Sherlayer

Post originally authored for the blog of Strategie Digitali, on July 20th 2018. A Common Environment for sharing data and documents has been the core of collaboration for ages, way before BIM. British Standard 1192, which many now forget to be the core of any PAS on top of it, was mainly about that: collaboration […]

Post originally authored for the blog of Strategie Digitali, on July 20th 2018.


A Common Environment for sharing data and documents has been the core of collaboration for ages, way before BIM. British Standard 1192, which many now forget to be the core of any PAS on top of it, was mainly about that: collaboration environment and naming convention for documents. The so-called Common Data Environment is central in many normative frameworks, although not all of them revolve completely around it as the British one does. Other norms, such as the Singaporean one, prefer to focus for instance on the method for sharing, coordinating and referencing models one with the other, instead of providing specifications on the structure of the environment itself.

Before getting into detail of how a Common Data Environment should work, it’s worth specifying that nobody ever said anything, in the British Norm, about the CDE having to be some expensive system in the cloud. On the contrary, it’s specifically defined as something flexible, which can be tailored and sized on the specific needs of the project.

Few months ago, the NBS released its annual National BIM Survey and a specific question on the product used as a Common Data Environment clearly showed a non-proportioned popularity for simple file-sharing platforms.

It is also worth noting that PAS 1192-2 indeed does recommend a “style” of CDE based on BS 11000-1 and BS 11000-2.

The CDE is a means of providing a collaborative
environment for sharing work and can be implemented
in a number of ways.
For the development of various
forms of collaboration within organizations and across
project teams refer to BS 11000-1 and -2.

The norm provides the adopting Company an 8-step approach for the identification and implementation of the most suitable technological and process solution as a mean of achieving collaboration in its business relationships with other Companies. You can download the guide to the norm here.

Part 1 of the norm was available here and it was about £112.00 but it has been superseded by BS ISO 44001:2017, available here for £127.00. Part 2 is still valid, it’s available here and it’s “only” £70.00.

Now, if your business assessment points you towards complex Electronic Document Management Systems, there are excellent solutions on the market, provided you have budget for them. The trouble starts when you start looking for solutions that are a little more model-oriented, leave alone object-oriented, if you need management systems supporting a more “agile” approach, and/or if your budget requires you to look adrift from the usual solutions.

In our constant research for a good sharing platform, this week we tried Sherlayer.

1. What Sherlayer is About

In their own words, Sherlayer offers “Dynamic Drawing, Document and Audit Management for the Construction Industry”.

If you want to have a quick overview of their features, have a look here:

It works as a very friendly, smooth, Level 2-compliant Common Data Environment and there are a couple of nice features you might particularly enjoy. We certainly did.

1.1 Set up your team

I know you’ll be tempted to jump straight into creating a new project, but hold your horses. People come first.

In order to invite people to your project, you’ll have to go under settings, on the top right bar.

You’ll reach a set of options: I’m talking about the Manage users one, as you might have guessed.

You can invite people by name and e-mail, and then they will be able to put in data about their organization and such when they confirm their account. This way you will not have to know the blood type of your client before inviting him, as it happens with certain CDEs. Just the name will do. You do know the name of your client, right?

In my case, I’ve decided to put on the project my partner Claudio and our trusted Artificial Intelligence. They will get along nicely.

1.2 Set up a your project

Here we are: the moment you were waiting for.
When you set up your project, you’ll be offered the possibility to set up different levels of BIMness, if you pardon my saying:

  • Set up a BIM Project. Within BIM projects, files are uniquely identified by their BIM File number and extension (file type). BIM named files can be imported directly and full BIM names are displayed and exported. Within Non-BIM projects, files are uniquely identified by their file name within a project.
  • BIM Naming Mandatory. Within BIM Mandated projects, all BIM tags will be mandatory for files. This helps ensure meta-data associated with documents and files is always up-to-date and correct.
  • BIM Approval Processes. Enable the BIM approval process for documents; Work In Progress, Shared, Published & Archived. Specified users can approve the progression of documents between the four main areas of a project. File names will also be displayed and exported with their Suitability and Revision Codes.

On step 2, you’ll be required to add contributors to your project, so remember to create them first and then create your project. This is where you thank me, because if you don’t have users to add, you’ll have to discard everything and go back to add them. You’re welcome.

Once you have all your guys on board, you can create distribution groups and put people in those groups. For instance, I have two groups: one for the buildings and one for the acres of park we’ll have around our headquarters.

.  .

For the landscape we want the human touch (that’s where the swimming pool is): I’m putting Al to work only on the building.

On top of setting up groups, you’ll need to define:

  • permissions (who can view what);
  • area approvals (who’s responsible for which gate);
  • titleblock amendments and other tasks;
  • volumes (with a 00 All Volumes already set up by default);
  • levels (with a ZZ All Levels already set up by default);
  • originators.

The last step is to set up folders structure and permissions. You’ll be offered the possibility to create nested folders and set up permissions to view and/or update for each folder. Permissions are set up by group, so be careful not to put in the same group people with different privileges of access to your deepest darkest secrets. That’s a valid advise also for life in general.

