Trimble: Teamwork for Sketchup and Layout!

Hello, we’ve decided to get Trible Connect in our Studio for getting better organization of our work and making it easier. Even though I was shocked after looking that it is ony for sketchup models and not Layout Documents. We’ve been fighting for optimizing the time and procedure of actualization of reference documents in Layout. We’re several team members manipulating the sketchup model and Layout document and we can’t find a better way for updating the Layout when anyone has changed something in the model or we’re moving to a newer version of the model. Please HEEEEELP!!!

It would be nice to be able to publish a LayOut file to your Trimble Connect project folder and then check it out to work on it. It is currently possible to upload LO files into a project folder so others could use it. A team member would download it to their computer to work on it in LO and then save locally before uploading back to the project folder. Might be best to give the edited LO file a new name so it’s clear it’s been changed.

At least until they add this option to directly publish LO files, there is a usable option.

Trimble Connect originated from Gehry Works and is primarily used as Project software for architects having to work and collaborate with other disciplines and industries. I doubt they used LayOut to produce condocs. In Trimble’s universe, the focus of TC is with Tekla.
Tekla is better equiped with a ‘condoc-generator’ and does not need LayOut.

But the need is there to view LayOut docs natively in Trimble Connect, especially since producing PDF on MacOS produces very large files in general and Trimble Connect’s pdf viewer is rather slow.

The main benefit of working in the cloud, however, is that there is one version of the ‘Model’ that is current and leading, and that that model doesn’t lies somewhere on an employee’s laptop.
Deritives like condoc’s are subject to change when the ‘main model’ is altered, not the other way around.
Thus there is alway’s some delay or ‘notable’ point when it is time to update.

Even with Trimble Connect, this is not instant, unless you keep pushing the refresh button in the browser.

You could however, agree on a workflow and make simple rules or attach ‘metadata’ on the files in the project (who has approved what and when? Send notification or use tags) create releases of all current files and above all, set up a folder on the local machines and have that synced through Trimble Connect Sync (either set automatically to sync on specified timeslots or manually or both)

Tekla is primarily for structural engineers. Trimble doesn’t really have a BIM product for architects comparable to Revit or Archicad. Both support a teamwork workflow where team members can modify a single project together, either with the model on a server or, lately, in the cloud.

I think they are beginning to grasp the possibilities that SketchUp has and need to incorporate a more fluent way for SketchUp to connect with Trimble Connect.

Within Tekla, you can start a project in TC directly, without the hassle to open up a file first and then select ‘File >Trimble Connect > Open Model’

MEP software like Stabiplan (which was bought by Trimble as well) has proven that Trimble Connect can host a BIM model in all the phases after the initial design, especially in combination of Trimble Connect’s workflow extensions.

Once the design phase can export data natively and without the hassle of zillion workarounds and extensions, Trimble good be that BIM solution for architects.

It starts even before with integration of PreDesign.

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