Autodesk Construction Cloud, Revit, and Autodesk Forma: The Path to Collaborative and Sustainable Construction

LUIS HIDALGO: Hi, everybody, and welcome to our 2024 technical instruction session. Autodesk Construction Cloud, Revit, and Autodesk Forma: The Path to Collaborative and Sustainable Construction. The construction industry still faces obstacles to sustainable and collaborative design, but is moving towards a smarter and more efficient processes.

Key tools needed for this shift include ACC, Revit, and Autodesk Forma. Safe Harbor Statement. The statements on this presentation regarding future events and development efforts for our products and services reflect our current expectations based on what we know today.

Our plans are not a promise or a warranty of future delivery of products, services, or features, so purchasing decisions should not be made based on these statements. My name is Luis Hidalgo, architect and senior technical account specialist for AEC name accounts, and I'm based in Barcelona's Autodesk office.

DANIEL MORAL: Thank you, Luis. As for myself, I'm Daniel, an architect from Spain. As a construction customer success manager, I collaborate closely with our enterprise customers to facilitate their adoption of Autodesk Construction Cloud solution, and thereby, streamlining daily operations.

By the end of this class, you will understand how to effectively implement various digital processes in building design and construction, focusing on improving efficiency and sustainability through the various collaboration workflows. First, learn how Autodesk Forma helps us in the design process with predictive analytics, design capabilities, and automation.

Second, learn about Revit and Forma. They don't have interoperability, and about the modeling possibilities of Revit. And finally, learn about Autodesk Construction Cloud, including Autodesk Docs as a CD, Autodesk BIM Collaborate for collaboration and coordination, Autodesk Takeoff for quantification, and finally, Autodesk Build for field execution and project management workflow.

To cover all these learning objectives, we will structure the presentation in the following project phases. Pre-design, then design and pre-construction, and finally construction.

LUIS HIDALGO: Let's jump into the pre-design. First Autodesk Forma and then Forma-Revit interoperability. Let us start with Forma. Planning and early design decisions have larger impacts on project outcomes.

In the curve 1, we see that the earlier in the project phase, the more ability to control cost. Curve 2, we see that the earlier in the project phase, the lower is the cost of design changes. Curve 3, current design practice, where our design efforts fall in later phases of the project. And curve 4 is our objective design efforts in the earlier phases of the project.

Autodesk Forma is a cloud-based software for planning and early stage building design that provides decision support and conceptual design capabilities. It delivers value in five key points. One, contextual modeling and data. Rapid setup of BIM model with real world contextual data like topography, slope, nearby context, or buildings.

Two, contextual design. With Forma modeling tools, architects can create complex 3D designs. Three, automations. Forma offers building design automations out of the box to accelerate early design exploration and optimization of multiple proposals and design concepts.

Four, analysis perform real-time, AI-powered analysis to improve designs and evaluate environmental impact. Five, interoperability. The Forma-Revit ADM helps ensure a fluid Forma-Revit synchronization and transition between planning and detailed design phase. These synchronization works both ways, from Forma to Revit and from Revit back to Forma.

Lastly, we have the third-party open ecosystem. An initial set of APIs are available to Autodesk Platform Services developers to enable third-party geometry generators in Forma. In summary, with Forma we work more efficiently and deliver better project outcomes in early stage building design with productivity gains, design optimization, improved sustainability outcomes, and improved collaboration and coordination.

Our long term vision is to expand Forma as the architecture, engineering, construction, and operations industry cloud. Unify BIM workflows across the teams that design, build, and operate the BIM environment. Enable data to flow seamlessly throughout project phases and stakeholders.

This is how the Autodesk portfolio is made of. Desktop applications like Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D connected to Autodesk Docs through BIM Collaborate Pro. Autodesk Docs manages files. The boxes inside of Docs represent files and the docs inside the boxes represent the data.

On top of Docs, we have the Autodesk Construction Cloud applications, Bim Collaborate, Build, and Takeoff. Forma will be expanded and will connect to AEC data model repository for granular data access. In the future, we will build new capabilities to support design and operations.

And even later, the capabilities from Autodesk Construction Cloud will be merged with Forma. Forma will support a full life cycle across industries and phases. A third party ecosystem will be able to build plugins, apps, and automations inside Forma. Sustainability will always remain at the center of order.

