Coordination Preferences

[jimbon]

When it comes to online coordination, I have very little experience (estimators are a solitary bunch).  I've seen BIM 360 Glue used, and personally used ShareFile to transfer files back and forth for another job.  But we have the opportunity to be in charge of the coordination effort on an upcoming job, so I am wondering what advice, if any, you fine folks might have as far as software and methods.

It looks like most of the solutions I've investigated (Procore, PlanGrid, ShareFile, etc.) are simply depositories, and offer no further benefit aside from differences in how they alert users to the presence of updated files and who carries the burden of costs.  With these, I believe one must still run NavisWorks over some sort of webconference service for any true 3D coordination to happen.

As a lowly subcontractor just looking to run coordination, some of these solutions (Procore, WeBuild) look to be overkill.  They look great for GCs, but not for us.

BIM 360 Glue/Coordination at least has an online collaboration function that shows conflicts, even if it's not quite as beefy as NavisWorks, it still seems to be geared more to what we're looking to do.  But that doesn't take the place of full-on coordination sessions using Navis over a webconference, right?  (I did read through the BIM360 forum here
(http://www.xtracad.com/forum/index.php/board,45.0.html),
but it's been pretty quiet.)  Being able to glue straight from AutoCAD(w/ CADmep) looks like a pretty cool feature, too.

For those of you subs lucky enough to be in charge of coordination, what services do you use that you like or have had success with?

[TFuller]

I want to add to this that you can open a BIM360 Glue model using Navisworks. So if you want the more robust tools found in NW Manage, as you stated, that is worth considering. I used that process a few years ago and it worked well.

[jimbon]

Thank you for the response, Thomas.  That's good to know.

In talking to the BIM 360 rep today, it sounds like even with the Coordinate function, there's no getting away from having to do a periodic WebEx (or similar) meeting where we have to run through the model in NavisWorks Manage.

If that's the case, is there really much value in spending the extra money for the Coordinate bolt-on to BIM 360 Docs?  As a sub on other jobs, we've always downloaded everyone's models and drawings as they posted them and loaded them up in NavisWorks to do our own clash detection.  We never just wait for the weekly meeting.  I would imagine any other responsible sub would be doing the same.  If that's the case, doesn't that make the 360 Coordinate module superfluous?  Or is there some benefit I'm not seeing?