ALTO vs SharePoint: Where Microsoft 365 Stops Working for Revit, and What Replaces It

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By NexSysIT Editorial Team · Updated 23 Sept 2026

Every practice that moved its documents to SharePoint eventually tries to move the project drive there too, and finds out the same way: a Revit central model that won’t sync, an AutoCAD xref that can’t be found, and a folder path that Microsoft says is too long. SharePoint is a good, user friendly document platform, and the fee proposals and the QA manual belong in it. The models don’t.

We’re the team at NexSys that builds ALTO, our cloud platform built for AEC workloads. Our engineers spent years at Norman Disney & Young and Tetra Tech building SD-WAN and virtual desktops across the UK, Canada and Asia Pacific, which is a long way of saying we’ve watched a lot of practices try to make SharePoint do this, and this article is what we’ve learned from each one.

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SharePoint for architecture firms: the four limits that matter for designers

First, worksharing, because SharePoint and OneDrive, like Dropbox and Google Drive, are sync services that let users edit a copy: they copy a file to each machine and reconcile the copies afterwards. Revit worksharing needs the opposite, one central file that every local copy talks to constantly, and Autodesk’s knowledge base is blunt about it. Asked whether cloud-synced services give an experience similar to worksharing on a local network, its answer is that the answer would be no. Second, references. AutoCAD external references stored on SharePoint aren’t found unless the files are downloaded locally, which Autodesk also documents, so a drawing with forty xrefs is unusable from the browser.

Third, paths: Microsoft caps a file’s full path at 400 characters across SharePoint and OneDrive, and a folder structure of client, project number, stage, discipline, issue date and file name gets there faster than anyone expects. Fourth, scale, because Microsoft’s sync client is rated for 300,000 items across all synced libraries, and a single architecture project with its renders, point clouds and issued sets can hold a hundred thousand files on its own. None of these is a bug, and the complete list of Microsoft’s limits runs to a long support article. They’re the design of a document platform being asked to be a file server, and the features that make SharePoint easy to manage for documents, versioning, co-authoring, retention, are the same ones that make it difficult for a 2 GB central model.

What SharePoint does well for an architecture firm's documents

SharePoint is used by more than 200 million people, according to Microsoft, and most of the reasons are good ones. For documents it’s hard to beat. Each project can have its own SharePoint site with its own members, so the fee proposal, the consultant agreements and the RFI log live in one place rather than across six inboxes, and a centralised library means fewer duplicate files with (2) in the name. Version history is automatic. Permission controls are granular down to a folder or a single file, and external sharing lets a consultant or a client see the issued set without a login to your network. Staff on site open the same library from a phone, and every library appears inside Microsoft Teams, which is where most of the office already works.

The better-run practices go further. Metadata columns, such as project number, stage, discipline and status, replace the deep folder hierarchy that drives paths past Microsoft’s limit, and Power Automate can route an RFI or a drawing approval to the right person and record who signed off. That’s real workflow, it’s already in the licence, and we build it for clients.

The catch is effort. SharePoint has a steep learning curve and needs real setup and ongoing IT support: someone has to design the sites, decide the metadata, and govern permissions and external sharing so a folder shared with a builder in 2023 isn’t still open in 2026. Search, which Microsoft sells hard, often falls short of what staff expect once the libraries are full of CAD files it can’t read. Practices that skip the governance end up with the same mess they had on the file server, just in the cloud. Google Workspace, where even a free Google account comes with 15 GB of storage, and wiki tools such as Notion or Confluence come up as alternatives, and for documents they’re fine. None of them serves a Revit central model either.

ALTO serves the file instead of syncing it: the solution for a complex project

ALTO is NexSys’s purpose-built cloud architecture for AEC environments, not a generic hosting environment. Project storage is served to the workstation rather than copied to it, so a Revit central model behaves the way it does on an office server: one file, worksharing, local copies syncing to central, without a VPN in the way. Storage sits in tiers chosen for modelling responsiveness, because models, coordination files and rendering assets generate IOPS a document library was never sized for. Compute scales for render and analysis jobs, so the critical path on a submission day isn’t a workstation, and each project is segmented and isolated with role-based access, so users see their projects and nothing else, and a departed contractor loses one project, not the practice. Security is per project, not per platform, and the archive stays at the practice’s disposal rather than lost in a departed user’s OneDrive.

