Ger O'Sullivan
Autodesk DOCs is most commonly known as a “Cloud-Based Common Data Environment” that helps a company provide a platform whereby all of the documentation and data can be stored and controlled for all teams on a project. This means that there is now a single source of truth that all information can be obtained on the one platform.
Fig. 1
As you can see from the image (Fig. 1), Autodesk DOCs allows you to create a folder structure whereby all of the members and companies you invite onto the platform will only have access to the folders you choose to give them. Within these folders those external companies can then start to upload their own information about the project and start to collaborate with other external companies. Autodesk DOCs allows the hosting of over 50 different file formats and can manage 2D and 3D Designs.
The reason why Autodesk DOCs is so powerful is because it’s a single source of truth which means that the latest information and drawings are available in a single platform. When drawings or files are updated Autodesk DOCs automatically version controls the document which means that each document is always at its latest version, and you can always go back and compare with the previous versions before (See Fig. 2).
Fig.2
Some of the other key features of Autodesk DOCs is that documents can be sent through an approval workflow whereby the external companies can submit their drawings or files to the main contractor for approval and if approved they can be automatically copied into a shared folder where the other contractors will have access to view the files. If these files were rejected by the main contractor they can provide comments, mark-ups and issues and assign these back to the company so that the company who submitted the drawings can see why they were rejected and can now rectify those issues (See Fig. 3).
Fig. 3
This in turn means that the main contractor can now track all issues on a project in a single platform and can see how these issues are progressing. The issues can be filtered by “issues” assigned to a company or individual on the platform or they can be filtered by what type of issues are on the project itself. Within these issues, documents can be referenced to them so when the issue is assigned to someone, they know what information it is relating back to. This in turn improves collaboration on a project and reduces to error of miscommunication by providing the incorrect information (See Fig. 4).
Fig.4
Autodesk DOCs is a centralised management solution that acts as a single source of truth across the project lifecycle of all project teams.
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