Understanding data exchange and consumption

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Hello and welcome to understanding BIM

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data exchange methods within the design collaboration tool.

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There are three options for exchanging data

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that we have live linking.

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We have shared linking

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and finally, we have consumed linking.

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Now, let's take a look at what those three options are

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a common point

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of confusion within the design

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collaboration tool is that models can live in

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three different places along with there being

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three different options for linking the data.

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First, let's look at zero gate or live linking.

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You can see here we have our folders, architectural, structural mechanical,

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they correspond with our teams here in

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design collaboration.

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The live linking option refers to

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if you click on architectural folder, we see our work in progress model right here.

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So live linking means,

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hey, we're going to go ahead and link that model within our Revit

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file and base our

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decisions on that.

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As you can

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imagine

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that comes with a certain amount of risk. So consider your

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project team structure before doing so or linking this method. If you're

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all on the same company,

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you have all the disciplines in house and you communicate regularly.

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Obviously, that's going to be less risky than if it's

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a different

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companies in the widely dispersed team. You know,

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just so you know, that, that you're linking them out, at least,

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you know, at least know the risks associated.

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Our second option

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or one gate shared linking directly involves packages created by teams.

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So if we're looking at

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design collaboration, we can see all these circles,

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what these circles represent are actual packages,

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teams have created to share

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with other teams. So we can see the packages. So when a team creates the packages and

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goes ahead and shares that with the team,

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it puts the circle on the timeline and open indicates it has not been consumed,

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closed means,

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you know, the architectural team has consumed it. So

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every time a package is created and shared, what the tool does is

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it automatically creates a shared folder here in our project files.

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And within that shared folder,

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it starts tracking the versions of those models as we're going through.

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So we can see architectural has 22 versions,

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structural,

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yes,

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four versions

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and mechanical has

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a variation of one version up to three versions.

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And our last method of sharing

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involves a two gate system of

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linking. For instance, we're looking at our structural model here. We can see

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there's an open mechanical package

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for us here to look at. So if we click on that as a structural team,

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what it does is it brings in and allows us to

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automatically consume it if we're confident that we don't need

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to understand the changes or we have the option of

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exploring it.

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If we're pretty familiar with it,

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we can come in here and kind of look

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at anything that we may be specifically looking for,

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you know, just to make sure it's there,

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we back out a little bit here or we can, you know,

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hey, that's what changed between those, that package

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and the last package that I consumed.

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So here we can see, OK, now we really understand

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what happened to the changes. So we can see,

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you know what's been added,

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what's been removed and what's been modified. And you can look around at that

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until you get a full grasp of the concept of what's been happening with it.

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We can turn these on and off as we want to. So if we wanted to just see what was added,

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we certainly can see, you know, what was added

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and we're not limited to just our 3D view. If we go to our content browser

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and start clicking around in the

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sets too,

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we can,

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you know, visualize those changes in here as well. So

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that gives us the ability to understand, OK.

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What changed in relation to my work in progress model?

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I can go ahead and choose to consume that folder.

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So I'm structural consuming the mechanical,

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you'll say yes

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and what that does it processes that change. Now, if we look in document management

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at our structural folder,

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we will see a consume folder automatically created.

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If we click on that, it opens up our disciplines that we've consumed in the past

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and we can click in here and we can see

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there's our mechanical file

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that we just consumed. It's the version, you can see the time coincide.

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So that is what we link to rev it.

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Now, how do we go ahead and link that to rev? You can see we're in a rev cloud shared

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structural model. We can come in and we're gonna go ahead and insert the link,

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Revit

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link.

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Notice the default to

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it defaults to our project, right?

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So what took us into a design collaboration project?

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Now, we can just go to project files,

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we can go to our team structural,

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we can go to our consume folder.

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So this is the highest,

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this is the highest vetting we can do in a model before bringing in our team.

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Click on mechanical.

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Go ahead and grab that mechanical,

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open it,

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it's going to insert it into our project, OK.

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our project,

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OK.

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And

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now we would be able to see

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that model, OK.

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OK there e have it. Now, we can see our mechanical model within our structural.

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So we can go ahead and do

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some visual quality checks

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and make sure everything looks as expected.

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Also, one last thing to point out

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is if we look at our managed link that's recently added,

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we have the ability to now to see that full path. So

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it used to be a little bit truncated,

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but now you can see we're pulling it in all the way from our consumed and disciplined.

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So it's a

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good visual indicator that allows us to be

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sure that we're referencing in from the right place.

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Thank you for your time.