Difference between A360 and BIM360

With the growing technology each day, there is a great jump seen in the activities in Autodesk around its cloud offerings. This also came up with an element of confusion between A360 and BIM360 services. Well, for all the users who are unaware of these very closely related terms, yet which are different, here is a simple guide stating the key differences between A360 and BIM 360.

• Purpose: While A360 supports General design & collaboration, BIM 360 has a more integrated configuration. It is specially designed for delivering construction project workflows. It is responsible for an end-to-end delivery i.e. from pre-construction to the actual construction.

• Compatibility: A360 provides multi-format sharing of files and model, with an ease in viewing and markup with an access through web, desktop & mobile. BIM 360 has all these capabilities in common with some more additional features. With the capability of real-time collaboration and model aggregation, it ensures that the entire working team has the access to the most recent multi-disciplinary project models.
• Approach: BIM 360 is a more organized approach, as it is team based. There is clash detection as well as coordination in collaboration. It also supports fifty industry formats, which makes it robust. It is a great combination of Revit & AutoCAD which is responsible for the end-to-end workflow of BIM coordination. This enables a flawless approach, throughout the process as there is a continual check on each and every step. If any conflict arises, the team resolves it immediately so that further steps are not affected. Also, it accelerates the coordination among the various stages involved in the project. This impeccable coordination with great teamwork, lacks in case of A360.

• Accessibility: BIM 360 provides complete access to the BIM data required for field workflows, like construction layout (BIM 360 Layout), commissioning (BIM 360 Field), etc. This way you can have a hold of your investment made for BIM, throughout the project lifecycle.
• File sharing: BIM 360 enhances the A360 Drive concept and enables file sharing at the project level, in addition to file sharing at an individual level. In A360, cloud file sharing is on a peer-to-peer basis, which provides a complete audit of activities on a folder system basis. Whereas, BIM360 is a cloud-based file sharing system which supports all the activities that are in collaboration across all the stakeholders.

BIM modeling services have come a long way in order to make the entire process systematic and enhancing the overall project performance. People are really seeing a considerable amount of difference with this approach and methodology.