Cadalyst - November 2007 - (Page 36)

cadlabsreview Figure 1. All Newforma Project Center screens are organized for clarity, consistency, and easy access to relevant functions. (All images courtesy of Newforma) Figure 2. Newforma Project Center consists of easy-to-install client components (for desktops or laptops) and servers that can work in a single office or a multioffice firm. ronment, I chose to validate that information by interviewing users of Newforma Project Center. All aspects of this process exceeded my expectations. Newforma Project Center is divided into function-based activity centers — screens devoted to particular activities such as e-mail management, document markup, or file transfers. Newforma Project Center screens (figure 1) typically are divided into a large main area that contains the principal listings of entities within each activity center (for example, lists of projects, e-mails, files, markups, issues, transfers, and so on) and a task panel that reflects task options appropriate to that activity, along with context-sensitive common questions (another reason Newforma Project Center has little need for voluminous help files). In addition to the comprehensive array of activity centers included in Newforma Project Center, users can configure custom activity centers based on any Windows application that can be invoked from a command line or any Web page or Web application with a URL. Thus, Newforma Project Center can easily serve as a firm’s dashboard or default desktop, and several user firms reported using it just that way. The organization of most screens and the hierarchy of information presented on each screen in Newforma Project Center are consistent across activity centers, an approach derived from research by Microsoft and others on inductive user interfaces (a fancy way of saying that users can figure things out for themselves). All of a firm’s underlying files and directory structures remain intact and unchanged behind the Newforma Project Center interface. Nothing need be moved, duplicated, or renamed. The server-based component of Newforma Project Center (figure 2) automatically indexes all existing content on all existing servers, so what users see in Newforma Project Center’s desktop component is a highly organized system of pointers to the existing files, no matter the organization of those existing files. One user described this as “a drape to throw over all the mess.” Additionally, it’s a low-risk strategy from an IT standpoint, because the 36 November 2007 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com existing files are not modified in any way. (Another lowrisk feature is that most Newforma-generated content, including logs and markups, can be exported to Excel, PDF, XLS, or other non-Newforma–specific file formats in the unlikely event a firm ever chooses to abandon Newforma Project Center). Activity centers feature the ability to navigate among multiple projects; drill down in detail on any project; navigate across multiple documents and document types; search and filter any documents such as e-mail (figure 3, p. 38); manage issues that might arise during design or project collaboration; manage and compare document sets; redline and annotate any document or set of documents such as CAD/BIM files (figure 4, p. 38); track and search the markups and compare document versions as well as successive markups; and track submittals and other project administrative details. These functions alone (and others too numerous to detail in a review of finite length) make Newforma Project Center a welcome addition to almost any AEC practice. However, Newforma Project Center’s communication-management capabilities tip it from the nice-to-have into the must-have category. A Cure for e-Net File Dysfunction Perhaps the most challenging IT-based problem areas that AEC firms face today are e-mail and file transfers. In the dozen or so years since the mass commercialization of the Internet, e-mail has evolved from a techno-geek curiosity to the principal, if not exclusive, means of business communication today. The sheer volume of e-mail has grown and continues to grow. The number, size, and diversity of file attachments increase apace. Simply managing the contents of one’s inbox has become a time-devouring burden for many project personnel. Messages sent to or from one staffer may contain information needed by everyone on the firm’s project team, yet those messages remain buried in individual mailboxes, indiscriminately copied into everyone else’s mailbox, or shunted to cumbersome sys- http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - November 2007

Cadalyst - November 2007 Contents Editor's window Cad Central Conceptual Inspiration for Less Than $200 From Any Angle - Publish and Share Your 3D Designs NX 5, Part 1 - CAD/CAM/CAE Software Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition - Software for Project Information Management CAD Manager's Survey 2007 Sharing and Collaborating with Your Team To BIMfinity and Beyond! Solutions for Sending Large Digital Files Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Cad Fidential

Cadalyst - November 2007

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