As you may know Autodesk Industry Collections became available to government agencies as of February 1. This date also coincided with the retirement of perpetual licenses for most of its products, including AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor, Revit, and more. But what’s so great about these new collections and how do they differ from the old Autodesk Suites?

First let’s explain what a collection is.

If you’re looking for your investment in BIM to pay off even more, the answer may be in the cloud. That’s because several of the biggest challenges for building design teams can be solved through cloud-based collaboration.

Keeping everyone on the same page in the face of multiple documents and files are two of the top concerns that keep AEC professionals awake at night according to Autodesk sources, here are some more:

By Chris Perry, CADSoft Consulting

Color schemes are a great visual tool in views to highlight or callout specific criteria of information in the view, generally used in plan-type views.

I have always been a big proponent of making 3D views with a section box to better understand design iterations and the relationship of the parts of the building model. Taking this to high detail and illustrating a segment of the model to resolve design issues quickly can result in having to make several, if not dozens, of views during schematic and design development phases.

If you're an Autodesk user then you may be aware that how you purchase software and even what you can purchase is changing.

You can import most popular CAD file formats into AutoCAD, including Autodesk Inventor, CATIA, IGES, Rhino, and SolidWorks, and export most AutoCAD drawings just as easily. With complex geometry, not every process is the same, and there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all import with CAD.

I wanted to post something that has come up in conversation lately.  I have been asked how to do cost summation in Revit.  It does not matter if you have Revit Structure, Revit Architecture or Revit MEP, this tip will help with any Revit product.

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The promise of field-accurate site conditions inside a 3D building information model is becoming a reality on construction sites and in early design discussions, thanks to better software import capabilities and newer, less-expensive field scanning technologies.

It’s likely that your agency’s procurement office requires proof of performance before even considering the purchase of a new software solution.  But government case studies are often hard to come by, after all agencies have a habit of keeping their projects and innovations quiet.

In recent years this has changed as more and more agencies are stepping forward to showcase their achievements. And, what better way to demonstrate that tax payer dollars are being used wisely and efficiently than case studies.

If you’ve ever accidentally moved a linked model or deleted a bunch of column grids in older versions of Revit and found your whole world crashing down around you, then you’ll want to know about these practical ways to keep your project intact a