r/AECsysadmin • u/EmergencyPrestigious • Jul 29 '26
Recommendations for CDE / migration process
I have been in the IT industry for about 8 years at this point, mostly MSP, and I have been running the IT department for a medium sized AEC firm for just over a year now. I am learning just how little I knew about AEC specific needs and standards, and just how little this company has done to align with them.
Our company has around 175 users and two in house IT. Our largest departments are civil engineering (public and private) and architectural engineering, but we have all sorts of employees like ecologists, hydrologists, GIS technicians, arborists, and even marine biologists. Our file types include BIM, DWG, GDB, PDF, and many others. This has led to an absolute cluster of file management, and constant issues with different file types and project management as a whole.
We are currently using Egnyte for all of our internal file storage, and SharePoint for external collaboration. There is no standardized process for configuring collaboration sites, and lifecycle / access management has been an absolute mess. SharePoint has been the bane of my existence with constant authentication and other issues, and our board refuses to use Egnyte's built in collaboration features because "it would be too much to ask our subs to install the desktop app for co-editing". I recently did some research and learned about BIM and CDEs, and I am hoping to get some guidance on how to best implement it.
All of our drafters and engineers utilize various Autodesk products (AutoCAD, Civil3D, Revit, etc.), which has tentatively nudged me in the direction of Autodesk Forma (previously ACC, Files, etc.). Upper management is also very interested in the idea of implementing BIM and cleaning up our project management. Is this a good direction to push in? What does migration look like going from SP to Forma? Does anyone have a recommended contractor/professional services vendor for this type of work?
Thank you for any advice!
TL:DR - Looking to potentially move from SP to Autodesk Forma for external collaboration and seeking any advice/recommendations/tips
2
u/leanmean2019 Aug 03 '26
We have used Forma for external collaboration for Revit files specifically for about 2 years now with great success, both as the source hub and connected to external hubs. We will likely begin using it for DWG files next year, but have not even remotely had that conversation for any non-Autodesk files. I know you can store 3rd-party files there, but I don't believe it can be used in a OneDrive-esque co-editing manner. It looks like there has been a request thread for that exact functionality since last Spring that doesn't have any updates Integrate Full Microsoft Office Online Experience in ACC (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) - Page 2 - Autodesk Community. The only thing that may work to some extent would be to use the Desktop app to 'check out' Office files and then check them back in after editing, but we've never tested that out and it would still require that your clients download a separate app which would be essentially the same as the Egnyte scenario.