Deleting BIM360 Projects

[wizard_ettore]

So my company wants to delete old BIM360 projects. Thankfully, we don't have too many yet. I know Autodesk doesn't want to enable this functionality so I figured out how to do it anyway.

Once a project is intended for deletion:
- Add it to Desktop Connector (I have a sacrificial PC for this, so conenctor doesn't get all jammed up)
- Download all the data and archive it (if you want; best to do through the web interface)

- Delete all the data from BIM360 (best to do through Desktop Connector)

- Wait for it to sync (check the web interface for everything to be deleted)

- Copy back your default folder structure (you can only do this through Desktop Connector)

- Rename the project to something (We now do Temp#)

- Delete all users

Now, when we create a project, I just un-archive a random Temp#.

I was pulling my hair trying to delete 50 projects people randomly made when testing BIM360. Now I have a rotating ~70 projects, and nobody can complain about their data being in the cloud.

[Chad-Smith]

Just keep in mind that:

• Files are not permanently deleted in the project. Each folder has a Deleted Items where files cannot be permanently deleted, but they can be restored.
• When using other features, some metadata can persist in the project, and cannot be deleted.
• And, item numbering is not recycled. i.e. When a project is recycled and a new Issue is placed it will continue with the numbering. In the future you will have numbers in the 1000s/10000s. This may raise questions with other users.

[wizard_ettore]

This solution is a stop gap for now until something that works comes along. I think I'll probably stop doing this once all the test projects are consumed, and just gum up Autodesk's servers until they start the microtransactions on the service.

We are already heavily discouraging collaboration within BIM; it ends up adding a LOT of IT hours continually battling Connector, and those lost productivity hours add up into a lot of $$. Not to mention the licensing costs.

[dbutts7]

If you're determined to do this and remove all of your files from an ACC/BIM 360 project (I'm hosting about 1200 of them right now) I would recommend making sure you are on a current build of Desktop Connector that's now using the OneDrive API's.

If you are logged into DC, you can move files from the shortcut in File Explorer to a local drive such as a server, but I would follow these rules:

- Work in small groups;

- Use Zip files to harvest the files in a subfolder and section

- Make sure all files have been published and cleaned up.

- Make sure NOTHING from BIM 360 has a link to an external location like the local server - instead these have to be stored in the host. A primary reason for doing this is that the reference types (like attach/overlay with relative paths) are correctly defined, unlike how most users working on a server manage their files.

- Use the reference manager first to check these links and paths from Desktop Connector.

I'd run a trial of this to see how it works. We typically archive old/inactive projects but have a backup system in place to maintain our own set of documents that is similar to this workflow.

[wizard_ettore]

1,200 projects. Insane. I have been fighting Desktop Connector for ~3 years and it has never even come close to functioning properly; always chasing the upgrades in hope "this one will work" ... nope. We technically only have maybe 5 active BIM projects, though we WANTED to have all ~200 projects on there. Everyone is on 16.6, and they've had every version since 14.1 .

I've been looking for anyone whose Desktop Connector actually works so I can grill them for what their secret sauce is. Our users are resetting Connector weekly, or just working from their PCs/the server then uploading manually via the web interface.

[dbutts7]

Most of our issues relate to users trying to run it like their old local server. We had a cyberattack in 2020 that forced use to re-examine our infrastructure where we found just how poorly we ran our network (67 locations). Over 60% of what we recovered was a duplicate, out of date, incorrect and more, with so many circular references it was like riding a digital tilt-a-whirl. We've definitely had a few hiccups but nothing close to what are describing. Let me put together a list of items you need to address before you even get started.

[dbutts7]

Can you let me know what your typical workstation spec is? How much of your office is hybrid/work from home?

[wizard_ettore]

We don't have a "typical"; we made a real bad decision to "standardize our system" about 5 years ago with Surface Books and they're near worthless as workstations. Admittedly, a significant number of people on our team WERE using these machines until about 8 months ago, but not anymore.

