BIM Track™ - Model coordination made easy in few clicks

Generally I'm not used to give reviews and presentation about particular software but, this time, I would like to share some personal feedback about this great platform.

Model management

When it comes to manage big models, big teams and coordination reviews, you need definitely a platform to track all the changes. 

Navisworks is able to manage reports and changes between different stages of the project but, is not able to provide information to each single user directly inside Revit and, of course, is not able to provide a professional cloud platform for Managers to track the progress of models coordination.

When first time I faced this problem, I realize that we need a professional environment to manage this workflow and I started to try different ways.

First I tried with couple of Dynamo scripts to visualize clash spheres in Revit (based on XML clash reports) combined with Excel Worksheets but this is not very user friendly (at that time we didn't have Dynamo Player!).

Then I started to test some cloud platform like BIMCollab and BIMTrack. Both of them are user friendly, both of them with a cloud integration, both of them with Revit and Navisworks integration, both of them based on BCF workflow. 

So why I choose BIMTrack? Simply because I liked the way hubs, projects, team and reports are managed. I'll not focus on the price cause both solutions have some trial and free version and user-based plans.

BIM Track™

After you register for you trial version you can login and create your first HUB. This is really interesting for team extended across different countries and projects, because you can easily manage accessibility to different information and follow all of them separately. 

So just to start I've two HUBs for two different countries and inside the first HUB I've 2 projects.

For each project you've lots of customization in terms of:zones, phases, status, labels and priorities. In this way is very easy to segregate issues and send to the correct team members and, of course from my point of view, track progress and create reports.

As explained before, one of the most important features is related to team management so, you can easily create group of members to assign issues.  

After you finalize the setup, is time to start you coordination workflow.

BIM Coordination workflow

I won't focus too much on how to export models from Revit and how to setup a clash test in Navisworks, because is not the target of this article so, just create some walls and some pipe and create a federated model in Navisworks (IFC or NWC as you prefer and based on you actual workflow).

After the installation of the plugin you'll find a new tab for BIMTrack with a brand new window. Here you can login to the cloud platform and choose the right project (you'll see only projects you're allowed to see)

This is the clash test between walls and pipes (very easy) and as we were expecting, we have some clash ;)

Now the issue tracking starts and you can create issues directly from the clash report in one shot!

It's very easy to setup some common information and, most important, assign to the correct team for action and for information. Then simply the issues are created and saved on the cloud.

It's very cool also the way you "socialize" the issue management with a chat related to the single issue to be able to track status changes and comments.

Now, on the other side of the mountain, Revit users receive the same list of issues (based on team memebrship). 

here's also a nice feature to place a sphere around the clash (as you can do with Dynamo as well).

Now is time to create some opening and to do this I'll use the plugin provided with MagiCAD for void management. MagiCAD comes with couple of common functionalities and this void tool is really helpful if you deal with MEP systems.

For some reason I opened three of them and left the last one closed (maybe because of some design change) and I changed the status of the issue to be "in progress" and I put a lower priority. All the changes in issues are instantly applied and saved to the cloud (this is the power of a common cloud platform) and if you setup in the correct way email alerts, you can be notified for changes.

Now it's just a matter of export again the model to Navisworks and run the clash report to update the status (as you're used to do).

From a Manager point of view you can always check the progress on the cloud and create some report directly from you table.

Ok now it's time to open also the last wall and update everything to clear the clash report. Of course you can change the status of an issue directly from Navisworks and everything will be updated.

There're some cool filters to be able to check issues and manage them directly in Revit and Navisworks other than the cloud.

And this is the final model clean

Others

There're other cool functionalities on the cloud platform, like 3D model visualization (still in beta) and more, I'm sure, will come very soon.

In the actual revision of the cloud platform, the only thing I think is missed, is the possibility to save report and archive them by project. The report is on the fly and it gives you only the possibility to save it as PDF.

Conclusion

As final conclusion I can easily say that this platform is deeply useful and it's not at all expensive, compared to the benefits provided. 

As always, enjoy you BIM life and feel free to comment!

Cesare