Building Smarter: How Woods Achieved Scalable and Secure CAD Management with 12d Synergy’s BricsCAD Integration
Established in 1970, Woods is a multi-disciplinary company with 50+ years of expertise. It provides innovative solutions for project execution across various industries. These include engineering, urban design, surveying, and land development. Woods also serves sectors such as healthcare, energy, government, and transport.
While Woods had a document management platform in place, they faced challenges like loss of data, IT failures, and user errors. They needed a more efficient platform compatible with CAD and 12d files. This led them to choose 12d Synergy.
In this interview, Mark Clews, AutoCAD | 12D Technical Manager at Woods, explains the decision to implement 12d Synergy, especially for its integration with BricsCAD.
What led you to choose 12d Synergy?
While most information management applications primarily support common file formats, 12d Synergy stood out because it efficiently manages 12d Model and CAD projects. Important features included:
- Historical version control
- Flexibility to manage data across various platforms
- Seamless integration with other tools
These features allowed us to choose the best platforms for our project and build an ecosystem of solutions that worked best for Woods. We saw immediate results as soon as we transitioned to 12d Synergy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our teams were able to work remotely as 12d Synergy allowed them the flexibility to work from anywhere without disruptions.
Our team also uses the web-drop publishing feature extensively as it allows clients to download large files like construction files directly rather than receiving them via email.
Additionally, 12d Synergy’s intuitive interface enabled our team to adopt it very quickly. This led to the successful migration of all document management processes onto the platform.
Woods already had a platform in place to manage project information, but it was a browser-based document manager for Office applications and general business processes. It had a steep learning curve, so many employees saved files outside the system.
For 12d Models and CAD drawings, we depended on network drives. This was not very efficient as someone from our team needed to be in the office or use remote desktop setups to manage the files. We also faced issues like inconsistent file structures, data loss, and lack of control over file management. Increasing inefficiencies and lack of flexibility led us to look for better solutions.
Let’s talk about 12d Synergy’s Integration with BricsCAD – how does Woods leverage it?
Woods needed a system compatible with BricsCAD, a cost-effective drafting tool. Since BricsCAD offered network-based licensing, it increased accessibility while lowering costs. When we discovered that 12d Synergy integrated with BricsCAD, it was a major advantage.
The integration streamlined CAD management by:
- Managing Xrefs, title blocks, and PDF publishing within BricsCAD
- Ensuring version rollback to revert to previous drawing states
- Creating a seamless workflow between BricsCAD and 12d Synergy
Are there any notable projects, where 12d Synergy’s integration with BricsCAD has improved efficiency and collaboration across your team?
Woods has seen tangible benefits from BricsCAD’s integration with 12d Synergy in its large-scale projects, particularly in the Silverdale region of Auckland.
Millwater is a well-established community in Auckland, with development commencing in the early 2000s. Spanning over 300 hectares in Silverdale North and Arran Hill near Orewa, the area has grown to include around 3,000 homes. This residential expansion is complemented by roughly 50 hectares dedicated to business and commercial spaces, a full range of schools, an extensive network of parks and green spaces, and a variety of community recreational amenities.
Woods has been providing engineering, survey, planning and urban design services for the project.
Our team relied on 12d Synergy to quickly share data across multiple sub-projects, ensuring that the 12d Model remains the single source of truth. The integration allowed for seamless exports from 12d Synergy into BricsCAD, followed by rapid PDF creation. Managing Xrefs and title blocks through Synergy further streamlined the process, reducing the time spent on manual updates previously done by our teams.
For Woods, the integration provided:
- Improved user adoption
- Reduced licensing costs
- Streamlined drawing revisions
- Reliable file recovery
- Consistent and secure Xref management
- Efficient title block editing
The BricsCAD and 12d Synergy integration has transformed Woods’ approach to CAD and document management. It has eliminated data loss, improved remote accessibility, and enhanced team collaboration.
As Woods continues to innovate in urban planning and engineering, this integration remains a key part of its digital transformation strategy, ensuring scalability and operational excellence.
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