Although Content Catalog is built specifically for managing BIM elements, you can store virtually any file type in your Content Catalog Collections.
Why Should I Store Non-BIM/CAD Content in Content Catalog?
Content Catalog is known for making it easy to find and use BIM content; however, we have several features that make storing your other files in your Content Catalog Collections appealing. Here are the top three reasons why you should move some of your documents away from your Windows file folder structure and into Content Catalog.
1. Meta Data
One of our most popular features in Content Catalog is our tagging functionality. Tags give you the ability to apply metadata to any of your content in your Collections. This means that your Word Documents, PDFs, and Excel files can have any number of tags assigned to them, allowing your team to find them in an infinite number of ways. For example, a BIM Execution Plan stored as a Word Document might have tags such as “BIM Standards,” “Processes,” “Documentation,” “Project Kickoff,” etc. By using multiple tags in this fashion, you’re making it easier for your team to find the content.
In contrast, storing your files in a folder on your network drive means the file can only be found in one way.
2. Permissions Control
In Content Catalog you have the ability to control permissions per Collection. Granular permissions allow you to let some items be not accessible, read only, downloadable or editable by the appropriate people.
Managing these types of permissions at a Collection level can make controlling read and write access much easier than dealing with folder permissions on your network drive.
3. Revisions
On our platform, all content is automatically revision-controlled. Any time a document is revised and re-uploaded to your Collection, Content Catalog will automatically create a new version and track who made the change and when. You can also add a note so that the rest of the team knows what was changed in the new version.
Many official documents such as standards manuals and guidelines have versioning (e.g., v2.0.1), so using Content Catalog to automatically track these versions for you, complete with the ability to roll back to a previous version, is a natural workflow.
These three features we discussed are only a few benefits of storing your Non-BIM/CAD content in Content Catalog. Some other features worth mentioning that can be of use when storing documents in our platform are star-ratings, favorites, and saved searches. All of these features are designed to make it easier to find your content.