Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD
Smart Client Extension for Revit

CAD and BIM Overview

The Archibus Extensions for AutoCAD and Revit are powerful tools that facilitate the integration of your CAD and BIM data with your enterprise data. This integration ensures that your CAD and BIM data is up-to-date and validated against your enterprise data standards, so that it is relevant for the lifecycle management of your facility.

The Drawing Environments

Archibus provides the following environments for intelligent drawing. Both drawing environments can be used in both Archibus local deployments and Cloud deployments. For information on Cloud deployments, see CAD and BIM on Cloud Deployments .

Drawing Environment Description
Archibus Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD Run AutoCAD commands on Archibus asset symbols , or use the commands that the Extension provides, including commands that connect to projects, edit asset symbols, and query asset symbols.
Archibus Smart Client Extension for Revit

Provides editing for Building Information Model (BIM) and publishing of enterprise graphics.

Note: If you have a license for the BIM Viewer (Archibus Digital Twins license) and you have an Autodesk Construction Cloud or Autodesk BIM 360 Account, you can view the Revit model in the BIM Viewer.

Database Connection

The Smart Client Extensions use:

  • Web Services to connect your CAD and BIM data live to your lifecycle database and facility management processes. See Smart Client Extensions and the Database
  • enterprise graphics that make all CAD and BIM data instantly searchable and accessible over the Web and mobile.
  • a wealth of validation tools to find and resolve errors in accuracy and consistency for areas, locations, and classifications of space, suites, equipment. Doing so ensures that you are operating your processes on solid data, and performing any external chargebacks on auditable results.

When you have synchronized your CAD, BIM and enterprise data, the asset symbols in your drawings and BIM models act intelligently. These assets and your graphics then appear in:

  • interactive forms, such as those that highlight suites for expiring leases or rooms with active work
  • dynamic reports, such as those that show today's space allocation by department or projected occupancy
  • dashboards and consoles that roll up CAD and BIM data, such as area data, to give the big picture of how you are using space and assets and the line of business that they support.
  • the BIM Viewer. This tool, available with the purchase of the Archibus Digital Twins license, enables you to view and explore your modeled equipment assets directly from a Web Central view.

Typically, the CAD and BIM team uses the Extensions to connect the CAD and BIM drawings and to make changes in a backoffice fashion. All other roles can use the Web interfaces to interact with forms, reports, dashboards and processes without needing any CAD or BIM knowledge, and without needing copies of the Extensions themselves.

Getting Started

The Smart Client Extensions provide the CAD and BIM specialists with the backoffice functionality that they need to support the “Run Anywhere” and Web Central processes. When you add a drawing or model using Archibus, the program adds it to the Drawing List table (afm_dwgs). If a drawing is in the Drawing List , Archibus will keep the data associated with the drawing or model up-to-date as you add, remove, and edit entities within the drawing or model.

Archibus also uses the Drawing List to find your drawing or model content from searches that cross multiple floors or buildings. If an Archibus query needs to know all of the rooms that contain employees to be moved, all of the buildings that have open work orders, or all of the suites that have expiring leases, Archibus looks into the intelligent drawings to find the right properties, buildings, floors, suites, rooms, etc. to present.

The following describes the process you follow to integrate your CAD and BIM data with your enterprise facility management data:

Additionally, Archibus Help includes the following sections to help you get started using the Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD or the Smart Client Extension for Revit:

Floor Plans and BIM Models versus Alphanumeric Inventory

In tracking your facilities data with Archibus, it is not essential that you develop floor plan drawings or BIM models. Some users may find that an alphanumeric record of their facility is sufficient. They document their facility with database records and then analyze this data with the program's many alphanumeric reports. Other users may get started with facilities management by first developing a project database and then later adding floor plan drawings to their project.

Note : If you do not intend on graphically representing your facilities information in CAD drawings, you may wish to skip this and the other drawing sections in Archibus Help.

Differences from the Client/Server Archibus Overlay for AutoCAD

Note : The Windows Client/Server product has been discontinued. Beginning with V.25.1, Windows Client/Server compatibility is not supported, although the features supporting Client/Server compatibility remain in Web Central and Smart Client. If you need to work with these features, use a pre-V.25.1 version of Archibus.

Using the Archibus Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD , you can round-trip drawings to and from the Windows Client/Server Overlay. Some aspects of the drawing might display differently; for instance, asset text might generate differently, but the xdata links and database record links are the same and can be traded back and forth with no data loss.

The Smart Client Extensions for AutoCAD differ from the Client/Server Archibus Overlay for AutoCAD in the following ways:

  • Highlighting, hatching, query text, and plotting from within AutoCAD or Revit are handled in the Web Central drawing control and in the Web Services for reporting.
  • Instead of using DWF files, Reporting features are handled live and dynamically in the Web Central drawing controls that read enterprise graphics Enterprise graphics are a quick and efficient way to publish your drawings for viewing in Archibus Web Central and mobile apps.
  • Similarly, there is no need to use AutoCAD Original Equipment Manufacturer to report on DWG files directly via a “DWG Viewer.”. This functionality is in the drawing control and the Web Services for reporting, so that all users in an enterprise can interact with graphic data from both BIM and CAD – not just CAD specialists and not just users with AutoCAD.
  • Archibus Design Management functionality (walls, doors, etc.) are taken care of by Autodesk Architecture or Revit objects.