Replace Dropbox Now!

By Henry Coombs

If you are using systems like Dropbox to share information on construction projects, you may want to consider Autodesk’s A360 Drive and BIM360 Team solutions instead.

Why I hear you ask? Well Dropbox and other systems like it are designed so that any discipline can pick them up and get going and don’t get me wrong there are some great systems out there. On construction projects, we work with a lot of different information coming from a number of different sources. We work with design files such as AutoCAD DWGs for example and now with BIM projects, a number of other file formats such as RVTs and IFCs, all of which aren’t as standard as PDF or Microsoft Office files. Systems like Dropbox do not know what they are and present them as any other generic file type. In short, these systems do not allow us to view the contents of the file if we do not have the design application installed.

A360 Drive which is free will give you 5GB of storage and if you already have an Autodesk software package you will get 25GB of storage. To access go here https://a360.autodesk.com/drive and sign up. If you already have Autodesk software just sign in with your Autodesk ID.

You can see from the image above, I have uploaded a number of PDF’s along with a Revit file. Unlike other systems, I can now open that Revit file live in the web browser or via the iPad app. All for free!

This is great to share BIM files with people that do not have any software as they can just view via a web browser or on a mobile device. Not to mention the graphics engine is very good and it’s easy to use. We can upload and view many different file formats such as .RVT, .IFC, .DWG, .DWFx, .NWC, .NWD, .SKP and more including all Microsoft office files too.

We can take this a step further by upgrading to the paid for service BIM360 Team, which does everything that A360 Drive does and more. They key additional functionality that Team has over Drive are 500GB of storage, revision control, more advanced security permissions, mark up and commenting and model comparison.

The model comparison is an extremely powerful function. Many of our customers have purchased BIM360 Team just because of the visual aspect in which it displays changes and  its clever filter system on the right hand side.

Marking up and commenting is also very useful of course and the way in which BIM360 Team handles those mark ups and comments is very user friendly. This makes communication on construction projects a lot easier as everything is under one roof.