For information about integrating with the Autodesk Construction Cloud, see ACC documentation.
API Basics
The BIM 360 APIs allow developers to develop apps that integrate with the Autodesk BIM 360 platform to extend its capabilities in the construction ecosystem.
Note that most of the BIM 360 API documentation is housed within the BIM 360 API documentation set. However, BIM 360 endpoints relating to BIM 360 document storage and document management are mostly housed within the Data Management API documentation.
- BIM 360 Account Admin
- BIM 360 Assets
- BIM 360 Checklists
- BIM 360 Cost Management
- BIM 360 Data Connector
- BIM 360 Document Management
- BIM 360 Issues
- BIM 360 Locations
- BIM 360 Model Coordination
- BIM 360 Relationships
- BIM 360 RFIs (beta)
BIM 360 Account Admin
The BIM 360 Account Admin API allows you to manage your Autodesk BIM 360 account and its projects, members, and company data. It includes the following features:
- Create, update, and retrieve information about BIM 360 projects.
- Retrieve information about BIM 360 project users. Note that the project user endpoints support both two-legged and three-legged authentication.
- Manage your business partner companies across services.
- Create a master member directory to manage account users and project users across services.
- Manage a business units structure that can be used to create regional offices or locations that you use for reporting purposes.
For more information about BIM 360 Account Admin features and workflows, see the BIM 360 Account Admin help documentation.
BIM 360 Assets
The Assets API provides programmatic access to the features of the BIM 360 Assets service. You can use it to define Assets settings and to manage assets within those settings. Assets API features allow you to:
- Create and modify asset categories, setting up a hierarchical category tree that you can use to assign categories to assets.
- Create and modify status sets containing statuses that you can assign to assets.
- Create and modify custom attributes that you can assign with values to assets.
- Associate status sets and custom attributes to categories so that assets in each category have a specific set of statuses and custom attributes that appropriately define the assets there.
- Create, modify, and delete assets.
- Search for and return sets of assets using powerful search filters.
- Search for and return sets of settings components such as categories, status sets, and custom attributes.
- Create and remove relationship links (maintained by the Relationships service) between assets and categories and outside entities such as issues and documents.
- Retrieve the set of possible error codes that the Assets API may return.
The Assets API currently has some limitations:
- It does not support 2-legged authentication.
- It doesn’t yet provide endpoints that explicitly synchronize locally stored assets and Assets settings with service-stored assets and settings. However, it does provide a workaround through filtering on the updatedAt properties that can reveal changes since last checking the assets and Assets settings.
For more information about the Assets API, see the Assets API Field Guide.
BIM 360 Checklists
The BIM 360 Checklists API tracks information about a project’s checklists and checklist templates. This includes the following features:
- Track and analyze the progress of a checklist.
- Filter and sort checklists and checklist templates.
- Retrieve detailed information about a checklist’s items, sections, and attachments.
- Download checklist attachments.
- Download checklist section signatures from S3 storage.
Constructing Checklists
Note that checklists are called instances in the Checklist API.
An instance payload can include data about the instance’s sections, items, and attachments:
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You can reconstruct a checklist from the data by using the relationship
objects in the response payload to arrange the sections, items, and attachments to reproduce the instance hierarchy. For more details, see the GET instances/:id endpoint.
For more information about BIM 360 Checklist features and workflows, see the BIM 360 Checklists help documentation.
Note that we do not currently support markups and submittals. In the near future we will be supporting more BIM 360 APIs - stay tuned!
BIM 360 Cost Management
Using the Cost Management API, you can:
- Read budget code templates, and read, create, update and import budget code segments and values.
- Read, create, update and import (i.e., bulk create) budget items.
- Read, create, and update contract packages.
- Read, create, update, and delete main contracts and main contract items.
- Read, create, update, and delete Schedule of Values (SOV) items.
- Read, create, and update change orders and cost items.
- Read, create, update, and delete expenses.
- Read, create, update, and delete expense items.
- Read payments and payment items.
