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When document management systems first became popular in AEC projects, documents used to be uploaded with very little “external information” except for the file name. While file naming conventions should follow standards prepared by your document control department, many times file names are given based on Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) structures, CSI codes, company abbreviation codes, sequential numbers, random phrases, or a combination of all of these.  All this is great when dealing with static files that have little or no relationship with outside information.

Most of the time the essential information that revolves outside of a file is dynamic in nature and not captured in the file name. And sometimes this info is not even in the content of the file (e.g. a scorecard or rating).

In Autodesk’s BIM 360 Document Management, Autodesk introduced Custom Attributes to allow users to label files with useful information and without modifying the filename or version. Custom Attributes allowed users to add properties such as (and these are just some ideas):

• fields to add internal revision or serial numbers.
• fields for special properties e.g. a subcontractor’s internal rating, location, or delivery terms. And this could be a drop-down list.
• dates such as “need to reply by”, expire dates, avg. business days for processing, etc.
• …and basically any information you would like to mark a file with.

In addition to this, custom attributes can be applied to folders and inherited by enclosed files (and subfolders).

Power Search 2021 searches custom attributes!

The new version of BlackSmithSoft’s Power Search 2021 for BIM 360 now includes the ability to easily search custom attributes. You simply click on the folder you want to search, flip the “Include Custom Attributes (beta)” switch and you will find a list of these attributes to select or search from (if available). The attributes also show up in Excel if you use the export function.

We believe custom attributes are essential to making files more useful and can be used to help us find files with more meaningful properties. At the end of the day, the content of any file is not just its file name, dates, created/modified by, version and content…it also needs external info we can append to better manage it.

You can try Power Search 2021 for free.