Create and add a documents naming convention to a project phase

Within BIMcollab Twin, the document number is very important, because the entire version management depends on corresponding document numbers.

Document naming conventions are essential for organizing files in a structured and consistent manner. Well-structured naming conventions provide clarity about the content and context of a document. 

A document naming convention is a set of rules used to consistently name project documents. The same naming rules apply to everyone who uploads documents to the active project phase.

Follow the steps below to create document naming conventions for your project.

1. Create a naming convention

Space admins can add a new naming convention from the Space Setting page. Click on the Settings tab (1) in the left menu. Select the Document Naming Convention tab (2), and click the Add button (3) at the top right corner.

A new menu opens, where you can create the new naming convention. Start by adding the convention name and description.

In the next part, select what will be the structure of your naming convention. It is divided into the following metadata fields: Company, Discipline, Location, Project and Project Phase.

All listed fields must have abbreviations set up to be able to be used in the convention. The abbreviations are managed in the tabs Settings, Companies, Locations or Project respectively.

The filed “Free” is mandatory for every convention, and as such is already added to the naming convention formula. The Free field is a unique identifier for each document, consisting of numbers, letters and special characters.

Each team should agree, as part of their project setup, on the structure of the naming convention to be used, as well as the sequential order of the Free field characters.

To create your naming convention, drag and drop any field in any order to the naming convention formula below. You can also use delimiters, like hyphen (-), underscore (_), dot (.) or space ( ), to separate the fields and make them more readable. You can rearrange the metadata fields and delimiters in any order by dragging them left or right in the convection, or remove them from the formula by clicking on the 'x” symbol.

When you are finished, click the Save at the bottom of the screen.

The document naming convention can be edited after, such as changing the order or removing fields. These changes apply only to the future documents, the existing documents remain named the same.

Document naming conventions can be deleted, or a new naming convention can be applied to the project phase. In either case, the changes will only affect the future documents!

2. Add a naming convention to your Project Phase

Once created, naming conventions needs to be added to required project phase(s) to be applied. Only users in a user role with permissions to add Document Naming Conventions to projects can perform this action.

From the Project page, once you have selected your required location, project and project page, go to the Settings tab (1) in the left menu. On the Document Naming Convention tab (2), click on the Edit button (3) to add a new naming convention to this project phase.

Select a naming convention from the drop-down list, and click save.

3. Upload documents

Now that the naming convention has been created and added to the project, it can be applied to your documents.

New documents can be uploaded from the Documents page, either manually or using the Upload list.

When manually uploading a document, mandatory fields must be manually filled-in. The selected values will be automatically displayed in the document number naming convention.

If a document with the same document number is added, a notification is displayed, that the uploaded document will be treated as a new version of the existing document with the same document number.

When documents are with the upload list, the metadata fields are automatically filled according to the upload list. All document name fields, including the free field are extracted from the upload list, and automatically populated. If a mandatory metadata field (marked with a '*' symbol) is missing from the upload list, then they need to be filled-in manually.

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