Why can't one firm's employees see the BIM360 Revit Links?

[nharburger]

I have a bit of a bonkers situation.

• Firm 1 & Firm 2 are sharing an Architectural Revit model in BIM360 (Firm 1 is doing the interior, and Firm 2 is doing the exterior).
• Members of both Firm 1 & Firm 2 are given the "Role" of "Architect" in BIM260 Project Admin.
• Permissions to the files and sub-folders in BIM360 Document Management are all controlled via "Roles" (So members of Firm 1 & Firm 2 should have identical access to all files/folders)
• All consultant engineer models are also on BIM360, and are being linked into the Architecture model via Live Linking method.
• While members of Firm 1 have no issue with any of the Revit links, members of of Firm 2 say that they cannot see any of the engineers linked models.
  
  • When they go to Manage Links, the linked files all say "Not Found"
  • If Members of Firm 2 click "Reload From" and they select External Links/BIM360, no hosts or projects are listed, so they cannot navigate to the link's location.
  • If Firm 1 changes the linking method, and reloads the engineer model links to copies of their models held in the "Shared" subfolder (pathing the links to published model packages created form BIM360's Design Collaboration module), then Firm 2 can see all of the Revit links.
  • The permissions to the consultant engineers' "Shared" folders are identical to the permissions to their main folders.
  
  

I know that is a ton of setup info... but I have no clue why Firm 2 cannot see the links using the live linking method. While we can switch to "Method 2 - Controlled Sharing - Link from the Shared Folder", if absolutely necessary, but the team would really prefer to stick with the Live Linking method. I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. Thanks!

[jmk]

Are you sure there are no extra roles controlling permissions (or anything per user/company)? People can have more than just a single role. If one of the firms has additional or conflicting roles that would be the most likely culprit.

Do you have a live link in the model that is in the same folder? Does that behave as expected? (ie, does the link "Architecture B" in the architecture folder show up in "Architecture A" when live linked?

Do they get any errors opening the project (besides links not found)? If you can open the project, it should at least let show the project under external links/BIM360.

If you want to live link I'd likely try changing the permissions, perhaps by company to see if that makes a difference before switching to shared.

[nharburger]

Both the Architects in Firm 1 & Firm 2 only have a single role, and it is that of "Architect", and the folders' permissions are all defined by the Role property.
I have edited my original post, striking out the part that said that the Firm 2 personnel can see the files if linked in form the "Shared" folder, as that has turned out to no longer be the case either.

Firm 1 has tried setting the linked files to both live link and linked to the shared folder versions - and Firm 2 has not been able to see the links in either case.
We discovered that the people in Firm 2 were not on the same build as the people in Firm 1. Firm 1 had 2021.1.2, and Firm 2 was only using 2021.1, so we had Firm 2 update their Revit builds, but the underlying issue still remained after the update.

At this point I am curious if the issue has to do with a lack of Firewall exceptions - causing certain data to be blocked from BIM360, so i have directed them their IT staff to this link which lists all of the exceptions which should be added. Still waiting to hear back on that.

[Twiceroadsfool]

Im nowhere near as versed at the BIM360 "setup" as Julie probably is, but... If you think its a Firewall issue, its easy to test:

Have one of them hotspot off their cell phone (since coffee shops arent really an option), and see if they can suddenly see the links during Reload From. Or have someone from Firm 2 try from home.

[jmk]

I assume that all parties are "members" of both the document management and design collaboration modules? Which firms have people in the "project admin" role? Anyone with a project admin role has extra permissions that trickle down to all the folders, and those permissions take precedence over other roles.

What permissions does the "Architect" role grant to the Architecture and shared folders?

Can you try changing how permissions are assigned - assign them by company and see if that works? You might try removing and re-adding persons or permissions. We've done it with people a couple times, and it is a solution Autodesk lists https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...-Software.html

Have you/can you add a new "test person" from your firm or theirs? Make sure that person isn't a project admin. Even better, if you have the ability to add someone that is not part of either firm to test (I've tested access by assigning a license to my personal email, but that only worked because I also manage our licenses and could do so)