Autodesk Construction Cloud Drawing Review
Short answer: Autodesk Construction Cloud manages, versions and distributes the drawing set and tracks issues people raise against it. It does not read the set and tell you which sheets disagree with each other. Its clash tooling compares coordinated 3D models, which most projects never produce across every discipline.
Almost every general contractor running a commercial project has Autodesk Construction Cloud, BIM 360 or both. It is a genuinely good document platform, and the gap described below is not a criticism of it. It is a gap in what document management is for.
What Autodesk Construction Cloud actually does with drawings
It is the system of record. The set is uploaded, versioned, published to the team, and superseded when a bulletin lands. Sheets are hyperlinked, markups are shared, issues are pinned to a location on a sheet and tracked to closure, and RFIs and submittals run through the same workspace. On a well-run project the platform is why everybody is looking at the same revision.
What it does not do is form an opinion about the content. An issue exists in the log because a person opened the sheet, noticed something, and created it. The platform records the finding. It does not produce it.
Where model coordination stops
Model Coordination is the part people reach for when they hear the word clash. It compares 3D models from different disciplines and reports where geometry occupies the same space. That is real and useful, and on a project with a coordinated federated model it is the right tool.
The precondition is the problem. It needs every discipline modelled, shared on the same schedule, and modelled to a level of development where a collision means something. Plenty of projects never get there: the architect models, the structural engineer models, and the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, fire alarm and low-voltage drawings arrive as 2D PDFs drawn by consultants who were never in the modelling workflow. Those disciplines are where most coordination conflicts live, and they are the ones a model-based check never sees.
What this looks like on a 2D project
The set is complete, the platform holds every sheet, and the coordination question is still open. Somebody has to read the architectural sheets against the structural, the structural against the mechanical, the mechanical against the electrical, and all of them against the specifications. That comparison is what produces findings; storing the documents does not.
The scale of that reading is the whole difficulty. Across 826 projects, RFIs run 9.9 per $1 million of construction cost, and on projects between $5 million and $50 million the rate is 17.2 per $1 million against 1.1 per $1 million on projects above $1 billion. Per dollar of contract value, the mid-size job carries the heavier document load, and it is usually the one without a VDC department.
Those are third-party research figures, not ours. Each is traced to its primary document in our construction rework statistics register.
How the two fit together
They are not alternatives. Autodesk Construction Cloud stays the system of record: it holds the set, controls the revision everyone is working from, and carries the issue and RFI log to closure. A plan review runs against the 2D PDF set the platform is already issuing and returns findings cited to specific sheets, which the team logs as issues or RFIs in the workspace they already use.
The division is clean. One system answers where is the current drawing and what are we tracking. The other answers what is wrong with it.
What Flikt.AI checks
Flikt.AI reads the whole submission rather than sampling it: every sheet against every other sheet, drawings against specifications, across all 16 disciplines at once. It reports spatial conflicts, specification-versus-drawing mismatches, missing coordination where something required is absent from the sheet it belongs on, and clearance issues where drawn dimensions leave less room than the referenced requirement needs. The five kinds of finding are set out here, and because a document review is not the right answer everywhere, where this is not the right tool is published just as plainly.
What you send
Send the 2D PDF drawing set you already have, and the specifications if the project carries them. There is no model to build. If your concern is the downstream cost, reducing RFIs before construction covers the pre-issue sequence, and reviewing a set without Navisworks covers the model-based comparison in more detail.
Frequently asked questions
Does Autodesk Construction Cloud review drawings for coordination conflicts?
Not in the sense of reading a 2D sheet set and reporting what disagrees. Autodesk Construction Cloud manages the documents, controls versions and tracks issues that somebody has already identified. Its Model Coordination tool finds clashes, but it compares coordinated 3D models, not the PDF sheets. On a project delivered as 2D drawings, there is no model for it to compare.
Can I use both Autodesk Construction Cloud and a plan review?
Yes, and that is the normal case. Autodesk Construction Cloud remains the system of record for the set and the issue log. The review runs against the sheet set you export from it and returns findings tied to the sheets they came from, which the team then raises as issues or RFIs in the platform they already use.
What is the difference between model coordination and 2D plan review?
Model coordination compares geometry between 3D models and needs every discipline modelled and shared. Plan review compares the drawings that were actually issued, including the specifications, and works on the PDF set the project already has. They catch different things: geometry collisions on one side, and contradictions, omissions and cross-sheet disagreements on the other.
We have BIM 360 from an older project. Does that change anything?
No. BIM 360 and Autodesk Construction Cloud share the same role in this question: they hold, distribute and version the documents, and they track issues raised against them. Neither reads the set and tells you where two sheets disagree.
Do I need to export drawings out of Autodesk Construction Cloud?
You send the 2D PDF drawing set, which is what the platform is already storing and issuing. There is no model to prepare and no modelling staff required. Findings come back cited to the sheets they came from, so they can be logged against the same documents.
The pre-IFC coordination checklist
50 checks before you issue for construction, ordered by what actually goes wrong — built from 1,516 findings across 34 real plan sets. Comes as an assignable tracker (Excel) with status, owner and due date, plus a printable PDF. No call, no card.