- Read, create, update, and delete performance tracking items and performance tracking item instances.
- Read, create, update, and delete timesheets.
- Upload and download attachments to a budget, contract, change order, and cost item.
- Download documents or file packages generated from change orders and contracts.
- Subscribe to various types of Cost API-generated Webhook events that your app can monitor and respond to.
For more information about the Cost API, see the Cost Management API Field Guide
For information about the product features, see the BIM 360 Cost Management help documentation.
BIM 360 Data Connector
The BIM 360 Data Connector API exports data from BIM 360 service modules so that you can create your own custom analytics and reports, enrich that data with corresponding data of your own, and -— if you’d like -— archive that data in your own on-premise storage. The Data Connector service has access across all projects within an account so that you can get a full view of an account’s activity.
The Data Connector service delivers data files in CSV format, widely accepted by business intelligence tools such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and Microsoft Excel. Returned data includes all objects within a service. Objects returned for the Admin service, for example, include users, projects, and companies. Objects returned for the Issues service include issues, root causes, and comments.
Using the Data Connector API, you can:
- Request data from one or more BIM 360 services. These currently include Admin (both Project and Account), issues, locations, submittals, cost, and rfis, and will expand to include more services.
- Retrieve that data immediately, or set up a recurring schedule when data is extracted and presented to you.
- Get notification via URL callback or email when data extraction is ready to retrieve, or check on extraction at your convenience.
- Set up and manage a set of data requests, editing them as desired to change what they extract, when they extract, and how they notify you.
For more information about the Data Connector API, see the Data Connector API Field Guide.
BIM 360 Document Management
Construction teams can use BIM 360 Document Management to manage blueprints, 2D plans, 3D BIM models, and any other project documents. BIM 360 Document Management is designed to streamline your document management processes, consolidate all your sheets and designs, and set up standard templates and workflows to maximize efficiency.
You access BIM 360 Document Management via the Data Management API, where you can manage your BIM 360 folders and files.
Some of the Document Management endpoints are part of a separate BIM 360 Document Management API. This includes the following features:
- Export PDF files
- Manage folder permissions
- Retrieve custom attribute information and manage custom attribute values.
- Retrieve file naming standard information for a project.
If you are using the Model Derivative API or the Viewer SDK to access BIM 360 data in EMEA data centers, see the blog on EMEA data centers for instructions on how to update your code.
For more information about BIM 360 Document Management, see the BIM 360 Document Management help documentation.
BIM 360 Issues
The BIM 360 Issues API creates, tracks, and updates issues. An issue is an item that is created in BIM 360 for tracking, managing and communicating problems and other points of concern through to resolution.
We support managing issues that are associated with a project, as well as managing issues that are associated with a specific document (pushpin issues).
The Issues API includes the following features:
- Create, update, and track project-related BIM 360 issues.
- Create, update, and track document-related BIM 360 issues.
- Retrieve a project’s issue custom attributes and issue custom attribute mappings.
- Add and update comments for issues.
- Add and delete attachments for issues.
Issues Workflows and Transitions
You can use the Issues API to transition the issue through different status changes: draft, open, answered, and closed. You can also change various characteristics of the issue, for example, who it is assigned to and the due date.
BIM 360 Locations
The BIM 360 Locations API allows you to manage and share the hierarchy of building areas in your project using a location breakdown structure (LBS). An LBS is a tree structure that represents the layout of a construction project. Currently, the API allows you to retrieve locations (nodes) in the LBS.
BIM 360 Model Coordination
The BIM 360 Model Coordination API can be used to:
- Create and view coordination space model sets and versions.
- Create virtual model set views by combining user defined views extracted from design files uploaded to BIM 360 Document Management.
- Run Navisworks-like clash tests against model set versions.
- Group clashes and assign their resolution to project users via the BIM 360 Issues Service.
- Permanently ignore clashes that are expected or are part of the design.
- Run SQL-like breakdown queries against a unified coordination space BIM property index.
For more information on BIM 360 Model Coordination product features, see the BIM 360 Model Coordination help documentation.
