Autodesk BIM Collaborate Pro (formerly BIM360) is a construction software for project managers, site managers, and Building Information Modelling (BIM) managers. It is designed to connect the office and site components of construction, providing cloud-based access to plans and models.
$480
per user/per year
Newforma Project Center
Score 4.3 out of 10
N/A
Newforma Project Center is web-based construction project information management software for collaboration. Users can access a drag and drop interface, relate emails to documents, markup and review designs, track meeting minutes and action items, and search across projects. It has mobile accessibility.
Personally I prefer Procore for reviewing submittals and other documentation for LEED purposes only because that platform holds more of the information we are looking for like drawings as well, all in one place. Newforma has been used from time to time, but Autodesk is …
Autodesk Bim 360 is well suited to the majority of construction projects in my opinion. On the construction side I could see how the straightforward nature of the platform would be well liked. The new update with the widgets is a great touch and allows for ease of site visits by showcasing good to know info like project location on a map and the local weather. You can also customize the "widgets" as you see fit to add more information if necessary to the home screen. From my experience as a LEED consultant, Bim 360 does not differ much from other platforms used for submittal review like Procore. It is easy enough to search for what you want but searches do take a while and you need to move the cursor over every time you search and do not find what you're looking for, which seems very unnecessary. Overall it is fine for reviewing documentation but isn't anything extraordinary.
Newforma is a great tool to collaborate with large teams and between firms. It allows for great documentation of transfers, activities, and other procedural aspects of projects that require collaboration between disciplines, for example, MEP, electrical, architectural and technology. For internal use, Newforma has been great for communications tracking and archival, as well as for record-keeping of all the users in a team or number of teams. Many great options are features are unused due to a lack of training or exposure to them, for example, the graphical viewers that can preview CAD, Revit, and other formats, or the markup tool available with the desktop client.
Newforma sits on top of our previous filing system (Windows Explorer). This was very important to us because we didn't have to change the project numbering system in order to fit Newforma's design. Also, if we were to decide we didn't like it, we could easily revert back to our previous methods.
Newforma does a great job of indexing information, making searches much easier by being able to use keywords instead of knowing the exact file location. No more traversing through countless folders before finding what you need.
Newforma keeps a read receipt for everything that you submit through it for issue tracking, and keeps an easy to read record of your workflow.
Bim360 is extremely unintuitive and frequently confusing to end users.
There are multiple avenues of sharing and collaboration for models and information. The advantages/disadvantages of each and how to perform even the most basic of tasks requires extensive training and mentoring for even the most advanced of users.
There are many enormous limitations and constraints to BIM 360 that are not immediately obvious and even contrary to published marketing materials and even product naming.
Development cycles of the product are seemingly monthly, but incredibly minor. This makes the desperately-needed and glaringly obvious massive usability, capability, and performance improvements into deal-breakers and hair pulling events. Change cannot come fast enough.
There are no integrations into Microsoft's Azure AD SSO or other 3rd party SSOs available for SMBs. This makes the provided MFA a huge headache for all SMBs.
There are no integrations into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem for SharePoint/OneDrive or Outlook. This is desperately needed for most organizations using Bim360.
It's not very difficult to use for majority of all our users. We really like storing and managing all our project data in one location so users have only one option to access the requested information. Managing our architectural engineering projects with two workflows in one system is really a good asset
AutoDesk support is slow and if you are not an enterprise customer they will likely tell you to go to forums and post for help pushing the support on the high-level end-users (some of which are AutoDesk employees). I haven't actually had issues requiring support with docs altough there are some features I wish it had
While I have never asked for support myself, a Newforma representative has been in the office annually to give training seminars and info sessions on how to fully use the product. I find this essential to keep the product relevant and make sure everyone knows its full capabilities and an important part of customer support.
The saving in reduced field changes/mistakes quickly paid for the license plus some. The software allows for easy data collection, especially at project completion for field software by checklist creation. Furthermore, the internal punch-list tracking, tracking completion lists and punch lists created for us by others is optimal compared to the competition. We chose Bim360 over other options due to its ability to import out of other software programs directly into the system, adding reports in one location and then distributing it to subcontractors and internally from there to fix deficiencies. It does the tracking, importing, markups of pictures and document viewing well and fulfills our needs.
The fact that your files are not on your servers. Anytime that the Autodesk servers go down you are down; it does not happen very often but when it does there is nothing you can do about it except wait.
Because of how BIM360 licensing is setup it does force you to manage the personnel on a project closer. This can at times be viewed as a negative but in the long run is positive because with better management comes better profit.
