Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Autodesk BIM 360 Design and the Challenge with Tracking User Access

Did you know an Autodesk account belongs to an individual and not a company, even if the company initiated the account using a company email address?

Learn about this and how it can lead to challenges tracking who has access to your projects in today's post! I have seen this many times, and even experienced it myself when I joined Lake|Flato Architects recently.


The image shows multiple BIM 360 Design hubs accosted with projects I should no longer have access to. I am in the process of getting myself removed, but there should be a better process that would protect the firm and the project from staff who have left an organization... especially if disgruntled.

keep reading to learn more...

As many of you know, I recently left LHB. Before I left, I showed them how to remove my BIM 360 Design entitlement and disconnect me from projects. That all went as expected, I no longer have access to any LHB projects.

Because the Autodesk account is mine, personally, I logged in and changed my email address from the .lhbcorp.com email to my new .lakeflato.com address. This account is associated with my beta testing, posts in the forums, my Autodesk Developer Network account, Autodesk University submissions, and more. Therefore, I would not want to just create a new account.

Making a user Inactive within BIM 360 Design instantly removes their access to all projects in that hub. However, as soon as I received a new BIM 360 Design entitlement from Lake|Flato I was able to see several hubs related to projects I was working on at LHB. These are BIM 360 Design projects initiated by other firms. Since they have a different hub, and invited me from their admin page, they would also need to set me as inactive.

Honestly, I am not sure how anyone can easily track that. It would help if BIM 360 Design gave the account admin a warning when someone changed their primary email address associated with their Autodesk account.

Additionally, I don't know of a way to remove myself from a BIM 360 Design project I was invited to. If there is a way, and I find out, I will update this post.

Not so fun stuff!


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