setting up your first project, configuring teams, sharing models, the works! You’ll have your first project going by the end of the day and you’ll be the expert that can explain to everyone else what’s going on.

Good luck!

1. Adding a BIM 360 Account Admin
2. Creating a Project
3. Inviting Members to Your Project
4. Creating Folders and Setting Permissions
5. Setting up Teams for Worksharing and Collaboration
6. Uploading Revit Models to BIM 360 Design for Collaboration
7. Sharing Method 1: Worksharing
8. Sharing Method 2: Live Linking
9. Sharing Method 3: The Shared Folder
10. Sharing Method 4: Consuming Packages

Setting Up Teams for Worksharing and Collaboration

With BIM 360 Design you can leverage teams to set up different types of collaboration depending on how you interact with different members of the project team. In this post we’ll explore how you might set up a team for your company vs a team for an external consultant. You can watch the video below to see it done for you (and gain a little extra insight) or you can skip right to the step-by-step below the video.

1. Access the Document Management screen.

Creating Folders and Setting Permissions

Once your project has been created, you’ll want to create folders to store your data and to organize your data so that you can give access to the appropriate people. In this post you’ll learn how to make new folders, invite people to access those folders, and set permissions so that you can determine what people can do when they’re in those folders. The post also includes an explanation how roles and companies fit into your permission scheme.

You can watch the video below or scroll down to the step-by-step. Your choice.

1. Access the Document Management screen by clicking Document Management in the module selector.

Inviting Members to Your Project

So you’ve got your first project set up and you’re ready to begin inviting other people to collaborate with. How’s it done? Watch the video or scroll on past it to follow the step-by-step.

1. Start by accessing the Project Admin screen and selecting the Members tab.