The backup is immutable and isolated from the primary workloads, which matters because a compromised account on a sync service can delete the synced copy and the cloud copy in the same session. Capacity planning is governed rather than discovered at the invoice, and the platform is watched around the clock. Teams access their data from anywhere without a VPN, which for a practice with a site office or a second city is usually why they called.

ALTO vs SharePoint on the things a practice actually does, with Microsoft Teams and the other tools it already runs

Revit central models: ALTO yes, SharePoint no, by Autodesk’s own account. AutoCAD xrefs: ALTO resolves them as network paths; SharePoint needs every reference downloaded first. Path length and item count: ALTO has no 400-character ceiling and is sized to the practice, while SharePoint has the ceiling and a sync client rated to 300,000 items. Point clouds and renders: ALTO puts them on a storage tier built for them; SharePoint stores them, but every workstation that syncs the folder pulls the whole set down. Access from a site shed: both work from anywhere, and ALTO does it without a VPN; reporting: Power BI reads SharePoint natively, and it reads ALTO’s project storage the same way it reads any file share, so the finance team’s dashboards don’t change.

Here’s the part some cloud vendors would argue with, and we’ll stand behind it: SharePoint is the right home for most of a practice’s documents, and a firm that rips it out to put fee letters on a file server has made the opposite mistake. Office documents, contracts, QA, HR, the intranet, the content people create in Word, and the collaboration in Microsoft Teams: SharePoint, which integrates with the rest of the tenancy for free. Project models, linked files, point clouds, renders, issued sets: ALTO. The failure is putting everything in one or the other, and the practices that collaborate best keep both and know which is which.

When SharePoint is enough, and when it isn't

A caveat we’d rather state than have you discover. If you’re a two-to-five person studio on Revit LT or ArchiCAD solo files, with no worksharing, few xrefs and projects under a few thousand files, SharePoint and OneDrive will carry you, the storage included in Microsoft 365 is valuable and already paid for, and ALTO is more platform than you need. Call us when the first shared central model or the first “path too long” error arrives; most practices hit one between eight and fifteen people.

Moving is a project. Not a wizard, and not a budget line you can guess. We audit the SharePoint libraries first, find the models and references hiding in them, and move project data to ALTO while the documents stay put, which is the option that saves the most and needs the least attention from the practice. The information required to start: a list of projects and who touches them. The trial is four weeks, full access, no contracts, and the ALTO page covers what’s in it.

Questions practices ask about SharePoint and ALTO

Can you run Revit central models on SharePoint or OneDrive?

Autodesk’s knowledge base says that if you expect an experience similar to worksharing on a local network from a sync-based cloud service, the answer would be no. Sync copies files; worksharing serves one. Use a local server, Revit Server, Autodesk’s cloud worksharing, or a platform like ALTO that serves rather than syncs.

Does ALTO replace Microsoft 365?

No. It replaces the project file server and the VPN. Email, Microsoft Teams, proposals and office documents stay in Microsoft 365, and ALTO holds the project data SharePoint wasn’t designed for.

What's the difference between SharePoint and a file server for a design practice?

A file server serves one copy of a file to everyone, which is what CAD and BIM software expect. SharePoint stores the file in a library and syncs copies to each device, which is what documents expect. ALTO is the served single copy, in the cloud.

Is SharePoint good for architecture firms?

For documents, yes: project sites, automatic version history, granular permissions, external sharing with consultants and clients, mobile access and Teams integration, with Power Automate for RFI and approval workflows. It needs setup and governance to work well, and it isn’t built to host Revit central models, linked CAD files or point clouds.

What are the alternatives to SharePoint for architects?

For documents, Google Workspace, Dropbox and Box, plus Notion or Confluence for wikis. For project models, the options are an office file server, Revit Server, Autodesk’s cloud worksharing, or a platform that serves the file rather than syncing it, which is what ALTO does.

How long does it take to move project data from SharePoint to ALTO?

For example, a thirty-person practice with several terabytes of projects is weeks from audit to cut-over, not days, and most of that time goes on finding the references and central models hiding in libraries. The documents don’t move.

NexSysIT Editorial Team

Editorial team, NexSys

Written and reviewed by the NexSys engineers, design technology specialists and consultants who build and support IT for architecture, engineering and construction firms across Australia. Every price, rule and vendor statement is checked against its source on the date shown.

Last updated 23 Sept 2026