Autodesk Build Sheets API

We are pleased to announce the availability of Autodesk Build Sheets API. The sheets is the feature in Autodesk Build. It allows you to publish a multi-page PDF file and distribute individual pages (sheets) to use in the field. You can find more information about product feature here. (Note: in the product user interface (UI), Revit or .rvt file is also supported. In this API release, only PDF file is supported.)

In this release, following API functionalities are available:

read sheets and version set
batch read, modify, and delete sheets and version set
batch restore deleted sheets
create a new version set
create sheets from a source PDF file

Steps to create sheets from a source PDF is similar to uploading a file to Files module using Data Management API. However Sheets API requires to use sheets specific storage endpoint. The process also involves a few additional steps:

create a storage using Sheets specific endpoint
upload source PDF file to the storage through S3 signed url, using Data Management API
call Sheets specific uploads endpoints to trigger “split” operation
modify basic attributes for sheets (e.g., sheet number, title, and tags)
publish the reviewed sheets

The Field Guide section of the document describes terminology, workflow for uploading and publishing sheets in detail. The page also includes current limitations of API.

Additional notes regarding this API release:

API supports 2-legged and 3-legged token. We strongly suggest implementing the integration with 3-legged token (in user context) which follows the permissions of the users.
API does not support export (download) sheet.
API supports to upload source PDF from local cloud storage. Importing the PDF files directly from Files module in Autodesk Docs is not supported. You will need to download them first, and upload from where it was downloaded.
The API does not support to extract Revit model 2D views to sheets. This is a gap between UI and API as UI has this functionality.
API provides the endpoint to get “thumbnail”, which is the image you see during the review process while uploading a file. No endpoint to get thumbnail of the published sheets. If you need a thumbnail of published sheet, you could use Model Derivative API to fetch the thumbnails and load them to Forge Viewer. The published sheets have derivatives.
The sheet number and title must be unique within one version set.

Documentation

Field Guild: this page describes the terminology and background information about Sheets and Sheets API. It also includes information about the scope of current release and limitations.
Tutorial: Step by step instruction about the workflow from uploading a source pdf to publishing sheets.
Reference Guide: this section lists a set of endpoints in three categories: sheets, version sets and uploads

Code Samples on GitHub