For people who do design (aka: would potentially use Connector), they're now on gaming laptops; discrete GPUs (non-Quadro/Ada/etc.), 8+ cores (non-Pro; Intel Core i7, Ryzen R7), 32+GB RAM, 1+TB NVMe (nobody is below 200GB free). These systems are no more than around 3 years old.

My test workstations are an Alienware R10 (8C 3800x, 64GB RAM), Custom Threadripper (32C 3970X, 256GB RAM), Surface Book 2 (4C 8650U, 16GB RAM). All systems are on our Windows domain, the users are non-admin, and the only non-Autodesk software is Acrobat, Chrome, Bluebeam, Barracuda NAC (VPN), Logitech Options+, MS Office 365 "business" (Visio, Project, Access, Publisher, Word, Excel, Powerpoint), Datto (IT management), and Trend Micro Business AV. We only really use AutoCAD (2022, 2023, and 2024), Revit (2022, 2023, 2024), Navisworks (2023, and 2024) and Recap (24.x.x.x ... I think that's 2023).

We have no WFH people who are also using BIM360/Connector. Everyone is at one of our 2 offices that have either 500/500 (my site) or 1000/1000 Internet. The slower site always has at least 250mbit up/down available.

[dbutts7]

My extended sympathies, I would have hated life on a Surface...and even some gaming laptops are dicey - we had Alienware and dumped them due to overheating, weight, etc. Personally I'm on a XPS 15 9520 with 64gb RAM and i9 12900, 2TB MVE SSD and the 3050 nVidia. Love it so far, and the price was more reasonable than the Precisions.

Trend has also been really dicey, Defender ATP or Norton has definitely been less invasive with no loss of performance. We also run trust software but you better have a crew to support it.

[dbutts7]

So the 500/500 could get a bit dicey depending on how many users are hitting it at once. We upped ours to all 1gb up and down just to get rid of latency. But we do have a lot of WFH, and they are typically my problem children (i.e. they have a modem with a built-in router and then another router behind it, etc. or worse - had one with 10mb/5mb out in the country on a hot spot).

[dbutts7]

Besides hardware, users have to be conscious about how the site works. For example, on our old network, we would have them main folders where DWG/RVT was stored, and then anywhere from 2 to 100 "archive, backup, working, trash, temp" folders. This really slows a project down - we have version and set training on every project to eliminate this, and my site managers will delete the content when they find it - that put a stop to it quickly). It's all about volume. 

Links are always fun - like when someone says they have a drawing on their local hard drive and link it into a model that's linked into 20 more. I need cattle prods for these users.

But the ones that drive me crazy are the file naming and length users that use every possible special character and tell their life story in a file name. These can also cause file resolution issues for paths, etc.

Having a clear set of standards and workflows defined at the start of the project - and having an overall BIM coordinator assigned to the project that understands it is critical.

We also run a 60 day test cycle on new releases of ADC - just because I've worked with Autodesk since 1985 and know never to roll something out when they first release it.

[dbutts7]

One big don't do this is manually copy files from a local drive to the cloud. Revit central models should always be created there at the start. Same with Civil 3D projects/SSM based projects. The temporary fix for SSM based on the Web version was an experiment that sort of worked, but the newer builds of ADC are more stable with these and data shortcuts now that the tools is based on the OneDrive API's.

Copying files, even with relative paths, still causes a lot of issues. The reference explorer really opened our eyes on how bad we were at linking files and using overlay/attach, relative pathing etc. 

[wizard_ettore]

Firstly, I am no fan of Alienware; I repaired MANY of them in a past life back in the early 2000s when they had no business making 'gaming' laptops (desktop replacements). My R10 is confusingly slow for its hardware and has the 'mix of corporate Dell with marketing department" case that boggles the mind. I have a bespoke system at home with virtually identical specs and it trounces it.

Anyhow, our current workstations are Lenovo Legion 5 Pro AMD 7745HX, 64GB, 1TB, 4050. As you mentioned, the overheating issues are significant and Intel's current generations of CPUs are VERY power inefficient comparatively ... a fact well exposed on thermally limited laptops. We don't much care about the portability, we just care about performance and connectivity. I have an affection toward Lenovo hardware; their management portal is refined and consistent, build quality is great, keyboards are nice, and connectivity is fantastic.

