The Next Generation of BIM 360, Part 2: Adding Project Members and Teams

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Synergis Application Consultant, Bill Knittle
In Part 1, I discussed the differences between C4R/BIM 360 Team and BIM 360 Design/Docs. Now, I’ll explore the setup of your BIM 360 account and first BIM 360 project. At the onset, a BIM 360 account administrator must set up the BIM 360 account for their organization. This is typically the Contract Manger or Software Coordinator for your organization. Autodesk will send an account activation email once subscription licenses are purchased.

Using the Account Admin module, the administrator can populate the organization’s account with Members, Companies, and Projects.

Initially, the member directory will be populated with internal users within the organization. Each member will represent a colleague assisting in co-authoring the Revit model using BIM 360 Design or collaborating in BIM 360 Docs. Additionally, each member will be assigned a pre-defined Role such as Architect, Engineer, Designer, etc.

It is also advisable to assign each new member to a Company. The first company to be created will typically represent your organization. If you add the company during member creation, you can edit the company profile later on. If you create the company prior to creating the members, it will be an option when adding the members to the account’s directory. Similar to BIM 360 Team, these steps will be repeated by collaborators outside of your organization as they activate their own BIM 360 account.

Now that the BIM 360 account has been populated with members from your organization and your company profile is established, it’s time to create the project. Projects function in BIM 360 similar to BIM 360 Team. They are a centralized workspace for all project-related activities. Because multiple design companies will be collaborating, only one company’s BIM 360 account will need to host the project. In our example here, we’ll assume that this is the architecture company. The consulting engineering companies will be invited later on down the road. Each project requires a profile to be filled out.

With a project created, it is time to activate the required services. Note that only available services that the organization subscribed to will be visible during project setup. At which point, the Account Admin will start by activating the Document Management service. This step requires the need to assign at least one account member as a Project Admin for the service. Immediately following the activation of the Document Management service, the Account Admin can activate the Design Collaboration service. Again, the Account Admin can assign at least one account member as a Project Admin. As a result, the appointed Project Admins will receive an email notification of their assignments within the project.

Now, the Project Admin must add those Revit collaborators within their organization to the project. This is done through the Project Admin module.

Members are added to the project in a similar fashion to how they were added in the BIM 360 Account. Only this time, the information will auto-populate as the member’s name or email is entered. Members using BIM 360 Design in other BIM 360 Accounts should be added at this time as well.

The Project Admin can assign or remove their member access to the Design Collaboration or Document Management service before or after adding them to the project. Selecting or de-selecting the symbols to the right of the each member allows or prevents access to that service. A small gear symbol represents a Project Admin role, a small bust symbol represents a member role, and “No” symbols represent no access to the service. A Filter section is also present to isolate quantities of members per service.

Each member is notified by email to join the project. Once the invited member joins the project, they can begin to access the services that they are assigned to. In Part 3, I’ll discuss how to set up Teams in BIM 360 Design.

With members now added to the project, the Project Admin can now setup the Design Collaboration service. Each service that was activated for the project is managed from the services listed on the left. If a service is not activated, selecting Overview on the left will reveal the available services for the project.

BIM 360 Design differs from classical Collaboration for Revit in that it utilizes a controlled experience of releasing model updates for linking through the use of Packages. To accommodate this workflow, Teams of members must be created to differentiate workspaces for collaboration. A Team can be representative of a discipline or design firm.

When a Team is created, it not only creates a Team Space in Design Collaboration but, it also populates the Document Management service with a set of Project File folders. A single folder is created for each Team utilizing the Design Collaboration service. Each Team folder displays the name given to the Team it was created for. Essentially, the Team folder will host that particular Team’s published Revit models. Within each team folder is also a subfolder called the Consumed folder. This folder will host a copy of the published models that were shared by another Team. Additionally, a Shared folder is created which hosts a copy of published models shared by other Teams as Packages.

Design Collaboration requires certain permissions to the Team folder in order for the project member to participate. Project members within the Team can be set to different permission to restrict their role in the workflow. Project members that will be managing Packages will need to have a “Share” permission level.

The Project Admin continues to create the other Teams. Once the process is over, the Document Management module reveals the Team and Shared Folders set up by the Project Admin.

So, far the build-out of the project for Design Collaboration is portrayed in the following diagram.

Once the other collaborating design companies have their BIM 360 accounts established and their users entitled to use BIM 360 Design, it is time for the Project Admin to invite them as outside project members. Once the outside project members have been added as project members, the Project Admin can add them as Team members to the appropriate Team. In Part 3, I’ll discuss how to implement cloud-worksharing in BIM 360 Design.

Watch our video to see in action how to add project members and teams to your BIM 360 project step-by-step. Plus, stay tuned for more in this series.