BIM 360/ACC Account for Development

Update August 17, 2023: This should be fixed. [ Update December 2, 2022:  A trial account for Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) Unified products currently has no API access for Docs. The product team is investigating for the fix. (ACSAPI-319: “Missing ‘BIM 360 Docs’ option when add custom integration for a trial version of Autodesk Docs.”)  ]

Update October 21, 2021: a free trial-converted developer account is no longer offered.

Update February 22, 2021: Autodesk released a new set of products. BIM 360 Docs is now superseded as Autodesk Docs. Autodesk Docs is a part of Autodesk Build, Autodesk BIM Collaborate, Autodesk BIM Collaborate Pro and Autodesk Takeoff. You can create BIM 360 Docs project within these products. 

Occasionally we receive requests for a BIM 360 and Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) Unified product account for development purpose. Here is the instruction to make it easy to find by googling.

• ADN members – if you are an ADN (Autodesk Developer Network) member, you can request a developer version of license from the ADN extranet: adn.autodesk.io >> SOFTWARE >> Software Request Form >> Development Software and Web Services Request Form. (Note: only your company’s site admin can request. If you are not the admin for ADN membership for your company, please ask him/her.)
• Paid account owners – If you already have a paid account, you can use your own account. (As of February, 2021, API access is activated for all new account. If you do not see “Apps and Integration” tab under SETTINGS tab of Account Admin module, you don’t have an access to API. You will need to request to activate it. Please refer to this post for where to make a request.)
• If neither of above applies to you, you have two choices:
  • Join ADN (www.autodesk.com/joinadn). Note: Start-ups qualify for a free ADN membership. (This does not apply to  ADN Open.)
  • Sign up for Autodesk Construction Cloud Integration Partner Program. This option is for a non-ADN developer who has commercial application and only need a BIM 360 or ACC unified product account. This program is not intended for in-house developers. When you apply, please provide your company name and company e-mail; Gmail is not accepted.
  • Try with a trial version for 30 days. You can sign up for a trial version at https://construction.autodesk.com/products/
    If you are not sure which product to choose, choose Autodesk Docs.

Materials from BIM 360 Online Hackathon Webinars

We just finished BIM 360 focused webinar series. The webinars were a part of BIM 360 Hackathon, the online event lasting for three months from August 1^st to October 31^st. The event is to kick off the opening of the new App Store for BIM 360. (Yes, we have App Store for BIM 360 now!) Currently, the store shelf only has apps that are “home grown”. The idea of the webinars is to help developers jump start implementing web service applications using BIM 360 and Forge.

If you missed the webinars, no worries. The webinars were recorded and are posted to the YouTube. I’m adding the links to the recording along with the presentation slides below.

No “Custom Integrations” tab?

Note on 2/20/2021.  “Custom Integration” tab is activated for every new account. Below apply to older accounts. 

Note on 7/4/2019. In case you are wondering if this manual process is still in place; YES, as of July 4th, 2019, this process is still valid.  

Update on 11/29/2017. “Apps & Integrations” tab was renamed as “Custom Integrations”.

To access data stored in BIM 360 Docs through API, you need to manually “provision” your app first. This is done in “Account Admin” page >> “Settings” tab >> “Custom Integrations” >> “Add Custom Integration”:

Folder Creation API for BIM 360 Docs

API to create a folder in BIM 360 Docs is finally available. Before you go back to your code and try it out yourself, however, I should point out a few things that you may want to be aware:

• It uses commands (not POST-project-folders end point)
• It supports in the user context only: i.e., 3-legged authentication and 2-legged with x-user-id specified. No full 2-legged is supported at this time.

Note that BIM 360 Team and other A360 based data management service uses POST-projects-folders endpoint to create a folder; the command version does not work for them. These may potentially add confusion if you are not aware up front. BIM 360 Docs team is aware of these gaps and will continue to work on to provide consistent, full 2-legged support at later time. For now, most importantly, we have a way to create folder!  Let’s take a look.