Forge Viewer: Onboarding

Use the Archibus Autodesk Forge Repository

Archibus SaaS customers with smaller portfolios can publish and store models in the Archibus Autodesk Forge repository, without having to subscribe to Autodesk BIM 360 or Construction Cloud.

This service allows a company to store their uploaded Forge models in a unique bucket assigned to that company inside of the Archibus Autodesk repository. When an Archibus user from this company uses the Archibus BIM Viewer, they can only see models stored in their company's bucket. They cannot see Forge models from other buckets that are not associated with their company.

Software and License Requirements

Archibus Licenses

Archibus Digital Twins
In order to work with assets, one of:

Assets license
Corrective Maintenance license

Note: The Archibus Digital Twins license enables the Catalog BIM Models and BIM Viewer views; there is no separate "BIM Viewer license."

Software

Autodesk Revit
Archibus Smart Client Extension for Revit (in order to publish models to the designated bucket)

An additional security measure is that each Archibus user’s email address must end in the same domain as the customer's email used for creating the Forge bucket. For example, if the Forge bucket was created for an email address that ends in @customer.com then the emails of Archibus users must also end in @customer.com.

Service Description

Service availability is dependent on Autodesk Forge infrastructure being online and running.

A customer will be assigned one production Forge bucket. The customer does not create the Forge bucket; the Archibus Customer Support team generates the Forge bucket and the Digital Twins license for the customer.

Procedure

Note: These instructions should be run by a BIM administrator at the site.

Follow these steps to pair the established bucket to your environment

Navigate to System / CAD and BIM Manager / Configure Application Parameters for CAD and BIM
- Select the application AbCommonResources and the application parameter: BIMForge-CustomerKey.
- In the Parameter Value enter the Archibus BIM Client ID (provided to you from Archibus Customer Support).
- Save. Reload Application Parameters.
In the Archibus SaaS environment:
- From the Archibus Smart Client Extension for Revit, run the Publish 3D command to publish your Revit model to Forge. The Publish 3D command uploads your file to Forge in SVF2 format, producing an interactive “digital twin” BIM model of your buildings. See Publish 3D command (User Help) .
- From Web Central, run the Catalog BIM Models task (User Help).
When an Archibus user of this Web Central instance (with the above key) opens a Forge Viewer view (such as BIM Viewer or Technologies Innovative Solutions / Forge Integration) and clicks on the Building icon (drop down), they will see all the building models from their Forge bucket.

Notes

Establish access only once for all Asset and Maintenance Managers

The above procedure occurs only once for the entire organization.

Demo Environments

In demo environments, setup is not required for demonstrating Forge integration using the default Archibus Forge sample bucket and the sample models (buildings NB and MC10).

Users whose email address ends in @archibustgd.com automatically connect to the Archibus Forge bucket. This is the case for user AFM.

Terminology

Forge is also known as Autodesk Platform Services, or APS.