Administration of Collaboration for Revit - Revit Tutorial

- [Instructor] So you're ready to give Collaboration for Revit a try. Well, in order to do so, there's some behind the scenes administration that needs to take place first so you make sure that you have all the licenses and everything set up properly. So let's kind of walk through what's required to start using C4R. The first thing, of course, you need is licenses to Revit. C4R works on Revit 2017, 2016, and 2015. If you've got Revit 2017, then you've already got the C4R functionality built into Revit. But if you have 2015 or 2016, then you'll need to download and install the add-in, which will give you that functionality. If you're not sure how to do that, just talk to your normal IT support people or your Autodesk reseller. And they'll help you make sure that you've got everything installed correctly. Having the functionality in Revit does not actually allow you to use it. So, in order to use the functionality, you still need to license that particular piece of functionality. In order to license it, you need to have an Autodesk account. So, each person that wants to work in a C4R project needs their own Autodesk account. And each of those Autodesk accounts needs to have a C4R entitlement associated with them. So think of this as the license for, specifically, Collaboration for Revit. So, you need a license to use Revit in general, but then you need a separate license to use C4R. So there's both the functionality in the software and then the license to use it. This gets assigned via an email address to that person's Autodesk account. And the C4R entitlement, or license, also includes a license to BIM 360 Team. Now briefly, what BIM 360 Team is is a Cloud-based sharing portal for BIM projects. Now, it supports many file formats and many different types of collaboration in online markups, and viewing, and so forth. So it's not just Revit. If somebody wants to do Cloud-based Revit work sharing, then they specifically need C4R. But if they just want to participate in a broader BIM 360 team project, then that's actually a simpler, separate license. Well, C4R includes access to BIM 360 Team, so that's all you need. But those subusers that don't need Revit could do the simpler license to just BIM 360 Team. So we'll talk more about that in the future videos. If you already have an Autodesk account, you've already got half of what you need. You just need to then get that C4R entitlement. If you don't have an Autodesk account, you can set one up. Now, if users don't have that account, you can ask each one to set them up for themselves. Or you could do that for them. And to do that you would jump over to accounts.autodesk.com. And then here it will ask you to sign in, or there's another option here to create a new account. So, in this case, because I want to create a brand-new account, I'll click this link. And then I just simply fill in the information for my user. So, just simply input that user's name, email, and a password, and you click Create Account. You'll be asked to confirm that you are in fact a person. And then that will take you to the account, and if you wish to receive email from Autodesk, you can click this check box here and then click Finish. Now, once you're in your account, you can edit your profile and do anything you like here. For example, we could add an image to our profile. We could put in a short biography about ourselves. We can put in our social media sites, our address, our phone number, any of the other information that this user would like to have recorded in their account. But all that's required is name and email address. I'm just going to simply add a profile picture there for the user and then just simply save the profile. Now meanwhile, this user should go and check their email address, because there will be an email from Autodesk asking them to verify that email address. They just simply click this button right here, and that will verify their account and make it an active account. Now, once that's done, the user's account is ready for us to give them a C4R entitlement. So now, this occurs in our Autodesk account as well. But this time, I'm going to go into my Autodesk account. And then up here at the top, once I'm logged in, I'll click on the Management tab. Now, this will display all of my products and services that I have in my Autodesk account. And obviously, what you see on your screen will vary depending on which products and services you have access to in your firm. What I'm looking for is Collaboration for Revit. Now, I could scroll through the list here to find it. Or, if you like, up here at the top you can just simply search. So if I start typing "collaboration", you'll see that my Collaboration for Revit license comes up. And I actually have three seats of Collaboration for Revit. So, I'm using one of those seats already for myself, but that means that I have two other seats that I can assign to other users. Now, how do I do that exactly? I do that over here on the left on this Users tab. So I just simply click that, and that will display a table of all of the users that are currently in my account. Now, I of course have myself at the top. And then I have an additional user there, Shad Cayden. Now, let's assume that I want to add a new user. That person that we just created an account for, Zachary, maybe they're going to be a new employee in my company. So, all I have to do is click Add here and add in Zachary's email and name here. Now I'm doing an individual user, but there is actually a Bulk Add option here. So if you need to use lots of users all at once, you can choose that. And then down here there's this check box that says "I'd like to add access to those users right now." Notice here in the background there's an Edit Access link next to each of the existing users. You use that button to decide which products this user is entitled to. So, when I click Save and Continue here, with that box checked it will immediately go into that Edit Access dialog and allow me to choose the products that I want to assign to Zachary. Now, it already checked this Product Downloads option right here, and I'm going to unassign that. I don't want Zachary to be downloading products. But what I do want to give Zachary access to is Collaboration for Revit. All I have to do is, notice I still have one seat available here, is to check the Assign button right there and then click Save. So it's as simple as that to give Zachary access to that C4R entitlement. So now, when Zachary logs into Revit, and logs in with his Autodesk account, he will have access to C4R. And we'll look at that specifically in future videos. But meanwhile, let's talk about one other thing here with regard to my users. It's really important that you understand that you can give those entitlements to anyone that you want. That can be members inside the firm or even members outside the firm. So let's say that I'm working with an outside consulting firm, like a structural engineering firm, and we've decided to do a C4R project. And maybe that structural engineering firm doesn't have a C4R license. Well, I can choose to give them access to one of my licenses. So, let's say that this person right here, Shad, is actually a structural engineer that's using my license. It's really important to understand that the way C4R works is, each user needs a license, not each project. So the licenses are not tied to the projects. You could have 50 C4R projects, and you only need one license per user to access those projects. But if you give one of those licenses to somebody outside your firm, they can work on projects that they're collaborating with you or even projects that they're doing on their own or collaborating with anyone else. A license is a license. Revit doesn't care where it came from. However, you still are in control. So let's say that I've completed the project with Shad. We're not using them on the next project, and I want to free up that license for another new hire that I'm about to add. All I have to do is come over here to Edit Access, scroll down and unassign that license. That makes that seat available again when I save this and now I could assign that seat to someone else. Now, if I needed to have Shad continue his access, then I would need to purchase another license in order to bring on that new hire. So you have complete control over your licenses and how they're distributed. And you do that through your Autodesk account. So, as you can see, we can have users that are just participants in the project. And also, we have the experience where we have the sort of master control panel like you're seeing right here in my account, where we can dole out our licenses to the individual users in our project. And it all depends on what kind of contracts each of those users has. Zachary is a brand-new user that has a free Autodesk account. He doesn't have any contracts. So he's completely relying on my giving him access to one of my licenses. Meanwhile, I have a contract with Autodesk and a license that I've purchased. I'm able to share that entitlement with anyone that I choose, either within my firm or outside my firm. Now, at this point, Shad's email is still in my account under my users. And I could leave it there if, in the future, I plan on doing another project with him and want to reassign that license. But if I'm no longer working with Shad and I choose to, I could actually remove this entry all together from my list here. And you do that by simply clicking this small little X right here, and that will allow me to delete this user. It's really important that you click Edit Access first and remove all of their benefits and products and services before you remove them as a user, because you don't want to still be holding on to some of your licenses after you've deleted them. So you can see everything says zero here. That's good. I'll click Remove, and now Shad has been removed from my list. Now, I could always add him back in later if I change my mind. But that's a nice way to kind of keep your list of users tidy. So you have complete control over your list of users and which entitlement you want them to have access to. And that's the most important thing for you to keep in mind about this entire process.