Storage
Every project has a Storage tab — a plain vault for the big raw files that don't need reading: CAD drawings, 3D models, long videos, zipped handover sets. Nothing is analysed or summarised here; it's simply kept safe, organised, and easy to find again.
What goes here — and what doesn't
Think of Storage as the project's shelf, and Documents as its reading desk. When you upload to Documents or Photos, BuildFlow reads the file — names it, files it under a category, makes it searchable by what's inside. That effort is wasted on a 400 MB model file or an hour of drone footage, so Storage skips all of it. Files here are found by their name, not their contents.
- Good for Storage: DWG and RVT files, videos, survey point clouds, zipped archives, anything huge or raw. Files up to 2 GB each.
- Better in Documents: anything you'd want BuildFlow to read and file for you — contracts, drawings as PDFs, reports, invoices.
Meeting recordings land here too: when you record a meeting from a task's Minutes pad, the audio is filed in this project's Storage — so it can be played back, restricted to certain people, or deleted like any other file.
Folders & finding things
- Make folders to organise however suits the project — by discipline, by stage, by handover package.
- Search by file name, or narrow the list by type, who uploaded it, or when.
- A folder can only be deleted once it's empty — nothing inside ever disappears with it.
When a file needs more than shelf space
If you decide a stored file deserves the full treatment — say a PDF drawing set you now want categorised and searchable — use Move to Documents (or Photos) on its row. The file moves over and BuildFlow reads it there, exactly as if you'd uploaded it to that tab in the first place. Very large files can't make this move — they stay in Storage, where they can always be downloaded.
The safety check
Files up to a certain size are checked for viruses right after upload, the same as everywhere else in BuildFlow — you may see a short "being checked" pause before the first download. Truly huge files are too big to check, so they carry an unscanned badge and BuildFlow asks you to confirm before downloading one. Unscanned files can never be moved to Documents or Photos.
Who can see what
Storage follows the same access rules as the rest of the project: everyone on the project sees the shelf, and any individual file can be restricted to chosen people from its row — same as restricting a photo.