Yesterday Autodesk‘s BIM 360 Docs products received yet another feature straight out of their BIM 360 Team product, Model Compare. For those who have been following the rapid development of the BIM 360 Docs and its assimilation of other product features, I hope Autodesk’s direction in this space is becoming more clear.

Understanding the changes between model versions can (and some say should) be a critical part of coordination and design iteration process. In any given week of design, much can change. No longer a simple overlay of 2D drawings, models are more graphically dense, with elements also containing self-identifying data.

To help address this, BIM 360 Docs is now offering the following comparison features:

  • Compare and view any two versions of your 3D model
  • View changes in Overlay or Side by Side mode
  • Review colour-coded changes (added, removed, and modified) in both the model view and property panel
  • Filter between added, removed, and modified assets
  • Distinguish between geometry and property modifications
  • Search & Filter changes by categories, disciplines, and object properties
  • Navigate through changes in the 3D view and the results list
  • Export the list of differences to CSV for offline analysis

Also included in this month’s release are RFI’s for models found in all folders, not just in the ‘Plans’ folders. Autodesk state this now concludes the implementation of Markups, Issues, and RFIs across both the ‘Plans’ and ‘Project Files’ folders.

Autodesk BIM 360 Docs RFI

And the final feature improvement is search, by allowing more characters to be recognised in the search terms. This should result in more effective results.

SOURCEBIM 360 Docs Update - September 13, 2017
Chad is a consultant to the AEC industry, a design technologist, VDC advocate, BIM Manager, early Revit adopter, and public speaker.