Quick! When you think about Standards what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Standards related to CAD? Revit? File structure? Maybe something else totaling different? Did you even think about the Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC)?
We are going to talk about the Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC). What do you have for standards? Would you even consider some of your company policies a standard? There are three things we should consider for standardization.
PROJECT CREATION:
This might not be considered a standard, but is it your company’s policy to fill out everything on the form? Do you really need to fill out all the information? What is the minimum you should fill out?
Autodesk provides a red asterisk “*” next to the required fields. At the minimum, you must fill out that information. It is a good idea to fill in the following as well:
- Project Number
- Template
- Address
- Time Zone
The reason for this is so you can use the information later through the ACC Insight Dashboards. If you know the Start and End Date fields, you can fill them in but is not something that typically is used later so leaving it blank is not an issue. As for the Project Value field, if your firm provides you with that information and requires you to fill it in, then do so, otherwise just ignore it.
PROJECT NAMING:
Is there a standard for the naming of the project in the Project name field? Having a standard naming policy is a very good idea. It makes it easy to search the project list, especially if you have hundreds of projects on the ACC.
The question becomes what do use as a naming standard. Just the project name? Do you have some form of abbreviations for repeat clients? Do you add a project number in the name? Anything about the location? These are all valid questions. The key is to create a consistent and easy-to-use standard that makes logical sense. Personally, I prefer at the minimum to have the project number, project name, and location, in that order.
Something like this: 00-0000-00.00_Project Name_City_State.
For those with repeat clients, adding a client abbreviation at the beginning would be a good idea as well. It forces the ACC to group all of one client together in the list.
Similar to this: ABC_00-0000-00.00_Project Name_City_State
Remember to keep it consistent and easy-to-use.
DOCS MODULE ORGANIZATION:
The last area of the ACC to think about standards for the Docs module.
Over the years, I have seen lots of folder naming setups for the Docs module. While they all have a lot in common there were some that were different, didn’t make sense and not consistent.
Things to think about when setting up naming standards:
- Folder Organization:
- By Discipline
- By Company Name
- By Company Name and Discipline
- By Discipline and Company Name
- Folder Name formatting:
- Sentence case
- All Upper case
- Sub-folder naming
- Keep it consistent.
- Between projects
- Between folders
- Folder names should make sense, make sure to use a name that tells everyone what the folder is for. An example: Linked Files.
- Keep it consistent.
- Keep it simple and consistent.
- All Project Admins who are creating ACC Projects need to follow the standards and create the same. You need to look consistent and from the same firm.
- DO NOT vary from one standard to another, stick to with one.
In the end, make sure the standard is easy to use, understand and that everyone follows it.
From now on just don’t of standards as they relate to Revit or CAD. Standards also apply to Autodesk Construction Cloud and a good set of standards properly followed will make everyone using the Autodesk Construction Clouds work easier.
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