- [Instructor] One of the most common things that users,
will need to do when working with BIM 360 design,
is access cloud-based, Revit models, from within Revit.
So to give you a sense of what that's like,
and how to access a Revit Cloud Model,
I will show you from the point of view
of one of my team members, Howie Cardell.
So Howie has just been invited
to the Nadia's Garden project.
So there is a button here,
where he could choose to go to the project,
but that would actually open it up in a web portal,
but we want to open it up through Revit instead.
So even though this is useful,
and there's a lot of interesting functionality here,
we'll talk about that later,
so for now, what we're going to do
is focus on the experience from Revit.
Now I should mention, there are a few prerequisites,
you will need an Autodesk account,
we talked about that in the previous video,
so make sure that your Autodesk account is established,
and that you're able to log in.
You will need a license to access BIM 360 Design,
associated with your Autodesk account,
and you will need of course to be invited to one
or more BIM 360 Design projects,
and I just showed you that
Howie is a member of the Nadia's Garden project.
So just how do we access one of these projects,
from within Revit?
So I'm here in Revit, and I'm in Revit 2021,
looking at the home screen.
The home screen has two links over here on the left,
Recent Files, which shows you the files
that you've been opening up frequently,
and a BIM 360 link,
that's what we would use to access our BIM 360 projects.
Now, of course, it does require Sign In as you can see,
and I'm not currently signed in yet.
So I will want to click this Sign In button right here,
and input my Autodesk account information.
Now once it logs in,
it should display the contents of at least one project,
that you are a member of.
If you don't see any projects,
then you need to talk to whomever is in charge
of your Autodesk accounts,
and get yourself invited to the project
that you need to work in.
If you're using Revit 2019 or 2020,
the layout of the screen is slightly different.
So in 2019, and 2020,
you'll still have links on the left hand side,
but instead of having a drop down menu here,
to access your accounts and projects,
that drop down menu will be on the left
with the BIM 360 drop down,
so otherwise, you'll have all the same functionality,
just in slightly different locations.
So it's possible,
you might be a member of more than one account,
so if you need to switch accounts,
you can use this link here to do so
or choose it off the list in the earlier versions,
and then you will see a list of projects under that account,
that you have access to,
and in this case we want the Nadia's Garden project.
Now, if you're trying to follow along with me,
you likely don't have Nadia's Garden or the same account,
that's perfectly fine,
you can choose whatever account you have access to,
from your firm, and follow along in any project files
that you like.
The point of this video is really just to show you,
how to access a cloud-based Revit model from within Revit.
So once you've chosen your project,
you should see a series of folders,
now the folders that you see
will be completely dependent on your username,
and which access rights your username has been given,
by your admin user.
So in this case my admin user,
has given Howie access to the Architecture
and Structure folders, your screen may vary.
So the file I want to access is in the Architecture folder,
and then it's called Arch Model.
Now notice that this is a Workshared Cloud Model,
so I'm going to click it right here to open it up.
And then there's a little show details here,
which you can expand if you like,
and that will show you what it's doing behind the scenes,
so it's loading different pieces,
sometimes there's Linked Models like you see right now,
and other steps that it's taking,
as it gets everything loaded up.
Now in Howie's case,
he's missing something called the Desktop Connector,
the Desktop Connector is a piece of software,
that allows you to create links to other file formats,
like AutoCAD, and DWG files.
Now it's safe to just click OK here and dismiss this,
but we will want to get that Desktop Connector installed
at some point, and we'll look at that in a future video.
Meanwhile, because we don't have the Desktop Connector,
it's also telling me that there's a problem in Manage Links.
So if I open that dialogue,
and go to the CAD Formats tab,
you can see the DWG file here is not found,
and that's because it's hosted on BIM 360,
and I don't have the Desktop Connector installed,
to be able to reload that.
So it's safe for me to just click OK here and dismiss that.
Now if the file you're opening doesn't have DWG files,
you may not see that same warning,
and again it's not really that important either way.
All right, so I'm here in a floor plan view,
and I'm just going to zoom in a little bit,
and now I want to talk about,
just some really subtle differences,
between accessing a cloud-based Workshared Model,
and a land-based Workshared Model.
Now, first of all,
if you're not familiar with what I mean
by a land-based Workshared Model,
and you've never heard the terms Central Model,
and local file before,
then you might want to check out the course,
that we have here in the library,
called Revit Worksharing for Users,
it would explain all of those concepts,
and they are important prerequisite concepts
to understand before using Worksharing,
and before working in team projects in Revit.
But meanwhile, the most significant difference here is,
that at the moment, it's very difficult to tell
that I'm actually in a local copy.
So you may, of course,
recall that it's incredibly important
that you don't work in the Central Model,
when working in Workshared Projects.
But if I look over here at the top of my project browser,
you can see that I'm just seeing the name of the Revit file,
which sort of looks like maybe I'm in the central file.
Well, rest assured, there's no reason to panic here,
we are not in the central file.
When you're working in BIM 360,
cloud-based, Worksharing Models, it's handled differently.
And the local copy that we have on screen
has a auto generated name,
and it lives in a temporary folder behind the scenes,
and they just display the project name for us here
in the Revit interface,
but we are in fact working in a local copy,
and that's all being managed for us automatically.
So in a way, it's actually easier with BIM 360 projects,
because you don't have to worry about that,
it just sort of takes care of itself.
Now other than that,
working in a cloud-based worksharing project,
is no different than any other worksharing project.
So I could just go about my business as usual,
so for example, if I select an object,
then there's an icon here,
and I could make that object editable,
and take ownership of it.
Or I could select an object,
and just go right to a modification,
and maybe move this thing over a little bit,
and it would simultaneously borrow the element,
and move it to the new location.
If I want to add new geometry, easy enough,
I just simply choose the command that I need and off I go.
Now, if I try to edit something,
that is already being edited by one of my co-workers,
then I will get the standard message,
indicating that just like we would get
in a land-based project,
so I'll just simply cancel out of that.
Now, one of my favorite ways to tell,
who's doing what in a Workshared Project
as we're working, is to use Worksharing Display,
so if I click this pop-up menu here,
there are a few different modes that we can enable,
Checkout Status, will color things on screen,
based on whether or not they're editable.
So the red elements are currently being edited
by my co-workers, the green ones are the ones that I own,
and everything else is available to edit.
Now if you want more information,
you want to know who owns those elements,
you can switch to the Owners mode,
and then each user gets their own unique color.
And so for example, these purple elements over here,
if I hover over one of those,
I can see that those are owned by a user called Deshiv,
so if I needed to do something with those,
I could contact Deshiv and have a discussion about that.
So of course, the most important thing that you'll do,
when working in a Workshare enabled project,
is to synchronize, so synchronize with Central,
works exactly the same way as it does in a land-based,
the only difference here is that
you can see that the Central Model lives on BIM 360,
but otherwise, it will function in just the same way.
You can optionally add comments before you synchronize,
and then you click OK,
and it will synchronize your changes,
and give you a nice status bar here,
to indicate the progress as it goes.
So accessing a BIM 360 saved Cloud Model is very similar
to accessing land-based ones,
with just a few minor differences,
but otherwise it's the same worksharing experience,
that you've come to expect, whether or not
you're working in the cloud or locally.