This is where we are heading with Forma, but this is not the objective of this class. We will focus on the current capabilities and workflows between ACC, Revit and Forma. In this video, we are going to see the summary of the Forma capabilities and the steps to follow to create a project.

We access our Forma hub, create a new project, pick location, assign project name, select map region to import, select site limit. From the library, we order contextual data, terrain, building, roads.

We can import reference images, and also 3D files. Add constraints to keep our building within bounds. We model our building. We can use three tools like building and basic building tools, where we can parametrically sketch our buildings, defining the floors.

Or we can use the house tool, where we can define the floors, type of roof, et cetera. With the 3D sketch tool, we can further develop our design, creating more complex geometries, like adding parapets to our balconies. With the tool Explore, using generative design, we get automatically site studies and multiple proposals for our site.

We can export to Revit. Use automations to optimize our design. Sketch out the different floor plans for our building. Add automatic parking systems. Get instance takeoffs of the metrics of our proposal while we are designing.

Add labels and annotations. Document our project on digital whiteboards that we can share with all stakeholders. Get information about our proposals and environmental impact analysis like daylight potential sun hours, solar energy, microclimate, wind, noise, and embodied carbon.

This rapid and real time analysis informs our design impact. We can dive deep into insights, and we can add new extensions to add new capabilities. Even we can build our own Dynamo scripts.

But the most relevant capability from Forma, for this class, is the environmental impact analysis. We can do the following analysis. With the matrix analysis, we can understand the area matrix relevant to our site and evaluate all design decisions impact our project scope.

We can differentiate buildings, units, parking. We will analyze different parameters like building coverage, gross floor area, net internal area, number of units. We can also define the function of the different floors of our proposals and define a color per function.

Functions like residential, commercial, offices, we can have the percentage of units depending on their size, and also we can define parking layouts. Sun hours analysis indicates the number of direct sun hours on the facade and ground of your selected area on a given date. And the unit is hours per day.

First, we need to select analysis areas, entire site or only specific zones, pick the analysis dates, we can pick multiple dates, and just run the analysis. We will see a code of colors depending on the solar hours received from 0 to 10. Using Inspect, this icon here, we can click on different points of the model to see what the exact number of sun hours on those points is.

We can share this comparison and view taking a screenshot using the camera icon. And also, we can share our design with stakeholders with Forma board to collaborate. We can compare the different analysis from different proposals.

We have run the sun hours for Proposal 2 and Proposal 2 copy for different times. We make changes to our building in Proposal 2 copy. We click Compare. So we draw the difference sun hour analysis from Proposal 2 and Proposal 2 copy.

Now, we can click Inspect, and we can see and compare the sun hours in different points. With this analysis, we can make better design decisions. We can also compare different types of analysis between different proposals, not just some hours.

Here, we see the proposal for January 10th. But as we have run the analysis at different times, we can change the date and see the results.

In this example, we run the analysis for January 10th and June 12th. So now we select June 12 in both. Proposals and we see the results.

Daylight potential analysis identifies parts of the facade with insufficient or excessive access to daylight. We will see a code of colors depending on the daylighting potential on our facades. The unit is the daylight potential from 0% to 100%.

With the wind analysis, we will see how our building is impacted by the wind conditions on site. We need to define the wind area radius. We will see a code of colors depending on the comfort of the different areas. Also, we will see the direction and the speed in meters per second of the wind in our project.

Microclimate at several analysis in one place to find out the perception of the specific climate with a mix of different factors. The unit, thermal comfort index percentage based on Celsius degrees in different areas. Noise analysis will consider the noise from road and rail. The units, decibels on different points of the proposal.

With solar energy analysis, we can identify our site's yearly solar energy potential and optimal panel placement. The total solar energy in kilowatt hours, the average solar energy in kilobyte hours per square meter.

Embodied carbon analysis measures the embodied carbon impact of buildings and make progress towards carbon goals through iterative design and adjustments to key parameters. And also, we can add all these extensions to add new capabilities.

We have already talked about sustainability in Forma. Now, let's mention the collaboration in form. In terms of collaboration, we can invite new members to the project, and we can assign three different roles: admin, collaborator, and viewer.

