BIM Viewer: User-by-User Authentication to ​Autodesk (UserVoice Idea)

In Archibus V.2022.03, users accessed the Archibus BIM Viewer using a single generic Autodesk BIM 360 account. Since many sites already have multiple Autodesk users accessing Construction Cloud and BIM 360 repositories, Archibus now supports individuals using their own Autodesk credentials to connect the BIM Viewer to their projects and models.

With user-by-user authentication, model visualization permissions are inherited from Autodesk Construction Cloud. This ensures that the BIM Viewer user can access only the models for which they have permission.

Sites whose users already have Autodesk BIM 360 accounts will find that setting user-by-user authentication leads to an easier set-up and onboarding process.

To control whether a site uses one generic Autodesk BIM 360 account or if authentication occurs for each individual user, a manager must run the System / Archibus Administrator - Application Configuration / Configure Application Parameters task and set the AbCommonResources.BIMForge-Autodesk-AuthenticationMethod parameter.

BIM Viewer: Explore Equipment Systems

Building equipment is often part of a larger equipment system, such as an HVAC system, security system, or fire alarm system. When examining equipment items, you typically need to know how the item fits within its overall equipment system. The BIM Viewer now supports viewing equipment in terms of their equipment systems. When analyzing an equipment item to replace or repair, managers can trace the overall equipment system to understand the total impact of the proposed change to one item.

Use the equipment system features of the BIM Viewer to perform such tasks as:

• locate and inspect assets that have maintenance work​

• trace the equipment system for the affected asset​

• identify dependent assets and dependencies

• compare an equipment system to the full mechanical or plumbing system from Revit

On the Assets tab, choose to group by building systems; this accesses the System Explorer in the left pane. Click on a system, and the BIM Viewer displays the system's top-level components. You can see other components of the system either through the System Explorer (left pane) or the Viewer (right pane).

• In the System Explorer, drill down to expand the list and see the various components of a system. Click on an item in the list, and the Viewer zooms into the item and highlights it.

• In the Viewer, select any highlighted item and use the Trace command to view the item's system. The Trace menu offers commands for tracing the entire system, tracing an item's dependents, and tracing an item's dependencies.

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BIM Viewer: Visualize Maintenance Work

While Archibus V.2022.03 introduced the ability to see in the BIM Viewer assets with active work along with their diagnostics , V.2022.04 expands the BIM Viewer's maintenance features with several new maintenance-related highlights, work-related KPIs, PM Schedule details, and the ability to create a work request directly from the BIM Viewer. Additionally, the BIM Viewer incorporates new diagnostic highlights .

BIM Viewer: Analyze Diagnostics

If a site has implemented a BMS system for collecting equipment diagnostics, managers can now access summary statistics directly from the BIM Viewer. This enhancement builds on V.2022.03 features , in which users could review BMS diagnostics for equipment items with active work.

In V.2022.04, maintenance managers can run the Diagnostics or High Priority Diagnostics highlights to show the equipment for which diagnostics generated a work request. The highlight uses various shades of blue to indicate the number of diagnostics for each item so that you can immediately see the equipment requiring the most attention.

The highlight also generates the following building-level statistics and lists them beneath the model:

• Avoidable Costs

• Number of Diagnostics in the Past 30 Days

• Number of Active Work Orders

These statistics are helpful for planning work, avoiding costs, and ensuring business continuity.

BIM Viewer: Filter Equipment and Work by Room

While the BIM Viewer has many features for viewing a model's assets, asset details, and maintenance work, sometimes maintenance managers want to focus on the building's rooms and may wish to filter for assets or active work by room. For example, a maintenance manager might want to see a list of all the assets in a mechanical room. To meet this need, V.2022.04 includes new features for working with assets in the BIM Viewer in terms of rooms.

The main filter now includes the Room field so that asset and maintenance managers can filter for assets or active work by desired rooms. The below image shows filtering by a mechanical room (NB-OC-C03MEC); the resulting asset list includes all assets located in this room.

The new room features include:

• Filtering and locating assets by one or multiple rooms​​

• Filtering and locating active work by one or multiple rooms

• Turning on room labels that display Room Name and Room Type

• Selecting a room in the model to receive a summary room profile listing the most important fields

BIM Models: Catalog Locations without Smart Client (UserVoice Idea)

Archibus V.2022.03 introduced the Catalog BIM Models task as a proof of concept . With Archibus V.2022.04, we have refined this feature and it is now fully functioning for cataloging locations.

Directly from Archibus Web Central -- without using the Smart Client Extension for Revit -- BIM Managers can use the Catalog BIM Models task to catalog models that are stored in an Autodesk repository (Construction Cloud, BIM 360, Forge). Cataloging assigns a model and its levels to an existing Archibus building and its floors.

When cataloging rooms from the BIM model, the catalog procedure creates Room records in Archibus by copying the Revit properties based on the mapping defined with the Archibus BIM Parameters task (ab-afm-bim-params-gd.axvw).

If the BIM model has room categories and room types that do not yet exist in Archibus, the catalog procedure automatically creates them so that you do not need to manually create them or interrupt the cataloging process.