Take a very good time to think about your folder structure because, as for now, you can’t create folders on the spot but you have to go back to the project settings and it’s considered a very serious business. You’re welcome. Again. I’m starting to sound like that heavily tattooed dude.

A good option is the one you’ll reach by clicking on the cube: you’ll be able to set up the folder as to support federated models. They have a nice preview of this will look like.

2. Manage your Project

Once you hit the dashboard of your project, this is how pretty much what you’ll see.

2.1 Upload Files

Let’s say that, as the client, I want to upload pictures of the survey we did in Tokelau. In the File Vault, I choose the pictures and the metadata input table looks nice and clean. The file name, which in my case are quite messy, will remain as description and can be amended as well. If you click on the triangle beside the title, you’ll be able to set up codes all at the same time: you’re supposed not to change organization mid-project, nor you should have multiple roles, although we all know that’s not always true, right?

If you want to be a barrel of laughs, know you can set people permissions in such a way that they can upload but they cannot view. This means that their files will be there after they uploaded them, but they won’t be able to see them and this will result – I’m sure – in an amazing chain of events. Like people keeping to upload stuff and the system telling them that they are already there and them won’t be able to see them and bashing their heads on the keyboards and calling you in the middle of the night because it’s 5 o’clock somewhere. Or maybe just can consider just not putting a coconut on the head of the chicken.

How we fear people will behave if they don’t see the stuff they just uploaded.

In the file vault, files will be displayed in the CDE compartment based on their suitability, regardless of the position in the folders, which completely makes sense and I’m always glad to find someone who gets it. This means that you can have two parallel structures and work in a decent, consistent way on two parallel train of thoughts. That’s what metadata is supposed to be there for, at the end of the day.

Compartment ≠ Folders
(not necessarily, at least)

We know you’ve been working with folders your whole life, but try and think outside the box.

On each file, you can perform a number of tasks:

  • View, which completely makes sense in my case since they are pictures.

I can sketch on it in different ways and, more importantly, I have two shortcut buttons to create a conversation or a task related to this. Let us say I realize that this wasn’t a picture from a survey, but a reference for the Swimming Pool Designer: we want sharks in our pool for the kids to play with, and we’re sure it’s feasible.

  • Add a task. Let’s say I want my AI to start a simulation: hit the bubble and write it up. The nice thing is that tasks can be set up with a predefined duration. We know that our AI will require at least five days to run a simulation, therefore nobody can assign him a task and require him to finish before the required five days.
Our Al is missing the ‘H’ but still we’re afraid he might end up killing us, so we tread lightly with him.
  • Download, and it’s a simple one. There’s also a desktop account to set up a proper sync mapping with local folders.
  • Checkout, and if you’ve worked on… well, anything, really, you know what this mean. Checkout is a way of saying to your fellow peers that you’re working on the stuff and they shouldn’t use it/download it/upgrade it as long as you’re done. You can set up a time frame for checkout: after that, it will be available again. This is to avoid situations like that time that George went hiking on the Himalayas and nobody could work for three months. You’ll also have to write down an explanation for checkout: it’s always polite to do so. The checked out file will appear with a light white icon and a “forbidden” logo next to it: nobody will be able to touch it aside from you.
This is what you can do on a file that you’ve checked out.
  • Note: checkout in the Published compartment results in a very interesting feature and I have to thank Toby Wisener, Head of Development at Sherwood Systems, for pointing that out to me. When a document is in Published, you’re still able to check it out to work on that, because shit happens. When somebody does that, the old version of the document will become a Ghost. But a friendly, funny kind of ghost. Like Casper, including the whole “wanting to stay close to my dad” drama: the file is still available until the draft version is approved back into the Published compartment because, even if it’s being corrected and you want to know that, you still might need to keep working on stuff and be master of your own destiny.
Nice feature, although I cry every time.
  • View File History;
  • Edit Details;
  • Move File;
  • Delete it;
  • Promote it to a higher suitability code.

The promotion will of course move it from one compartment to the other of the CDE. If you issue it for authorization, you’ll be harassing the person with privileges of the correspondent gate. The file will appear as a task in his bar.

I’ve got two tasks and two alerts. Damn.

The Communication, Tasks, Alerts and Calendar tabs all organize your activities based on different filters.

The Audit Trail is the last and, in my opinion, most interesting feature. It allows you to see everything that’s been going on on the project, based on different filters, and export data into a spreadsheet. And we all know what’s that for, right?

But this is a story for another time.

3. The Federated Model

The last feature I want to hit, is the possibility of uploading a federated model into a folder.

Unfortunately you can’t view Revit native files directly in the browser and that’s a pity, at least for us.

Yeah, I’m sorry too.

It does, however, support IFC.

Do you remember the Federated Folder option we saw when we set up the project? This is where it comes into action.
Now, let us say that I have different files for structure, architecture and landscape for our villa. Yeah. It’s that villa. We wanted to bring a little bit of Italy in Tokelau.

When you go to view, say, the architectural model, you have a new option that says “Federated Model Selection”.

You will have to choose which models you want to load together with the one you’re opening and they will become “Anchored”. You can always add new “anchors”, add notes, perform few basic interactions with the elements in the model, isolate, make semitransparent, interrogate objects.

Now, I wouldn’t mind some basic interference check and the possibility to set up views for the client. How about adding that?

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