This is the warning message we will receive when our proposal is edited by another team member. It gives us the option to save our changes as a new proposal, or we can discard the changes. Let's jump into the Forma-Revit interoperability.

In this video, we are going to show the interoperability between Forma and Revit. This is the model in Forma. And this is the model in Revit. We will use the Send to Revit tool to transfer from Forma to Revit, and Load Proposal tool in Revit.

From Forma to Revit, we can only send it one time. We will use the Update Proposal tool to transfer the updates made in Revit back to Forma. From Revit to Forma, we can send it multiple times.

First thing we have to do is install the Autodesk Forma add-on for Revit, either in the Autodesk App Store or from the extensions available in Forma. From Forma, we normally duplicate the proposal we want to export. We select it, click Revit, and click Send to Revit.

From Revit, create a new project from Massing and Site, Forma, Load Proposal. We will see the mapping options for elements and contexts of our model. In Revit, we will have exterior and interior walls, floors, roofs, levels, and access. The context buildings are generic models and they are not editable.

The terrain is a TopSolid in Revit and it is editable, and the streets are also modeled in Revit. So we have done some modifications in the height of the buildings, and click Update Proposal to send it back to Forma. Just be aware that now our model is transformed into a generic mass and is not editable.

In summary, within Revit, we go to Massing and Site, click Forma, and we will have the following options: Load Proposal, Update Proposal, and Unlink Proposal. Here, we see the mapping of the elements in Forma when they are sent to Revit.

With this, we are done with pre-design phase. So let's talk now about design and pre-construction. Revit and Autodesk Construction Cloud. Let us start with Revit.

In Revit, we will develop our different models, architecture, structure, and MEP. Using Revit Cloud Worksharing, we will synchronize and publish our work to Autodesk Docs, our common data, environment and single source of truth. Here, we have our architectural model and the architectural tools.

We have linked here, the structural side and MEP models. Our structural model with structural tools, our mechanical model with the systems tools, the electrical model, and the plumbing model with the systems tools.

We can have all our models in Autodesk Docs thanks to Revit Cloud Worksharing through collaborating, syncing, and publishing our models from Revit to the cloud. Revit Cloud Sharing is included in BIM Collaborate Pro. In these images, we see our model in Revit, our model in Autodesk Docs, and also we see the symbol of a Revit file that is Cloud Workshare. That is this symbol here.

Also, we see the requirements to use Revit Cloud Worksharing. This is the RGB camera sharing workflow. The different teams from different companies involved in the project make changes to the models and they synchronize, and then they publish to Autodesk Construction Cloud.

In our Revit model, we click Collaborate tab, Manage Collaboration panel, Collaborate, and we select In the cloud. This is the way we synchronize our Revit files. Click Synchronize. Running the synchronized with central panel, we click OK.

Just to clarify, synchronization is the function in Revit of syncing local work in a Revit model to the cloud, not to be confused with publishing. Publishing is what makes the Revit model available for viewing and use in Autodesk Docs and Bim Collaborate. In this case, we see that they are updates available. So we click the three dots and we click Publish Latest.

Now, on Revit Home, we see latest published in our model. Now, our models are published on Autodesk Docs, our common data environment. And now, my colleague Daniel is going to continue with the next steps in the design and pre-construction phase in Autodesk Docs.

DANIEL MORAL: Thank you, Luis. I'm fascinated by the power of collaboration that sync to central brings, especially when you host it in the cloud, and models and plants are directly published into ACC as the common data environment. Let's admit, not everyone involved in a AC project has time to learn Revit or any other BIM desktop application, or even no time to install and open it.

Moreover, any Bim or not Bim project needs much more collaboration that would remodeling desktop tool as Revit can handle. The truth is that there are a significant number of decisions that need to be made across tens to hundreds of individuals working on the project. Some decisions are within your control, whilst others are not, and you need of all these people to collaborate together.

Every one of these decisions impacts the progress and the success of your project. So this is the reality of the complexity of construction and the potential of improvement motivates us, within Autodesk, to enable the following.

First, we want to facilitate making decisions as soon as possible. Second, we want to ensure the right stakeholder are involved in the right moment of the workflow. And finally, we want to provide a full traceability of all documented workflow even years later when the project has been closed.

All this helps you to achieve your goal faster and more often. For example, that way, you need less time in looking for information. Or for example, you will be able to run early coordination, noticing changes as soon as possible, and avoiding doing this changes later with a bigger impact on cost. Or finally, you'll run connected quality workflow assuring better quality results.

How Autodesk Construction Cloud ensures this? Autodesk Construction Cloud enables you to make better decisions across the project life cycle from planning to operation and maintenance. All decisions are really interconnected. So by connecting every step on this decision, we have more information and we are faster and more confident in making the right decision.

For us, in Autodesk, it's not about point solution, but about the ability to act based on the information captured in the different phases of the project. And finally, even it's not about only digitizing those workflow and connecting them. We can go one step further.

This is also going to help you with the quality of information by leveraging insights through reports and dashboards. And this will enable you to make data-driven decisions. So we see here in detail how the various Autodesk products and tools can help you in the different phases of the project, from design to pre-construction and construction, and even finally, to operation and maintenance.

In blue, we have the main capability for each of the phases detailing below the main workflow for each of these capability. Today, have no time to get in depth on all those tools and workflow. It's not the intent, but we want to understand how all this capability can make your project more collaborative and more sustainable.

All these capabilities are interconnected through a common data environment. So out of these docs is the common data environment that centralize project data across the different phases of products. With all of the stocks in the center, we ensure the basis of collaboration. Let's see how we can really collaborate with docs.

First, by providing access control by user, company, or role, we ensure the right people can access the need project data with the right permission level: view, upload, download, edit, and/or manage. Second, by defining a collaborative workflow to approve document and automatically change the value of their metadata once these document have been approved.

Third, by identifying, assigning, and prioritizing critical design problems that might overrun later in bigger cost. Multiple tools can be used during this collaboration. For example, create the right type of issue when identifying a problem to the 3D.

Assign to the right user company or role, and provide more information by using a set of published markup. Once they respond and provide a new document version, compare both versions to understand if it has been correctly solved, and mark it as closed if it's the case.

And finally, by ensuring high level document control and document collaboration, we can apply several naming standards to document in a specific folder. Easily search and filter document through the entire folder structure by their name or metadata associate. Share document in different ways.

Share a link with external, getting notified when subscribing to folders, through transmittal, ensuring full traceability and providing a view about who has viewed and downloaded, or by bridging files and sharing documents between different projects I have.

With this document control and collaboration level, Autodesk Construction Cloud has achieved the ISO 19650 compliance accreditation. This certification was awarded by TUV SUD, the independent testing, inspection, and certification body that validates ACC adherence to the widely recognized standard for digital information management and construction projects.

So collaboration wouldn't be possible without a powerful viewer based on Autodesk platform service viewer. The Files tool support many file formats. It can be opened and viewed to improve collaboration workflow. We can easily open on the web all the models my colleague Luis showed from Revit.

Our plan being, destructor model, electrical model, MEP model, or the architectural model. And we can access to the object property very easily by selecting one element and opening the properties. That is not only limited to Revit.

And we can have a similar experience in mobile. With Revit and IFC, or with other BIM model from different software company, not only Autodesk, we can also view and collaborate through 2D drawing, such as DWG, PDF, and various document types from Microsoft Office.

We have set up a collaborative common data environment. Let's go now, one step beyond on the collaborative workflow specific for the design and pre-construction phases. By being connected to Autodesk Docs, Autodesk BIM Collaborate streamlines multiple collaborative capability workflows across design collaboration and coordination.

So here in the timeline, by clicking the little plus icon on the right of your timeline, you can create package including Revit, IFC, DWG, another type of document, and share them with the rest of the team into a shared folder with the appropriate permission level. Then review, compare with previous version, and decide to consume other teams package into your work-in-progress folder, if you approve them.

Activity across the package will be tracked in the project timeline, improving collaboration across team. You will understand if a team has been shared a package, if you have consumed them. We can federate the different model we have in our work-in-progress folder, the one that we have created and the one that we have consumed.

Those are our work-in-progress model and the other team model we consume previously. By enabling the color theming one color by team, we will easily identify which team is having some inconsistencies with our model and we will be able to create issues to quickly solve them.

During the design phase, we exchange models very often. We cannot review all of them in depth every time, only share by a team. In most of the case, each of us will be interested in tracking change in a specific group of objects, but not the whole model.

In this example, for example, the electrical model, the electrical engineer will be interested in tracking changes in the ceiling of the architectural model, and is not interested in anything else. Therefore, the electrical team can create a watch group with the type of object and category that he is interested to review the next time.

So the electrical engineer will only need to focus on changes that have been occurring in the workgroup next time the architect share the next version. This is what I call a control collaboration. You focus on collaborating on things that matter only to you, avoiding getting overwhelmed by distracting elements of the whole model.

Let's talk about coordination. Nothing can be coordinated if there is no collaboration between teams. Coordination needs fast collaboration between teams and discipline to share their different model. And then, collaboration needs as well, to respond and apply to the action decided during this coordination.

Model Coordination allows us to create various coordination space with or without automated crash detection enabling. Disabling crash detection accelerates, of course, the processing of the model once the model is uploaded.

Within a coordination space, we can create different views by federating different models. We have similar capabilities on the viewer, as in docs. Some months ago, object table was released, allowing us to aggregate model data in table from including model object properties and quantities as if we were creating directly, schedules in Revit.

More recently, we released as well the object colors, assigning colors to the different files, model, or the various objects by property making it easier for everyone to understand the context and fit and the purpose of the intent communication.

Those view can be saved, the docs, to be shared with the rest of the team at the office or on the construction site via the web or the mobile app.

On coordination space with classes enabled, select model will be automatically analyzed for intersecting geometry. The class grid shows the total number of class groups for all pairs of models in the coordination space.

By clicking one of these class numbers, you will be prompt to the view of both models. By selecting a class or a group of classes, you can create issue and assign them to the right user to solve it.

Let's go one step beyond collaboration. Those models of view are accessible through the coordination plugin in Navisworks for providing the accessibility and the possibility to create and manage issues in a single environment in the cloud, and in the Desktop tool at the same time.

They share the same issue library. With the issue plugin in Revit, you can access the Issue tool as well.

So with the issue plugin in Revit, you can access the issue too, as well. Understand the problem, apply the correction, and then respond to them directly in the Revit interface.

This is what we call the round trip of issued data between Autodesk Construction Cloud, Navisworks, and Revit. The round trip streamlines the collaboration between a maximum number of stakeholders, private user, the Navisworks user, and everyone in Autodesk Construction Cloud.

Let's talk now about estimation. Estimation teams have traditionally not been profiting from a collaborative environment. How can we improve collaboration with estimator?

In Autodesk Construction Cloud, we do this with a comprehensive 2D and 3D takeoff solution, all connected with a single source of truth. If a new version of the document or the model is published, we are quickly notified and we can decide if we want to utilize the new version or we want to keep the last one.

Being cloud-based enable different estimaters to collaborate at the same time, on the same package, on the same inventory reports. Beyond all these capabilities for estimator and quantity takeoff, let's see how takeoff can also help us to improve our sustainability request.

Everything we build has a climate impact, whether it is an operational carbon or embodied carbon. Operational carbon can be mitigated with efficient energy measures afterwards. Embodied carbon cannot. And it's locked in our building.

Construction embodied carbon emission are quite significant, representing 13% of the global carbon emission. Imagine. So reducing carbon emission and embodied carbon in particular is a priority. And therefore, we need to have the right tool to select the most efficient material during the design and pre-design and pre-construction phases.

And that's why Autodesk Construction Cloud integrates with the free and open source platform EC3. We can export our quantity material takeoff to EC3. After enabling EC3 for Autodesk Construction Cloud, you can log into EC3 and import 2D and 3D material quantity, and compare the different embodied carbon data.

EC3, if you are not familiar, pulls and bonded carbon data from environmental product declaration and can compare the embodied carbon intensity from the different available local materials. You can always update quantity from Autodesk Construction Cloud.

You come there, press click. OK, you can update the quantity of the Construction Cloud to continue the process and at the same time the project evolves. You don't need to wait at the end of the project. And finally, you can create detail and summary report, and save them directly in Autodesk Docs to share with the rest of the team.

So EC3 integration is a very powerful tool to achieve project sustainability goals. Let's go one step further with the carbon accounting beta in takeoff. In this method, by using the masterformat as classification system, we get from EC3 directly the embodied carbon values into ACC. Everything happened in ACC, and we don't need to connect to EC3 to import export.

That's it. How does it work? So how to create a 3D takeoff type. We start adding an output for concrete. When I select the classification embodied carbon is fetched automatically from the database.

Do the same for river, and actually, the embodied carbon is also fetched from EC3. And finally, we can do the takeoff for the 3D footing on the model in Revit or IFC. We can do the same also for 2D take off.

In this case, we will do for concrete. Metal deck. The carbon will be fetched as soon as we select the right classification from the master format. In this case, being a 2D takeoff, we need to pull the right formula to make sure that when we create an area or a line, it calculate the value terms of height, volume, weight.

Anything that you want to calculate, you need just to create the right formula there. By doing this part, we have an area and the area within the formula will calculate the embodied carbon.

So let's see how we have this total carbon in the inventory and we export to Excel. We're going to still override this value if we have a different product manually in Autodesk Takeoff, and the inventory will be updated automatically.

We can also save a snapshot in a moment of the project. By saving this snapshot, we can compare the various version of the project once there are significant change and compare which version will be more sustainable.

And finally, we can run reports, including the carbon data, the embodied carbon data. I share with the rest of the team.

Finally, it's time for construction. Autodesk Build is probably our most powerful collaboration product within Autodesk Construction Cloud. In fact, Autodesk Build delivers a broad, deep, and connected set of project execution and project management tools.

Our builder's in a single software platform. It's easy to deploy, to adopt, and at the same time, is highly configurable. Let's take a close look at some of the capability and workflow supported by Autodesk Build that helps us to improve collaboration.

Request for information, RFIs. It's a formal process used to obtain clarification or additional information from different stakeholders involved in a project. With a scalable format and trackable process, RFIs in Autodesk Construction Cloud improve collaboration by connecting different teams and different companies.

In a similar collaborative way, submittal are a formal process employed this time to submit document material and equipment for approval from the responsible stakeholder. Submittal, in this case, ensure that the material and equipment utilized in the project adhere to the project requirement.

Meetings tool. The Meetings tool allows us to create agenda. Our meeting invite is external or internal from the project, from the Autodesk project. Capture decision made, assign individuals to a specific action item by referencing them to other workflows.

The Asset tool in Autodesk Build with 2D asset or 3D asset allows teams to track and visualize construction components across a project life cycle. From the design through commissioning and handover. Quality workflow can be achieved in different manner. Here are reactive quality control.

Identify quality issues. By currently assigning them to the right type of issue, project managers will be able to run confident report and add them to the daily or weekly discussion with the right teams. In this case, a proactive way of running quality control will be over firms having prepared a set of templates using smallpdf or the Autodesk Build default format.

A stakeholder in a construction site can create as many items as desired. When finding anything not compliant, an issue or a photo can be added to this form.

Cost management, something that usually has not been connected to design, construction, is a specific theme running this kind of workflow. In this case, owner and subcontractor can control it in the same project. The budget and manage change order with clear visibility into what this impacts on the overall project budget.

It can also may manage pay application and track payment against the total work to be completed. And finally, keep project on track with connected and centralized schedule management and work plan accessible for everyone.

As you can see in the center, all these tools can be interconnected by referencing them to each other. This ensures that all stakeholders, we just mentioned, can, with the right permission set, find quickly the most updated information, streamline the collaboration to a next level.

So we try to cover directly in ACC most of the capability or AC projects. At the same time, we understand other tools are doing great things and collaboration is still at the top of our mind. Therefore, Autodesk Construction Cloud has over 175 integrations to other applications through partner card, APIs, including Autodesk platform service and Autodesk Cloud Connect, ACC Connect.

To conclude, this presentation should provide you with an overview of selecting a smarter and more efficient workflows to improve collaboration and sustainability. First, Autodesk Forma helps in the early design process to predict predictive analytics, design capability, and automation. Second, Revit-Forma interoperability and the modeling possibility of Revit are huge.

And finally, we have learned about Autodesk Construction Cloud, including Autodesk Docs as a CD, Autodesk BIM Collaborate for collaboration and coordination, and Autodesk Takeoff for quantification, and finally, Autodesk Build for field execution and project management workflows.