Autodesk releases new product enhancements for quantity takeoff and design review workflows to increase collaboration and mitigate risk during preconstruction

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2021 — (PRNewswire) —   Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) today announced that more than 350,000 projects across the globe are using Autodesk Construction Cloud to power more effective preconstruction workflows, including document management, bid management, quantification, model coordination and design collaboration. The company also announced a series of product updates, doubling down on its commitment to unify the construction process and empower teams to build better.

Owners, general contractors and specialty contractors alike, across all industry segments around the world, turn to Autodesk Construction Cloud for their preconstruction workflows. DeAngelis Diamond, Windover Construction, Inc. and Granger Construction are three such companies using Autodesk Construction Cloud to supercharge workflows for bid leveling and risk mitigation, model conditioning, quantification, design collaboration, model coordination and more:

• DeAngelis Diamond – a national construction management firm specializing in commercial, multi-family and healthcare construction with offices across Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and Michigan.
• Granger Construction – a Michigan-based construction management firm specializing in education, commercial, industrial, healthcare and the public sector.
• Windover Construction, Inc – a full service, employee-owned firm that provides comprehensive preconstruction planning, estimating, design-build, virtual design and construction management service in the education, healthcare, commercial, senior living and hospitality spaces.

"Mistakes made in preconstruction become exponentially more expensive when they are discovered in the field," said Zac Hays, head of preconstruction product at Autodesk Construction Solutions. "Autodesk Construction Cloud arms preconstruction teams with best-in-class solutions to help mitigate risk and reduce rework, whether it's reducing the total number of RFIs, increasing collaboration between the design and planning phases or using machine learning and predictive insights during the bidding process within BuildingConnected."

"Any contractor knows that risk mitigation during the preconstruction phase is one of the most critical factors to success, and a big part of that is bid leveling," said Brett Diamond, CIO and principal at DeAngelis Diamond. "BuildingConnected not only gives us access to a robust network of specialty contractors, but also makes collaboration with our estimating team seamless and provides valuable insight into our historical bidding data. Combined with TradeTapp's machine learning and AI technology to evaluate and mitigate risk, BuildingConnected allows us to reduce our rework, stay on time, on budget and be more nimble and efficient as an organization."

Autodesk Construction Cloud is a cloud-based construction management solution that offers an end-to-end platform to manage every phase of the building lifecycle, from design and plan, to build and operate. For the design and plan phases of construction projects, Autodesk Construction Cloud supports:

• Bid management and qualification – bidding teams can access the largest real-time construction network with an easy-to-use platform that streamlines the bid and risk management process, while utilizing machine learning to help identify, quantify and provide risk mitigation insights.
• Design Collaboration — multi-disciplinary teams can update designs in the same place, at the same time. With controlled package sharing, team WIPs, issue identification and design change notifications, teams will always be up to date with the latest design content.
• Model coordination – designers, engineers, BIM experts and trades can easily contribute to model coordination using automatic clash detection, clash grouping and tolerances, an issues solution that connects tools like Navisworks and Revit to the cloud and an aggregated model that can be reviewed by discipline, relevant sections or a first-person walk through.
• Model conditioning – teams can easily add custom data to a given model and classify and organize project data, turning a design into a construction-ready model that can be easily broken down into relevant scopes for downstream activities.
• Quantity takeoff – estimating teams can perform 2D and 3D quantification workflows from a common data environment to increase collaboration, speed and accuracy during the estimation process.
• Document management – Autodesk Construction Cloud provides a common data environment that helps teams organize, distribute and share files on a single, connected document management platform, ensuring all team members have access to the information they need.

New Takeoff API allows users to leverage quantities from Autodesk Takeoff externally

Autodesk Takeoff has released a beta API that allows estimating teams to leverage quantity takeoff data and project information directly from Autodesk Takeoff and integrate it into existing solutions. With this new API, teams can now extend the life of takeoff data to inform project decisions and power downstream workflows while breaking down barriers and providing added flexibility.

"Along with being able to visualize our takeoffs in both 2D and 3D, Autodesk Construction Cloud's common data environment gives our team a big advantage when it comes to quantification," said Amr Raafat, vice president of VDC and technology at Windover Construction. "Knowing that our team is working from the most up to date information, from a single source of truth, allows us to enhance our collaboration and deliver more accurate and complete quantity takeoffs."

Autodesk BIM Collaborate adds functionality to better identify design and constructability issues

Autodesk BIM Collaborate, a solution that enables project teams to easily manage coordination and design review workflows from the cloud, has also announced new updates that will help teams be able to quickly identify and resolve design and constructability issues throughout the building lifecycle. These updates include:

• A new clash tolerance filter, which allows individuals on the project team to check their work using dynamic clash tolerance filters—making it easier to focus on larger clashes at first, while getting more detailed as you go.
• Issues in Design Collaboration for architects, engineers and BIM experts to identify 3D issues in the design phase—adding relevant issue details, assignments, comments and due dates to be resolved in Revit or passed on to the coordination phase. 2D issues are also available for digital markup of 2D sheets with shapes, text, measurements, photo references and issue pins during design review.

"Information siloes between general contractors and trades have historically been a massive challenge for those of us working in preconstruction," said Darrah Leach, VDC Manager at Granger Construction. "Building a bridge between the two with collaborative features allows us to work not only cross functionally, but with partners outside of our own organization. This helps connect us in ways that simply were not possible before and, at the end of the day, helps us speed up our delivery time. Autodesk BIM Collaborate acts as that bridge between project partners and allows us to work in lockstep as broader team."

Assemble now supports publishing directly from Autodesk Docs

In line with offering a model conditioning solution that allows BIM and VDC Managers to organize, customize and share model data with key stakeholders for downstream workflows, Assemble users can now publish Revit models directly from Autodesk Docs and BIM 360 Docs to Assemble without using Revit or any publisher add-ins. This greatly reduces duplication of efforts by leveraging the common data environment and helps ensure everyone is working from the latest project documents.