The very detailed models I create for clients, I share with them so they can explore them on their own. This is not so that they can get meaningful information from them, as I provide that as part of my course of construction services, but just so they can spend time, on their own, to gain familiarity with their project they couldn’t otherwise gain.
To do this, I’ve been back saving to Make 2017, which they can download and for their use. Since they’re not doing anything with it other than using it as a viewer (and don’t tell me to send them to SU Viewer - it’s horribly weak), I don’t believe this to be outside the terms of use for Make.
I have one client asking to be kept more “up to date” with their model. My models are fairly large, so I make revisions in a subset of the overall model. Paste in Place (yea!) makes this possible. While back saving one file to 2017 once a week or so isn’t too onerous, I dislike the thought of doing this to several models on a daily basis. I only have so much hard drive space, after all, not to mention time.
I’m thinking of suggesting they get a subscription to SU. My (rather long winded) question is
Shop or Pro?
then I could just give them full time real time access to the files.
I think either subscription would suffice. The reasonable solution would be to recommend the least costly version, particularly if they agree that SU Viewer has insufficient capabilities for your purposes.
The trouble with Viewer on Mac (don’t know about PC) is that there is no ability to adjust visibility of layers / tags. The iPad Viewer does, but the shortcoming with that is no text tool. I embed a lot of info in my models to be accessed via the text tool. So, Make is the only no cost option to exploit both capabilities.
You could invest in one or more hard drives similar to this type. These don’t require much space, can store up to 5 TB, and are reasonably priced these days.
If you really want them to be part of the process and continuing developments, you could set up a project in Trimble Connect for them (if you don’t have a subscription, you are allowed only one project with 5 team members, if you have a subscription, unlimited projects and team members and storage is yours)
Or, let them set up a free account and invite you as a team member(!)
Each initial save from your model can then be easily published in the clients project, they will have access to all revisions, can use the viewer on their tablets or phones, make comments on the progress made, etc. Etc.
Thanks for the explanation, Mike. That helps. Looks like it may be time for me to bite the bullet on the SU subscription. I’ve been in a holding pattern here on SU’20 Pro.