I am looking for a way to tag an item in A360 with metadata using Autodesk Forge. For example: I have a revit file stored in A360 and I want to put metadata on this object such as author, department, duedate etc.
Is this even supported in the API?
Unfortunately, as far as I can see in the Data Management API Reference, there is no such feature exposed yet. I'm checking with the development team and will log a wish about it.
Suggested workarounds would be:
1/ Store the data in the revit file itself to some properties which get extracted, so you are able to access them from the Model Derivative API
2/ Use a custom side database where you store the item URN mapped to third party metadata
3/ Add a file to DM which contains metadata attributes
Related
I was trying some hands on with forge services, I want to fetch few object's properties inside of a revit model uploaded on bim360/ACC, for which I am calling two API's 'https://developer.api.autodesk.com/modelderivative/v2/designdata/job' for translating the job to svf and then calling API "https://developer.api.autodesk.com/modelderivative/v2/designdata/" + urn + "/metadata/" (with urn of the translated job) (failed when passed urn of revit file directly)
Can we not directly get the metadata/properties without converting the file to svf? Since translating to svf is taking a lot of time for large files, my motive is to decrease the time to fetch the properties, can you share any solutions if you think of any please?
Yes, you are correct in assuming that you need to translate to SVF in order to access any BIM element properties at all. It's either that, or open it in desktop Revit and access the data there. Also discussed in the Revit API discussion forum thread on fetching metadata of a model using Forge model derivative API.
I would like to use Autodesk Forge to extract the log of activities (named "File Activities") for models stored in Autodesk Construction Cloud Docs. An example of the information is attached as an image below. I have so far been unable to find anything in the Forge Documentation, other than extracting the file attributes and last modified information.
Is it possible to extract the file activities? If so, what is the best way for me to proceed?
File Activities
Unfortunately, no API exposed for the activities functionality. I will log a wish.
I'm trying to get the Discipline Property of a Revit Model uploaded to BIM 360. I was able to get the list of views by GET
https://developer.api.autodesk.com/modelderivative/v2/designdata/URL_SAFE_URN_OF_SOURCE_FILE/metadata
However there is no data on Discipline. Where and how can I get it?
I'm not familiar with "Discipline Properties" in Revit but I can comment on the Forge side of things:
The GET :urn/metadata endpoint simply returns a list of "viewables" that were extracted from the source design file. In case of Revit, these are typically 3D views or 2D sheets. I'm not aware of any other types of viewables that could be extracted by the Model Derivative service.
If the "discipline property" is a property available on some of the Revit elements, you might want to take a look at the GET :urn/metadata/:guid/properties endpoint. This one returns a JSON with properties of objects in one of the extracted viewables. Note that those properties are also accessible from Forge Viewer using its APIs.
In general, the Model Derivative service is trying to extract the "right" amount of information, making sure that the viewer gets all the important data for visualization and analysis, but also making sure that the size of the converted output stays in bounds. If there is some specific information in Revit designs that you need that is not extracted automatically, you can consider using the Design Automation service to process your Revit models in the cloud and extract all the information with your custom Revit plugin.
I used the TimeLiner plugin for Navisworks to create a 4D timeline. I'm now trying to grab this TimeLiner data from the Forge API. When I log into BIM360, I'm able to load a model into the viewer and see all TimeLiner information within a browser. However, I don't see how I can accomplish this with the Forge API. Is there an available API for this? Or is there another way to grab this info?
Unfortunately, the Timeliner properties are not extracted by Forge service (which BIM 360 is running on), and also some other properties. This blog tells in detail:
https://forge.autodesk.com/blog/updates-navisworks-nwd-translation-engine-coming
Currently, we do have an advanced option to override default configurations to tell NWD/NWC translator if it needs to translate Timeliner properties. BUT, this option is about Forge Model Derivative API ONLY.
While in BIM360 Docs UI, there is no any plan to expose options to let users override default configurations when they upload files. So for now, users uploading NWD/NWC files to BIM 360 Docs will lose Timeliner properties. Consequently, you will have to open those files inside Navisworks to view Timeliner data or take advantage of the Navisworks API to extract the data inside Navisworks. We apologize for the inconvenience.
However, we have legged a wish BIMPLT-698 with BIM360 engineering team to evaluate the possibility of adding options for end-user when they upload the model files. You're welcome to track the updates in the future via sending an email quoting this wish id to the Forge support channel.
Note. Triggering your own translation job to override your desired translation configurations via Forge Model Derivative API on files uploaded to BIM360 will charge you for cloud credits. You will have to consider the extra costs if you want to do so, and see here for the pricing: https://forge.autodesk.com/pricing
We are trying to create a system that can displays BIM Model using Model Derivative and Viewer API, and provide functionality to use updated BIM Model, while preserving the mapping between element (currently we are using dbId) with some metadata.
The problem is that when we post Model Derivative translation process with updated BIM Model(updated meaning that we modified Revit file using Autodesk Revit or equivalent toolkit), the original dbId is lost.
While looking through viewer API, we've found that through model.getProperty with dbId, we can obtain a value called 'external-id', which seem to be preserved even after the update. However, this seems like that this can only be accessed in client side; there is no MD api that provides external-id property(correct me if I am wrong please).
As the last resort, we are trying to map dbId=>metadata mapping from original BIM model to dbId=>metadata mapping in updated BIM Model by creating a dbId=>dbId mapping using name as common feature, but we are worried that adding / removing BIM Model's element while updating would cause name mapping to be invalid.
TL DR; the question is:
Is there a way to obtain unique and preserving id per each ObjectId / dbId in Model Derivative translation process with updated BIMs?
Yes, exactly.
In Revit, the UniqueId is the safest method to persistently identify elements.
This UniqueId is available in the viewer, and unfortunately currently not in the model derivative API.
For an immediate solution, I suggest that you create you own shared parameter in Revit for all elements that are of interest to you and populate it with the UniqueId value. Then, that information will become available to you in the model derivative API as well.