Ok, with that out of the way:
Trend has been something I wondered about. Connector works poorly at my house as well, but it's a LOT faster despite my terrible Internet, and it still fails with about the same rate as at work. I have been retiring old hardware at work (12+ year old Thinkpads) so I can do some resetting and testing before I install the AV. Would be nice if Autodesk put any effort into my case to determine this for me (why do they want verbose logs if they have no verbosity?) but whatever.

We recently had a "loss of array" on our main server and it has reminded everyone my chicken-little-esque warnings are founded in fact. Since I am not the infrastructure admin (I am an electrical consultant, I do day-to-day IT things only), these types of things are not managed by me. An Internet upgrade is on the short list, especially given its cheapness. The 500/500 office has about 25 users, so it's not being taxed.

It's really confusing why Autodesk doesn't just use the 8/3 filenames that NTFS maintains to circumvent all of this filename nonsense. Also, allowing files that don't conform to its standards (ends with a space? No problem, but we then can't access it, because whoever coded that part never got that far) is a confusing decision. However, I think the disconnect of the BIM system that assuredly runs some *nix that happily deals with everything gracefully, and Windows that is medium graceful if you have a litany of rules, and Connector that is basically just Dropbox that is somehow 900MB and has no ability to gracefully handle anything abnormal.

We have no real standards, and nobody really understands BIM ... this is kindof my pet project to develop all of this, because we don't really do 'consistency'. I don't think there's much to understand re: our general workflow though: I have a layout in ....\Dwgs\ called layout.dwg and it has 51 XREFs in .... \Dwgs\Xrefs\ . Copy all of that to BIM360 via Connector, wait 20 minutes for failures. No failures? Nice. Open the file and do work. Within a few days, something will not sync and that's basically the end of Connector ever working for you again unless you re-create everything.

Fair, most of our layouts are referencing 100+MB xrefs, but why does Connector care? Well, it definitely does.

What about just uploading a few thousand site visit photos in 100ish variously nested folders? Not a chance. 0% chance that succeeds. My test dataset is 100,000 files with 0 special characters that have 0 XREFs; JBOFiles ... I've been trying to upload the same files for ~3 months. Most are within the 8.3 file system because of their age.

Then there's you/your company, where somehow ~1,200 projects are successfully doing their thing and Connector is uploading and downloading like it's supposed to. And I can't get 1 project to work.

For our Connector issues, we are constantly told by Autodesk to update to the newest version or they'll just blame it on that. Once we update, it's radio silence until there's a new version. Rinse, repeat. Edit: v16.6.1 released :D.

[luciasmith561]

HELLO

[dbutts7]

12 year old? Man, that's stone age. Once that gerbil gets tired...

I really like the reference explorer tool - it doesn't require that files be located in the DC folder locations, but definitely does a great job of visualizing all of the xrefs (working and not) as well as all of the circular references, missing files, etc.

The Onedrive naming standards will definitely come into play - and now the user will get warnings in the newer builds of DC when they do it. Was hammering ADSK about this for a while.

I would beg to differ on the file handling, as most issues we encounter are user induced. My main gripe is the continued tinkering to get sheet set manager to work with it. While the SSM for Web helps, I would dump it altogether. The only benefit in keeping is for the view titles/naming for sheet data, but there's a ton of different ways to handle this.

And yes...the constant update drives us crazy to, but just like the early days of ACAD releases where you never install it under the first service pack comes out...Like I said, we never install the latest DC update for at least 60 days after testing. Maybe we need to have a specific forum section just to cover these by themselves.

[dbutts7]

And on the photos. I don't put those in ACC, they stay in Sharepoint unless they are linked. But it's rare that we do that in a CAD doc - typically we'll add these as a separate set of docs.

[wizard_ettore]

Again, we were hoping to use BIM as a collaboration tool for design (specifically with AutoCAD). It's obviously not built for that, which is unfortunate as we might previously had been able to push our clients to a more suitable solution.

I'm waiting for version 17.1 ... maybe they'll do a rewrite.