AI and the future of outcome-based design hinge on better data. But what does “better” mean? We hear from so many customers that due to the expanding array of tools and data sources in recent years, you’re facing an increasingly disparate–and costly–patchwork of siloed people, processes, and platforms.

At Autodesk, our vision for better data revolves around increased interoperability, connection, and accessibility at the most foundational level, both across projects and your firmwide, internal ecosystem. As an industry, we’ve realized major progress towards sharing data across the many stakeholders that collaborate to deliver a project. But so often when the project is completed, all the associated data gets shelved rather than leveraged for future use, whether on a similar project or later in the building lifecycle.

Rather than harnessing existing data to get a jumpstart on our next project, we recreate it again from scratch. This reality is not only costing us massive amounts of unnecessary rework, but also holding us back from uncovering valuable insights from the connections across projects. For example, how many instances of a certain door type have been placed across in-progress projects? We’re aiming to address this by connecting building information modeling (BIM) content and its associated data into Autodesk Docs, our cloud-based common data environment for architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) customers.

One of the many exciting announcements shared at Autodesk University this year was that UNIFI Pro’s powerful cloud-based content management capabilities will be made available to anyone with Docs access in an upcoming release. When it’s launched, the integrated product will be rebranded as Autodesk Content Catalog.

Amy Bunszel, EVP, AEC Design, announced Autodesk Content Catalog as an entitlement to Autodesk Docs on the mainstage at AU 2023.

Watch the Autodesk University Day 1 General Session to learn more about how UNIFI Pro will be made available to Autodesk Docs users. 

If you have existing access to Autodesk Docs—be it through the AEC Collection or Autodesk Build— you will enjoy UNIFI Pro’s feature set at no additional cost. The demand for improved BIM content management has long been on our roadmap, prompting the question: Why now? And why Autodesk Docs?

As we work to unlock granular data from the confines of files and models, we need to make it available in a common data repository that enables you to simplify data management across your firm by unifying all your data and permissions in a single, cloud-based location—precisely what Autodesk Docs does. Content Catalog marks a significant milestone in expanding Docs’ data management capabilities by bringing in another fundamental subset of granular data.

When released, Content Catalog will deliver the ability to manage, organize, and share your digital content in Revit, Civil 3D, Plant 3D, Rhino, and other digital design tools. Currently, that content is typically created on a project-specific basis and the same files may exist and be recreated in a disconnected state across projects, users, and tools. With the digital content management capabilities of Content Catalog added to our AEC common data environment, our customers will be able to find, search, and load BIM content faster, anytime, and anywhere.

Users will be able to search and insert in Content Catalog’s data management system, in seconds.

Content Catalog’s data management capabilities will sit alongside our recently released AEC Data Model API Public Beta, a new service that allows you to retrieve granular data such as elements, parameters, and their values. Together, Content Catalog and the AEC Data Model API Beta represent tangible and meaningful progress towards unlocking increasing amounts of data and value as we work towards delivering an open, extensible data platform that connects AECO teams in their tool of choice.

We know that to facilitate better data sharing across tools, processes, and people, data needs to be more organized, interoperable, and accessible from the very start. And we’re pleased to be adding Content Catalog’s capabilities to Autodesk Docs to do so.

If you’re interested in signing up for Content Catalog’s “First Look” waitlist to be first to hear about news and updates, click here. You’ll be joining firms like Arcadis, HOK, HDR, and Walgreens who trust Content Catalog to manage, structure, and share content.