You can choose to catalog all rooms on a Revit level at one time; or, you can select an individual room and catalog it.

Help Topic

• Catalog Locations in BIM Models

View File

• ab-bim-forge-onboarding.axvw

Navigator Path

• Technologies / Innovative Solutions / Forge Integration / Catalog BIM Models

View and Print Floor Plan (UserVoice Idea)

Archibus V.2022.03 introduced the View and Print Floor Plan view , a simplified view of the Space Console designed for occasional users who need to search for floor plans, view and highlight them, and then print the highlighted floor plans. Based on user feedback, Archibus V.2022.04 adds a few enhancements to this view.

When users highlight a floor plan by division or department, the legend now displays the descriptive Division Name and Department Name fields, rather than the identifying Division Code and Department Code fields. Likewise, highlighting by room category, room type, or room standard results in the legend displaying the Room Category Description, Room Type Description, and Room Standard Description fields.

This change provides a friendlier and more useful interface for staff accessing this view. When consulting the legend to review highlighted floor plans, users who are not familiar with identifying values (such as room category PRIMCIRC) will find the more descriptive values (such as "Primary Circulation Area") helpful in understanding the floor plan highlights.

When it generates PDFs of highlighted floor plans, Archibus also applies the descriptive fields to legends. Since PDFs are often distributed throughout the company, consumers of these reports will more clearly understand what each highlight represents.

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Help Topic

• View and Print Floor Plan

View File

• ab-sp-view-print-floorplan.axvw

Navigator Paths

• Space / Space Inventory / Department Manager / View and Print Floor Plan

• Archibus SaaS / Space / Space Manager

Space Console (UserVoice Idea)

Like the changes for the View and Print Floor Plan view , the Space Console now supports descriptive fields (Division Name and Department Name) in the highlight legend rather than the identifying fields (Division Code and Department Code). The descriptive names help users better understand the highlighted floor plans as some users might not be familiar with the identifying code values. The use of descriptive fields in the legend also applies to exporting the floor plan to PDF.

Unlike the View and Print Floor Plan view, the use of descriptive fields in the legend in the Space Console applies only to highlights by division and department. Highlights by room category, room type, and room standard use the identifying fields: Room Category, Room Type, and Room Standard.

Connect to Power BI by Using Archibus APIs (UserVoice Idea) ​

Out-of-the-box Archibus reports, along with Archibus Reports Central and the Archibus Metrics Framework, provide a powerful set of tools for analyzing building data. However, some sites wish to obtain additional, custom analysis that is not covered by these tools. These sites can use the Archibus API to connect to Microsoft Power BI and custom data sources; they can then build their own advanced reports.

Since the Archibus API supports custom datasources for data extraction, advanced users can examine the examples of custom datasource and the sample Power BI reports. They can then build their own custom datasource for their own PowerBI reports.

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Workplace: Review Comments and Activity (UserVoice Idea)

Workplace users who request maintenance and possibly comment on the request to provide further details or communicate with the technician can now see their comments and work request status changes in the Recent Activity pane. Directly from the Dashboard, users can review the latest activity and stay informed about the status of maintenance requests.

Clicking on the bell-shaped icon on the Dashboard loads the Recent Activity pane, which lists recent status updates for maintenance requests, along with comments that the user has made and those in which they have been tagged. Rather than load the individual request to see this information, users can now see the activity for all requests from one mouse click.

Workplace: User Interface Font

Throughout the Archibus product line, we are implementing a new design system. As a first step in this new design system, we have changed the font from Open Sans to Noto Sans. The below image shows the new font that you will see throughout Workplace, as well as Web Central and OnSite.

OnSite: Maintenance Release

OnSite V4 is a maintenance release, with many changes that make OnSite easier to use.

​Support for Virtual Private Archibus (VPA)

For sites that implement VPA restrictions, the restrictions are now automatically applied in OnSite. No additional deployment steps are required to have OnSite reflect a VPA restriction.

​Bug Fixes and ​UX Enhancements

OnSite V4 addresses several minor bugs and makes minor improvements to the user experience.

​Usage Analytics (Internal)

So that we can better understand how technicians work with OnSite, we have implemented a usage analysis tool that captures how users interact with OnSIte. The analysis will answer such questions as:

• How do technicians sort and filter their work queue?

• How many work requests do technicians view per day?

• What are the most frequent actions that a technician performs on a work request?

• Are technicians making comments? taking pictures? looking at documentation? calling or texting others?

Having this information will help us determine problem areas and prioritize future enhancements, leading to an overall improved product and user experience.

OnSite: Improved Fonts

In addition to the new Nato Sans font update that has been applied to all Archibus products, OnSite has other font improvements.

OnSite now better adapts to a device's setting for a large font. Previously, if the user set their device's text size to a size larger than the default, OnSite did not always correctly adjust to the large font and cut off or overlapped text in some instances. We have worked to resolve these issues, and users choosing a large font can be assured that all aspects of OnSite will now properly display.

OnSite: User Experience Improvements

OnSite V4 includes the following improvements to the user experience: