Great news for AEC industry! In a significant development that could have far-reaching implications for construction industry workflows, Autodesk today announced a new set of products for Autodesk Construction Cloud at the company annual event Autodesk University 2020. The four-day interactive event, which began on Tuesday, November 17 went virtual this year in view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The annual AU event encourages attendees to explore new ways of imagining and designing what’s possible across the industries of construction, manufacturing, architecture, engineering and media creation.
Autodesk Construction Cloud connects workflows, teams and data at every stage of construction to reduce risk, maximize efficiency, and increase profits. Now, the new updates — Autodesk Build, Autodesk Quantify and Autodesk BIM Collaborate — built on a unified platform and common data environment, will empower general contractors, specialty trades, designers and owners to drive better business outcomes. Construction teams will have a comprehensive construction management platform with all data in one central location to simplify collaboration, proactively anticipate project changes and provide data-driven guidance for organizational improvement.
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Announcing the new launches, Jim Lynch, Vice President and General Manager, Autodesk Construction Solutions, said, “Almost a year ago we introduced Autodesk Construction Cloud, sharing our vision for the most powerful and complete portfolio of construction management products. The new products we announced today represent a huge milestone for connected construction, with Autodesk Build providing an entirely new approach to project management.”
To be available in early 2021, the three new product offerings announced today include:
- Autodesk Build: Unites the best of PlanGrid and BIM 360 with additional new functionality to create a comprehensive field and project management solution. Autodesk Build also includes the PlanGrid Build mobile app with additional new capabilities for field workers.
- Autodesk Quantify: Empowers estimators to automate 2D and 3D quantification from a single comprehensive platform.
- Autodesk BIM Collaborate: Enables project teams to align and execute on design intent by managing the entire design collaboration and coordination workflow from a single solution to reduce rework, improve productivity and accelerate project delivery.
“We’re continuing to deliver on our promise of helping builders across the world catalyze their digital transformation and make construction more predictable, safe and sustainable,” Lynch added.
Construction is about building, not learning how to navigate complicated software. Underlining that technology should be easy-to-use and effortless to scale, that is if a construction company grows, its software should grow with it, Sameer Merchant, Head, Product Development, Autodesk Construction Solutions, said, “In developing our new offerings, we incorporated the best-in-class features of existing Autodesk construction products into a common web and mobile framework and integrated them with a shared data platform. As a result, the most loved capabilities will be immediately available within Autodesk Build, Autodesk Quantify and Autodesk BIM Collaborate.”
Entire building lifecycle from a single platform
The new construction management products will connect construction teams, data and workflows across the headquarters, office and jobsite.
Autodesk Build delivers a connected set of field execution and project management tools for builders in a single platform that is easy to deploy, adopt and use, while ensuring information sharing and workflows are performed in a tightly-controlled and highly-configurable environment.
It capitalizes on best-in-class features of BIM 360 and PlanGrid while also delivering new functionality, and is integrated with data from all other construction workflows so teams can handle workflows such as project management, quality, safety, cost and project closeout with a single log-in.
Autodesk Build enables real-time collaboration between teams in the field and the office with the PlanGrid Build mobile app. With capabilities such RFI creation and issue tracking, and up-to-date drawings and markups, PlanGrid Build ensures changes are immediately available to reduce miscommunication, errors and rework.
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Autodesk Quantify is a comprehensive quantification solution for estimating teams that enables both 2D and 3D takeoffs in one cloud-based tool. The tools enables quick and accurate quantification of elements from both 2D plans and 3D models, and managing these elements alongside subsequent documents in a single environment. With all data in a centralized project location, teams can increase transparency and collaboration on their estimates and reduce risk for faster and more competitive bidding.
Autodesk BIM Collaborate brings design collaboration, model coordination and document management to the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform to reduce rework, improve productivity, and accelerate project delivery. Since it is built upon a unified platform, the BIM Collaborate tool empowers project teams to align and execute on design intent and constructability by managing the entire design collaboration and coordination workflow within a single, Cloud-based solution in a common data environment. Features such as project timeline, aggregated model viewing and change review provide design teams with deep insights into the real-time status of the design phase and help quickly contextualize changes, while model coordination capabilities like clash detection and issues management ensure the highest quality designs are delivered to the field. A BIM Collaborate Pro option will also offer users Revit Cloud Worksharing, Collaboration for Civil 3D and Collaboration for Plant 3D.
