Data Everywhere

By Nick Harris

Where is the best place to store your design data? In this era of agile working you want to be able to get to your files regardless of whether you are in the office or not but you want them to be secure. You certainly want to avoid duplication and version conflicts that result from taking a copy of a centrally stored file for your personal use. It is a subject that needs some serious consideration. There are plenty of business cloud storage services to consider, not least from big players like Microsoft, Google and Amazon.  Moving your data to the cloud is a significant step but if you want anywhere access and seamless sharing with third parties then it is the obvious choice.

Cloud storage services have a characteristic in common; they are optimised for a particular data context. Microsoft Office 365 services allow you to store almost any type of data and have some great tools for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents. It is not so good for design files however. It can store them without a problem and you can get some feedback about the last time they were downloaded, but you cannot view or edit them.

In this scenario considering the Autodesk Team products makes sense. Autodesk BIM 360 Team is a cloud storage service optimised for people working in the construction industry. Similarly, Fusion Team is Autodesk’s cloud service with functionality specifically aimed at the engineering design community. Both are much more than just cloud storage; they also include a viewer capable of presenting more than fifty different types of design file. And these are not just Autodesk formats but also industry standard, software independent ones as well as formats from other vendors There is also project centric functionality that allows team members to comment on others work and initiate design changes.

There is a challenge with these Cloud storage services and that is the way they look. We are used to the Windows Explorer or Apple Finder experience which is tightly integrated with the computer operating system. The last thing we want is to have to open a web browser to find and download our files. The good news is that at Autodesk they are connecting their desktop design software to their cloud collaboration services in such a way that access to project data is seamless. With Autodesk Collaboration for Revit the building model is hosted in BIM 360 Team. Revit users connect to the model as if it stored on their local PC. As the user makes and then saves changes to the model they are instantly reflected in the hosted model. This means that the up to date model is held safely in a secure data centre and importantly, available simultaneously to multiple team members. The interface is integrated into Revit and project data is presented in a clear and intuitive manner. It is also likely that we will see a similar capability in the Autodesk Plant products, where again the project is hosted on BIM 360 Team but connected transparently to the users’ desktop software.

On the manufacturing side of the Autodesk portfolio we have seen a preview of the next phase of cloud connected data. With an Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle preview we have seen the ability to synchronise a set of folders on the local desktop with a Fusion Team site that is integrated into Fusion Lifecycle. Here we get the best of both worlds, access to the folder structure in a familiar Windows Explorer interface that is maintained in a Cloud storage service. This is a more sophisticated solution than it appears on face value and goes beyond the capability of well know file sharing services like dropbox. The Autodesk version is required to understand the contents of the design files and maintain version integrity and lifecycle behaviour.

We are approaching a point in the maturity of these services where they are the default choice for data storage. If the user experience is richer when the files are stored in BIM 360 Team or Fusion Team, then organisations need to think hard about whether they really need expensive local server infrastructure.