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A Simple Guide to Emergency Remote Work for Architects and ARCHICAD users | COVID-19

COVID-19 is affecting many companies with its outbreak in all over the world [including Spain]. Most people who become infected experience mild illness and recover, but it can be more severe for others. One of the most recommended preventive measurements is to take care of your health and protect others by staying at home and work remotely. But we all know that professions within the construction industry and especially architectural practices massively rely on teamwork and collaboration. The question is, as an architect, are you ready to set up your remote work environment and stay away from your physical office? 

In this article, we try to address some critical issues with regards to setting up remote work environment with a focus on architects and ARCHICAD users. We all know that it is not that easy to suddenly move back home and be able to perform the business as usual. Especially it is more difficult for someone who comes every day to his/her office with all work environment configurations. In general, there are two main aspects to consider: 1) Remote Access and 2) Remote Collaboration:  

1- Remote Access: 

• Access to your desktop computer in your office 
• Access to your projects 
• Access to your software licenses 
• Access to online meeting rooms 

2- Remote Collaboration: 

• Be able to share your project and collaborate 
• Be able to send your project for review and feedback 

1- How to set up remote access to your physical work environment? 

Of course, if you work in a large corporate environment, most probably your IT team, has already configured a solution that fits your organisation. But how about small companies and architectural firms? As far as we know, most of them are not ready to suddenly stay away from their work environment. Here I am going to provide simplified steps to take and immediately set up your access to your physical work environment: 

Access to your desktop computer in your office 

There are many ways through different IT solutions. In our investigations, we found the most practical and straightforward solution (and at the moment free of charge as a response to COVID-19) is GoToMyPC. From here, you can see the free access conditions and also its platform to register and see how it works. 

Note: We are not part of any referral affiliation with LogMeIn company, and the above recommendation is based on our own experience 

Access to your projects 

If you can access your desktop computer, then you also have access to your projects and physical office environment. Still, if you are an ARCHICAD user and you want to access your BIMcloud server, you need a public IP address for your office server computer. Also, you should test to make sure you can connect through your public IP before you leave the office (read this article on how to start with GRAPHISOFT BIMcloud). Alternatively, you can hire a virtual machine to set your BIMcloud server. There are different services such as Amazon EC2, Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine, etc. We also can help you through our customised cloud virtual machines (ARCHICLOUD) that are optimised for BIMcloud Server and ARCHICAD projects. 

Remember: DO NOT use dropbox, one drive, google drive, etc. as your ARCHICAD teamwork environment. Unless it is just a conventional file sharing method for only download and upload solo-project files. 

Access to your software licenses

In the digital world, most of the software solutions take advantage of digital keys. The problem comes when you have a floating NET keys in your office, and you cannot access them from outside. But do not worry, here, I am going to provide different solutions for ARCHICAD NET keys: 

+ Solution 1 (Standard Solution): Immediately buy "borrowing license" feature for your NET license. This feature enables your ARCHICAD licenses to be reserved in your computers for 30 days without connection to the physical network of the company. To do so or for more information, contact us. 

+ Solution 2 (IT Workflow Solution): Set a VPN to your LAN environment. When you connect to your VPN, your computer thinks (of course falsely) that you are in your office! For this, you need to contact your IT service provider. 

+ Solution 3 (Emergency Solution): Call us for help! We will evaluate your situation, and we will advise you for the best workflow. If necessary, we will supply you with different emergency license solutions. The keyword here is, if you are ARCHICAD user, DO NOT PANIC and call SIMBIM!    

Access to online meeting rooms 

Nowadays, there are plenty of online meeting room solutions. Below you can see the list of the ones that our collaborators or we are using: 

• Microsoft team 
• Gotomeeting (see free offer) 
• Bluejeans 
• Zoom 
• Skype
• Etc. 

How to remotely collaborate with your team members or clients? 

Nowadays, online collaboration on a text-based document is something ordinary offered by many different providers such as Microsoft word, google docs, dropbox, etc. The difficulty comes when you need to collaborate and share your architectural project; it is not anymore a simple text-based document. Good news for ARCHICAD users, there are different possibilities included in the standard package of ARCHICAD; BIMcloud for teamwork and BIMx for data access. In addition to these native features of ARCHICAD, BLUEBEAM Revu gives additional capacities to share your PDFs with your collaborators and clients and get immediate feedback. Such feedback through ARCHICAD-BLUEBEAM connection can come back to your BIM environment for further editing. 

• Use BIMcloud and ARCHICAD teamwork to collaborate with your colleagues (if it is not clear, read the "access to your project" section again or contact us) 
• Download BIMx and use BIMx transfer site to share your projects 
• Use BIMx-BIMcloud client access license through BIMcloud professional version to communicate directly with your customers 
• Download and try BLUEBEAM Revu and its connection with ARCHICAD (see this recorded webinar) 

In Conclusion

We hope that these measures help you and your company to minimise the impact of the coronavirus on operations. At a time, physical interaction is being discouraged by many different international and local health organisations. So, go home, work remotely, and call us if you need any help and support. 

During these difficult times, we are very sensitive to helping our customers. First of all, be safe, and if something goes wrong in your ARCHICAD or project workflow, DO NOT PANIC! CALL SIMBIM!

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