Design Automation API
The Design Automation API provides the ability to use the core API’s of your favorite CAD engines, in the cloud, leveraging the scale of the Autodesk platform service to run automated jobs. These jobs could be highly repetitive or frequent, or could be larger problems that need large-scale processing power. With the Design Automation API, you can offload that processing to the Autodesk platform service, which can process those jobs at a much greater scale and efficiency.
Currently, the Design Automation API supports AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Inventor, Revit and Fusion, with plans in the works to expand to other CAD engines. Read on for details about each:
Design Automation API for AutoCAD
Run scripts on AutoCAD DWG files
Imagine you have thousands of DWG files stored in the cloud, and you need them all converted to PDF files. Ordinarily, you would have to download all the files, run a script on them in the AutoCAD desktop software, and then potentially upload them all back to the cloud. Your efficiency would be bottlenecked by the processing power of your computer and your network bandwidth, and you would have to instrument logging and retry logic in your code to ensure that the entire job completed.
Using Design Automation API for AutoCAD, you can offload all that processing to the Autodesk platform service, which can process those scripts at a much greater scale and efficiency. Current functionalities for DWG files include:
- creating new DWG files
- querying for information in existing DWG files
- purging drawings and saving them to other DWF file formats
- plotting DWG files to DWF and PDF
- translating text from one language to another
Note:
- The Design Automation API for AutoCAD does not provide access to commands or APIs of AutoCAD verticals (toolsets and products built on top of AutoCAD).
- The Design Automation API for AutoCAD supports vertical Object Enablers.
Design Automation API for 3ds Max
Run MAXScript, Python and 3ds Max plugins with 3ds Max Batch
3ds Max offers rich capabilities for 3D data modeling, animation, rendering and simulation. Whether you’re working with 3ds Max files or many other formats, the 3ds Max engine can be used to load or import data from a wide range of sources. Through MAXScript, Python and its extensive SDK, data can easily be processed for optimization, rendering, publishing and more. Leverage your existing 3ds Max scripts and plugins using the Design Automation API for 3ds Max Batch in the cloud.
- Import and export data from any of the plug-ins available with 3ds Max
- Run scripts and modify the file as needed.
- Upload and use your own C++, MAXScript or python plug-ins and implement logic that connect to all parts of the 3ds Max architecture.
- Perform renderings and simulation and other compute intensive operations. (Note : while in Beta, rates and limit may create constraints that will no longer exist in production)
Design Automation API for Inventor
Run addins and iLogic with IAM/IPT/IDW files
Imagine you have customers continuously submitting orders for custom configurations of your product. Using Design Automation for Inventor plus your own custom code and iLogic rules, you can set up an automatic responder to receive these orders and prepare initial documents and models for engineers to fine-tune or validate. The automatic handler can modify parameters in part files and assembly files and update relevant drawing files, doing all the preliminary processing in the cloud, and delivering initial documents to engineers’ desktops. Engineers can spend their time on the creative / unique / difficult aspects of each job, rather than wasting time on repetitive document-copying.
Design Automation API for Inventor provides access to the full Inventor API (“server” only), including functionality such as:
- Modify parameters and features in IPT (part) files
- Configure components in IAM (assembly) files
- Update and fine-tune IDW/DWG (drawing) files
- Use iLogic rules or custom code
- Operate on common, static files, or per-job files
- Provide results in any Inventor-supported formats
In order to help you to quickly step into using the API, we recommend downloading our Design Automation for Inventor Visual Studio template . The template contains a working Plugin project where just your own business logic needs to be put to. The second project included in the template allows you to locally debug your plugin in case you need to fine tune your plugin or investigate it’s behavior.
A working example of the complete solution using Design Automation API for Inventor can be found here.
Design Automation API for Revit
Run Revit addins or web applications to process or create RVT/RTE/RFA data
Design Automation API for Revit is Revit’s engine running in the cloud as an APS service. Build cloud-native apps and services that create, extract, and modify Revit data. By providing access to the full Revit DB API, without the requirement of installing Revit on the desktop, the following workflows are now possible anywhere:
- Create custom Revit family content
- Automate model creation
- Explore and analyze model data
- Extract and produce automated reports
- Modify existing models to maintain company standards
- Automatically create documentation
To get started, we recommend going through the Design Automation API for Revit walkthroughs here and samples here.
Design Automation API for Fusion (Beta)
Run scripts to create or modify Fusion data
Fusion offers a range of capabilities for 3D modelling and manufacturing. Using TypeScript, the Fusion engine and its extensive API, design and manufacturing workflows can be easily automated.
- Create or modify 3D geometry
- Create manufacturing models to use in your subtractive or additive manufacturing setups
- Create, modify and calculate manufacturing operations
- Explore, analyze and extract model data
- Import and export to a range of file types
To get started, we recommend going through the Design Automation API for Fusion walkthroughs here.
