Eddy Krygiel
The AEC Data Model’s Newest Beta Capabilities
Let’s take a look at the latest and greatest capabilities we are building to help AEC firms realize more value from your data through the AEC data model. Customer input is critical to enabling us to build solutions that work for you and your organization. Our beta process allows you early access to our newest capabilities, so you can test them out and provide feedback before they’re generally released. Like our AEC data model roadmap, we will keep this post updated with all in-progress beta capabilities.
Future API capabilities
- Geometry access – Allowing users to tie data to geometry
- Data access at sync – Accessing refreshed data on a cycle relevant to project workflows
- Data extensibility – Ability to attribute data outside of an authoring environment
Future in-product experiences
- Custom Properties in Model Coordination – The ability to add and edit custom properties directly from the Model Coordination interface. Join the beta here.
- Content Catalog Content Request Workflow – The ability to submit content requests through Content Catalog. Join the beta here.
Accessing granular data with the Autodesk AEC data model today
At Autodesk, we feel that in order to help designers, engineers, and contractors enhance automation, analysis, and unlock all the benefits of all this data, we need two things: 1) trustworthy data and 2) an easy way to access this information at a more granular level. This data can be anything from data stored in a file or model (e.g., the measurements of a door or quantity of windows), metadata we want associated with those files (e.g., who accessed or changed a file) or what a cost system reports as the current price of that door.
To help AEC achieve this goal, we’re building the Autodesk AEC data model. The AEC data model enables cloud-based access to granular data to support better insights, efficiency, and reliability across the AEC project lifecycle. The AEC data model is expanding Autodesk Docs capabilities as a common data environment by extending powerful permissions, management, and collaboration capabilities beyond files to granular data. This means that you and your firm can begin to benefit from these new capabilities where we work today, in Docs, rather than having to adopt a new tool.
Since its launch in 2024, the AEC data model has already begun helping customers make better informed decisions based on trusted data. From intuitive, web-based capabilities like Content Catalog, which allows AEC firms to manage and access their standardized BIM content from a centralized location, to powerful platform capabilities like our AEC Data Model API, which delivers read-only access to Revit property data, we are working to establish a data ecosystem that will deliver more granular access data without the need to learn authoring tools like Revit. This means expanded accessibility to information across your entire organization in support of better decisions and reduced work as you benefit from the reuse of standardized data across projects rather than having to recreate it from scratch repeatedly.
What’s next for the AEC data model: Continuous development and our current in-progress betas
The AEC data model is constantly expanding and the capabilities outlined above are just the beginning. We regularly release new functionality that customers can use today, and we are currently running several beta programs to provide you with the ability to explore new ways to access granular data.
Let’s take a moment to break these down in a bit more detail and discuss the value they can bring to an AEC workflow:
1. Visualize model geometry with custom filters and queries with the AEC Data Model API
In today’s BIM workflows, you can visualize models and their respective components in viewing tools and pull up some limited property information. But what if you could treat the data within a model more like data in a spreadsheet?
What if you had the ability to query and to filter model geometry based on formulas? This new API capability allows you to visualize model geometry using custom filters and queries. Filters allow you to query elements or properties across all the models within an Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) hub, project, or folder.
You can also visualize or schedule the model elements based on that query and report information such as properties, coordinates, or other data. For example, a design firm can use these APIs to both visualize and share information about a complex façade outside of Revit, or a contractor can similarly pull a list of all the openings across several buildings as part of a campus project to get counts and sizes for estimation. In the example shown below, the model is being queried to showcase doors based on filtered set of properties.
2. Access to up-to-date and relevant data with the AEC Data Model API
The ability to query data across one or more models and multiple projects is great, but the data must be current to be valuable. While APIs help separate access to BIM data from the requirement of knowing how to use Revit, projects are still a collection of many models in different stages of development. But how do we know what is current within the model and how up to date the information is?
Another beta capability of the AEC Data Model API is the ability to allow users to access element data refreshed with each Sync with Central action performed in Revit. So, every time the model is saved back to ACC, the data read by the API can be refreshed. Access to the most current information in the AEC workflow is critical for improving data quality and consistency which drives better, more data-centric decision making.
In the example below, the model is directly tied to a PowerBI report showing a room schedule and room areas. We’re utilizing the AEC Data Model API to update the PowerBI dashboard with current area information each time a user syncs back to Central.
3. Ability to attribute data outside of a model environment with AEC Data Model API Extensibility
Finally, we are also truly beginning to decouple Revit from being a tool only accessible to those who can create models. Our AEC Data Model API beta also extends the API’s functions to include extensibility, which allows users to add custom elements and properties to models via a direct, API integration. This capability has the capability to bring dramatic changes to how properties within Revit are created and populated by allowing stakeholders to append information to a model element or property, without that information living in the model and increasing the file size. For example, a construction firm could append cost information from their costing database external to the Revit model.
Users can already report on properties and property values with the API today, but soon the API will expand beyond a read-only approach, allowing users to also write data back into the model. This powerful capability for AEC professionals will enable dramatic enhancements to today’s model data management processes, supporting increasingly data-driven digital project delivery requirements.
Using the AEC Data Model API, we can write non-geometric data back into the model. In the following video, we show how non-Revit users can use this type of functionality to update important information about the project without needing to open Revit.
4. Custom Properties in Model Coordination – The ability to add and edit custom properties directly from the Model Coordination interface
In addition to enabling the ability to append additional information to a model via the AEC Data Model API, we are also leveraging the API to power in-product experiences that allow stakeholders to interact with model data externally to the design authoring environment
Within the Model Coordination interface in ACC, stakeholders can now add custom properties to specific elements in the model from outside of the design authoring environment. This enables non-designers to engage with objects and information within the model without ever having to open Revit. For example, a project manager can isolate the window elements and bring in a series of customer properties like the contractor responsible for installation, installation date, and installation completion as shown in the video below.
This data doesn’t need to — and really shouldn’t — live in the model. This new workflow allows modelers and non-modelers alike to easily augment models with additional information they care about from a web interface.
5. Content Catalog Content Request Workflow – The ability to submit content requests through Content Catalog
Content Catalog was launched in 2024 to bring the ability to centralize, search across, and manage access to a firm’s library of reusable BIM components — like Revit families as an example — to Autodesk Docs subscribers. Today, many firms work without a centralized, cloud-based approach to content management, which leads to time wasted recreating the same content from project to project.
With Content Catalog, those reusable assets are centralized in an intuitive, cloud-based content management system so all users have easy access to vetted, structured data. The design technology or BIM management team at a firm typically uploads their existing Revit content to Content Catalog as they get started, making those assets easily searchable across their whole design team. But what happens when a new piece of content is needed?
The content request workflow allows a user to create and submit a request for a new family directly through Content Catalog. That request is then routed to the appropriate team members to be reviewed and fulfilled. No more trying to track content requests across email and chat! Check out the video below for an overview of the new functionality.
What’s the point of having data if you can’t trust it?
This is only the beginning. As the AEC data model continues to expand functionality, it will grow to address more authoring tool data types like Civil 3D and Plant 3D. We will also begin to add data validation workflows to the toolkit.
Our AEC data model public roadmap further highlights our strategic product focus areas, as well as where we are headed. Check it out to explore what we plan to work on next and vote on the new functionality that’s most important to you.
Learn more: AEC Data Model API Beta // Content Catalog Beta // ACC Experiences