How to make the most of your Autodesk AEC Collection

If you’re a newcomer to the Autodesk AEC Collection, you’ll be impressed by it’s powerful ability to sharpen your work as a designer, engineer or contractor. Offering a wide variety of BIM, CAD and Collaboration tools that allow a scattered team to work together across the entire lifecycle of a project, the AEC Collection facilitates everything from creating high-performance building and infrastructure designs to optimising projects using integrated analysis, generative design, visualisation and simulation tools.

Even so, power without knowledge is redundant, and as one of the UK’s most trusted Autodesk software trainers, the Cadspec team is often asked how to get the most from AEC Collection. Here are some tips for success.

Pin down your business priorities

Before taking out a subscription to the Autodesk AEC Collection, take a step back to assess your workflows, deliverable outputs and the business goals you hope the acquisition will achieve. Key questions to ask yourself include:

– How is your team working now and what do they currently produce?

– What challenges are your team facing that are holding them back?

– What are your clients demanding now and how is this likely to change?

– What are your aspirations for the business, financially and conceptually?

– What sector are you based in and what do you want to move into?

Focus on the key software packages

With the AEC Collection comprising twelve individual Autodesk software sets, it’s easy for first-time users to dive in and become overwhelmed. As such, our advice is to identify the core areas that offer most value to your business and start by mastering those.

At Cadspec, we can create a dedicated training workshop to focus on the AEC Collection software that matters most to you – from Revit to Navisworks – and once your team is comfortable with the basics, we’ll support you as you dig deeper.

Take advantage of automation

When you start using the AEC Collection, it’s natural to want to stay hands-on. But one of the key benefits of this Autodesk software is its capability to run itself, and what you’re trying to achieve is a state of automation where you can focus on key decisions and leave the arduous and time-consuming admin to run in the background. By automating tasks, you’ll not only cut design time and improve handoff with streamlined data exchange, but reduce errors, eliminate rework and build trust amongst stakeholders.

Establish a common data environment

Don’t forget that the AEC Collection offers access to Autodesk Docs and a Common Data Platform. This is vitally useful: Autodesk Docs lets you organise, distribute and share files during the project’s lifecycle from a single document management platform, all while retaining data ownership. Get Docs onside and you’ll have a single source of information, giving your remote team access to what they need from a laptop anywhere in the world, in or out of office hours.

Sharpen your skills with the UK’s most trusted Autodesk training courses

When you’re ready to harness the power of the AEC Collection, drop the Cadspec team a line. We’re fully accredited by Autodesk and can supply the best trainers in the field, guiding you to complete expertise with dynamic workshops that go at your pace and can be as general or subject-specific as you like. Remote or face-to-face, at your office or our UK training centres, trust Cadspec to put your people on the fast track.