Issue Management in Archicad and Other Applications

[Emoke Csikos]

Archicad offers solutions for creating, tracking and handling issues, providing a solid platform for proper issue management during the architectural design process.

Archicad's Issue Management functionality supports an extensive collaborative workflow both within the architectural design team and within the multidisciplinary design team. Architects and engineers can communicate more efficiently, and can also propose design changes via issues, without interrupting the design process.

This article describes the issue management workflows within a multidisciplinary team. The possible issue management workflows within an architectural team are discussed in another article.

Archicad's Issue Management functionality replaces the Markup tool from earlier Archicad versions. It is integrated with other functionalities of Archicad into a complete workflow.

Archicad can export and import the issues in different formats enabling bidirectional information exchange with 3rd part applications that support the workflow concept of open BIM.

You can export the issues from Issue Organizer. You can decide to export the entire list of issues, but you can also select only some of them to be exported.
On the left side of the Issue Organizer you can sort the issues by the issue tags, such as: Status, Priority, Teamwork Owner, dates of creation and modification, and so on. Use the Additional Settings button on the left side of the dialog for this purpose.

Use the Additional Settings button on the right side of the dialog. It lets you access the commands that are related to the export and import process.

Let's see in what format we can export and import the issues and how they can be further used in bidirectional workflows.

Workflow 1: Export and Import Issues Using BCF

You can export issues in BCF format and then import them back via Issue Organizer.

Using BCF as the format of issue information exchange ensures a smooth collaboration workflow between the architectural team and other disciplines in the BIM design process. BCF can be used with other BIM applications that also support this format, such as Solibri Office and BIMCollab.

When you import issues in BCF format, they will be automatically created and displayed in Issue Organizer.

Archicad supports the latest version, BCF 2.1 and earlier versions of BCF as well.

Workflow 2: Archicad with Solibri Connection add-on

The Solibri Connection add-on establishes a real-time connection between Archicad and Solibri, providing fast and automated rule-based model checking. The add-on automatically processes only those elements that are changed in the Archicad model, resulting in fast collaboration. There is no need to save files to find the issues if you want to improve or evaluate the quality of the model. This way, you can start working on resolving any found issue right away.

You can also report the detected issues in BCF format and assign them to teammates for resolution.

Workflow 3: Archicad and Bluebeam Connection add-on

Bluebeam Connection is a PDF-based collaboration and markup solution. This add-on provides a reliable connection between Archicad and Bluebeam Revu.

You can publish any number of views and layouts as PDFs and send them to the client, consultants or any other project stakeholder. You can share the PDFs with them by uploading the files directly to BIMcloud, since all project files can be stored in the BIMcloud Project on BIMcloud. With the help of BIMcloud Teams, any project stakeholder can be given the proper type of access rights to relevant files and project information, so they can easily access the published PDFs.

Your consultants download and open the PDFs in Bluebeam Revu. They review the documents, create issues with markups, save the PDFs again and upload them back to BIMcloud.

You receive the reviewed PDF and import it back to Archicad via Bluebeam Connection Palette. You can select which of the issues you want to import. The consultant's issues are transferred into Archicad's Issue Organizer and the markups are pasted onto the original views and layouts from where the PDFs were first published.

Keep a simple record of the Project Issues in an Excel Sheet

You can export the issue list into Excel format from Issue Organizer too. You can save the list on your computer or office file server, and can also directly upload it to BIMcloud.

This is an easy and fast way to record the issues and make them visible to all design team members regardless of discipline.

NOTE: this works only in one way, you cannot import .xlsx files.