BIM 360 Relationships
The BIM 360 Relationships API can be used to:
- Create, retrieve and delete relationships between entities in different BIM 360 modules.
- Perform advanced searches to retrieve specific links between entities where only some of the information about the links is known.
- Synchronize relationships for a project, based on specific criteria (for example, for offline use).
BIM 360 RFIs (beta)
The BIM 360 RFIs API creates, tracks, and updates RFIs (requests for information). An RFI is a formal question asked by one project member of another, such as clarification of design intent from the architect.
We support managing RFIs that are associated with a project, as well as managing RFIs that are associated with a specific document (pushpin RFIs).
The RFIs API includes the following features:
- Create, update, and track project-related BIM 360 RFIs. These RFIs correspond to the BIM 360 Project Management service. For more information, see the RFIs help documentation.
- Create, update, and track document-related BIM 360 RFIs.
- Add comments to an RFI and retrieve them. Note that we do not currently support adding multiple comments to RFIs.
- Add, retrieve, and delete RFI attachments. Note that we do not currently support adding multiple attachments to RFIs.
The following table describes the Project Admin module names and the corresponding RFIs API names:
Project Admin Module Workflow Role Name | RFIs API Workflow Role Name |
---|---|
Creator | Subcontractor (projectSC) |
Manager | General Contractor (projectGC) |
Reviewer 1 (EMEA workflow) | Construction Manager (projectCM) |
Reviewer (US workflow) / Reviewer 2 (EMEA workflow) | Architect (projectArch) |
RFI Workflows
The RFIs endpoints contain references to workflows and permissions that are set in the Project Admin UI, such as the type of RFI workflow assigned to the project, and the workflow roles assigned to the project members. To check the workflow types for the RFI, see GET rfis/:id. To check the workflow roles assigned to the project members, see GET users/me.
Note that the RFIs API does not currently support setting up workflows and configuring worklow roles. For more information about RFI workflows, see the RFIs help documentation.
RFI Transitions
You can use the RFIs API to transition the RFI through different status changes: draft, submit, open, answered, closed, and void. You can also change various characteristics of the RFI, for example, who it is assigned to and the due date, etc.
For information on transitioning an RFI through a typical workflow, see the RFI Transitions tutorial.
Note that we do not currently support uploading local files to RFIs or linking RFIs to PCOs (potential change orders).
BIM 360 API Terminology
The following table defines important terms for the BIM 360 APIs:
Category | Description |
---|---|
Account | The host organization that owns BIM 360 projects. |
Attachment | A document or image attached for reference to an issue. |
Business Unit | Organize projects to correspond to different business units within an organization. For example, a construction firm may have different divisions for different project types (buildings, interiors, infrastructure). The information can then be used for reporting and analytics. |
Checklist | A list of points or questions that need to be verified in order to assess the safety or quality of work completed by a trade in a given location or the correct installation of a piece of equipment. |
Checklist template | Outlines the structure and content of a checklist. |
Company | An organization that contributes to a project. Every project member is associated with a company. |
Container | Each project is assigned a set of containers that stores all the issues and checklists for the project. This is relevant for the Issues API and the Checklist API. The container ID is used to call BIM 360 Issues and Checklists endpoints. You need to use the Data Management API (GET hubs/:hub_id/projects) to find the Container IDs. |
Issue | An item that is created in BIM 360 for tracking, managing and communicating problems and other points of concern through to resolution. |
Project | The primary organizing construct within which people work and content is managed in BIM 360. |
Pushpin | A visual marker that denotes the location of an issue or RFI in a document. |
RFI | An RFI (request for information) is a formal question asked by one project member of another, such as clarification of design intent from the architect. |
User | Members participating in your BIM 360 account. |
Getting Started
To use the BIM 360 APIs, you first need to register an app and successfully acquire an OAuth token. You also need to get access to a BIM 360 account and to provision access to BIM 360 documents.
Take a look at our Step-by-Step Tutorials to see typical BIM 360 API workflows.