Data Management for Large Civil Projects

[Anonymous]

I am trying to figure out the best workflow for an upcoming large civil project I'll be managing. I have done everything from storing files on my local hard drive for smaller projects to having an in-office network drive and collaborating with Sharepoint and also using Vault because it was client driven. We also have Box for cloud file management but with pathing and file locking issues I'm thinking it would only be good for backing up but not for directly working on. My experience in Vault is limited and I'm hesitant to try go in that direction because of cost, cumbersome checking in and checking out and bad reviews from a former co-worker who struggled for a few years with it. There's also a possibility that the file management for the upcoming project will be in Projectwise and reading into that a little it seems like the CAD file management component can be very slow. Any suggestions, experiences, etc would be greatly appreciated.

[KirkWM]

We currently use ProjectWise for holding all our project files, including C3D drawings and associated files. PW has advanced integration which allows use of data shortcuts and sheet set manager which is nice. You can also use the PW exchange attributes to have PW store attributes that can be brought into title blocks; this allows you to also mass-update the drawing title blocks without having to open them :-D.  Also for a large civil project, you may have lots of teams and in PW you can create user lists to manage what they have access to and what they can modify. PW also has a customizable check and approval workflow.  BUT yes PW can be a bit slow at times.

Besides that our company has been looking closer at the updated BIM360 platform which may be capable of many of the same tasks but also support advanced hosting of the major AEC suite of Autodesk products like Infraworks and Revit.

Food for thought 🙂