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
PlanSwift, by ConstructConnect
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
PlanSwift is a quantity takeoff software for construction estimating. It features a drag-and-drop interface and automatically calculates material and labor estimations in exportable formats.
PlanSwift was acquired by ConstructConnect in the middle of 2018.
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.
I use PlanSwift for all my projects - it has just cut my time by a major percentage when it comes to quantifying a blueprint. At times there are funky areas, which are just hard to calculate on paper. It also has a great tool for scaling according to the dimensions, so if a drawing is missing a scale, you can always allot a scale by giving directions and then marking the points. I use this tool to check the scale as well - sometimes the drawings say something but the scale if off and you are left with an incorrect take-off. The dimension tool is a good way to check that. We don't use it much for pricing purposes though, we have found other software which are more robust when it comes to estimation, but we can see using PlanSwift for pricing sometime in the future.
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
I have called once needing support. I was asking about the "compare" tool to compare different versions. They told be about their desktop app and I downloaded. They answered quickly, you could understand them, and they took care of my question
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.
Bluebeam is amazing and can accomplish any take-off needs, but you will spend much more time creating your conditions and take off items. It is not as user-friendly as PlanSwift. OST (On screen takeoff). This product is by far better than PlanSwift, as it is amazingly easy to use. However, it is much more expensive. Cloud-based takeoff software -- this kind of software is difficult for me to use because of how slow the pages load and navigate. It's hard to beat that from PlanSwift or OST.
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.
