Collaboration Tips
This month is all about collaboration and CAD professionals, designers, architects, and engineers deal with this regularly. What is collaboration? Although there are many definitions, they pretty much fall into one of two categories, and this first hit I chose online summarizes them concisely:
- The action of working with someone to produce or create something.
- The traitorous cooperation with an enemy.
Even though we sometimes do not see eye to eye with our clients, consultants, or coworkers, I think the best choice of the two above would be #1. So “collaborating” is working with others with an end goal of producing or creating something.
In any industry, whether it be manufacturing, automotive, or the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, drawings are created in order to show how an end product is to be built. These drawings are then shared and coordinated with multiple parties during the design process in order to get their input and assistance—this is collaboration.
The process of collaboration will require the use of various products to be successful and the product that many use to produce their drawings is AutoCAD®. This is important to mention, because this is an AutoCAD column.
As we all know, there is much more to collaboration than just creating drawings. Drawings that are created need to be shared with the various parties involved in the design and approval process. Although this type of work happens in many industries, for ease of description and examples, this article will be based around collaborating on a building project and we’ll discuss a few other items used in conjunction with AutoCAD.
In a building project, the team that will be collaborating is typically composed of an architect (usually the lead), civil, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection engineers, interior designers, contractors, suppliers, vendors, and of course the building owner—the one everyone is ultimately working for.
To make sure the project is a success, as part of the collaboration process there will be lots of back and forth conversations and sharing of physical and electronic data. The electronic data, which is commonly composed of emails, cut sheets, project schedules, specifications, and most importantly, the actual drawing files, can be shared via various methods. These methods and how files are (or should be) shared are discussed in this article.
In 30 years of working in the building design industry I have seen a tremendous amount of evolution in how drawings are created (mylar and slicks with pin bars and sticky backs is where I started) as well as how they are shared. The days of hand-carried drawings on floppy disks or CD-ROMs is all but gone; even FTP sites are a rare find these days. Of the current technologies available the most common way to share the electronic data is via email and online (in the cloud) sharing sites such as Dropbox, Sharefile, Justcloud, Hightail, and of course Autodesk’s own cloud services, A360. Each method and service has its own advantages and features, with some being more geared toward just the sharing portion of collaborating.
From an AEC industry perspective, where the bulk of our designs are done using Autodesk products such as Revit® or AutoCAD, it would seem that A360 would be the way to go. But as I currently work with a small firm and clients that handle projects involving quick turnarounds and typically less than a hundred drawings, I see most collaboration being done through email and Dropbox.
No matter the system or technology used, there are some key concepts and procedures that should be followed in order to make the overall collaboration process successful. Two of these concepts are communication and coordination.
Communication
By far, some of the biggest mistakes made on projects happen due to the lack of good communication. Someone didn’t ask, someone didn’t tell, or someone assumed it was understood or common knowledge. When collaborating, communication is what keeps the project moving forward. Checklists and questionnaires are great ways to start initial communications. What are the expectations of the team by the owner, the architect, and the other team members? What’s the schedule? What are the deliverables? What has changed? Everyone needs to be aware of what is happening on the project and what the client’s expectations are. When communicating with the team, it is better to have over-communication than a lack of.
Coordination
Once the majority of the data is pulled together, which often seems to be a couple days before the project is due, it needs to be shared and coordinated with the rest of the team. Wall or space configuration changes, new equipment, revised lighting layouts, or myriad other items need to be communicated to the entire team in order to make sure nothing is missed. Sometimes the team lead, whether it be the architect, project manager, or general contractor on design-build projects, knows exactly who to include when sharing changes. And sometimes, not so much. If you are the lead and you're not sure who or what the changes will affect, let everyone know. This falls back to communication.
Email is still by far the most common method of communication in the business world, and even with its limitations, is one of your most powerful tools to keep the team updated.
Email is not the best method of sharing large files, but is still commonly used as the sole method for sending and requesting file updates. Although it is becoming less of an issue these days, many email providers as well as some corporate servers have attachment size limitations. This is frustrating and can lead to a reduction in files sent to limit this headache, which leads to a reduction in information provided or a tidal wave of individual emails in order to get all the files distributed.
If you're still sending files through email, you can reduce the attachment sizes by compressing them into a zip file. In Windows it is as easy as selecting your files, right clicking, and choose “Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder.”
Then attach the compressed ZIP file to your email.
If you are sending DWG files, be sure to Audit and Purge the files before sending. If you are having issues getting your file sizes down, see the February 2014 and July 2015 articles on “Drawing Cleanup” and “Drawing Purge” in AUGIWORLD for some additional help. When cleaning up your drawings, do not skip the xrefs, and be sure to include them in your ZIP.
AutoCAD has a tool to do a bunch of this for you and then some. By using the eTransmit command, which you can type or access through your File pull-down menu, you can have your files purged, audited, and compressed into a ZIP for sending. If you have a client who is using an older version of AutoCAD, you can even have the files converted automatically to a usable version through custom transmittal setups.
Note: If you are not using eTransmit, to save yourself some extra work you may just want to create a draft email with the links to Autodesk’s viewing/conversion tools: http://www.autodesk.com/products/dwg/viewers. I recommend “DWG TrueView” regularly.
Cloud Server
If you are sharing your project files via one of the cloud services, there are a few things you can do to make it easier for your team. One is how you set up your folder structure and project name.
Things to do:
- Create a structure that allows an organized hierarchy of trades, revisions, etc.
- Create a project name that works for everyone. For example, naming your shared folder "Project Files" or “Drawings for Consultants” can be very confusing when that share shows up in a list 20 other folders in a service such as Dropbox or Sharefile.
- Use a descriptive project name such as what is on the plan’s titleblock.
- Don't use an internal project number, which has no meaning to anyone else on the team—they have their own project numbers.
Here are some examples of shares that have shown up in my Dropbox or Sharefile list. If you are typically doing the sharing, put yourself on the other end and maybe you can see why some folder names can be confusing.
Some Courtesies
Let everyone know what has changed. When making changes, develop some method of tracking and then sending that information along with the drawing updates. Those of us who have been burned because we were told that “We just moved a door” (and trusted it) have come up with ways to find what the changes really entail. Consider sending a PDF with the areas clouded and commented on or add this to the drawings on a separate layer. This is a lot more efficient than what basically equates to an Easter egg hunt on the DWG receiver’s end.
Timely updates make the collaboration process go smoother. It is not necessary to send a new background, section, or elevation each time you make a change, but likewise, do not wait until the afternoon before a job goes out and send all the changes that were made that week to include in your team’s final drawings.
Provide more than a background file and a titleblock. Note that much of a project’s work, whether it be mechanical, lighting, electrical power, plumbing, fire protection, structural, landscape, or interior work, is much like yours. It gets installed in a 3D world; i.e., it is affected by sections, and elevations, both interior and exterior, roof plans and details—not just in floor plans and reflected ceiling plans. It is not necessary to have a BIM model to collaborate successfully on a project, but a good “set” of drawings can make it work. So when sending out updates, be sure to at least send PDFs of your latest drawings along with your background updates. If you are not sure what to send, just ask. It may be surprising, but when I have asked for sections and elevations for coordination, I have actually had some people ask why we needed them.
During the course of a project it is very common to have an architect/owner require multiple review sets for owner review and or approval, but it seems more and more that the consultants are not given a copy unless they specifically ask. These review sets should be for everyone’s benefit.
Collaboration is a team effort, and sometimes it is the little things we do that can make a huge difference. When it comes to collaborating with the team, the team leader sets the tone. Let it be a good one.
If you want more details or have a comment, feel free to send me an email at walt@functionsense.com.
