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Russian developers have lost access to their project documentation due to the blocking of cloud accounts by American developer Autodesk. Market players fear that this will lead to a shift in the deadlines for the delivery of construction projects.

A number of large Russian developers have lost access to the American developer of computer-aided design (CAD) systems for construction, engineering and industrial slovenia whatsapp resource design Autodesk BIM 360, and along with it, access to their design documentation stored there. Two sources among developers told RBC about this: Autodesk has begun blocking those companies from Russia that continued to use its solution, making purchases through third countries or via VPN.

Mikhail Viktorov, President of the National Association of Organizations in the Sphere of Information Modeling Technologies (NOTIM), Head of the Commission on Digitalization of the Construction Industry and Housing and Utilities of the Public Council under the Ministry of Construction, as well as Ekaterina Borisova, Director of Development at Rariteco (developer of the Quartier d'Or / Golden Quarter club complex). "The models that were in the developers' foreign cloud are indeed unavailable now," she said.

The American vendor back in March 2024banneduse of its software products by Russian companies. This happened two years after Autodesk officially announced the suspension of its activities in Russia due to the start of a military special operation in Ukraine. In October 2023, Autodesk liquidated its Russian legal entity, Autodesk (CIES) LLC.

The company's products, such as AutoCAD, Autodesk 3ds Max and the Autodesk Revit family of programs (Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP), were used by most Russian engineers in various industries, including mechanical engineering, construction, etc. BIM 360 is a server solution with a data storage mechanism on Autodesk servers. Files uploaded by clients to this system are stored in encrypted cloud storage.

What are the risks of disconnection?

When disconnecting Russian users from its system, Autodesk may delete their accounts or erase all data stored in this cloud, Mikhail Viktorov explained to RBC. Blocking access for users from Russia means that companies will have to re-create information models, at least based on the latest archived data, explained Mikhail Bocharov, deputy general director for science at SiSoft Development (a developer of construction software).

In his opinion, some companies will try to continue using BIM360 via VPN under an address in another country, but this does not guarantee success. "The blocking may be targeted, in which case the Autodesk system will not let a user from another country into the online account of a Russian company," Bocharov reasons.

In 2022, some developers purchased Autodesk licenses through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the UAE and other countries. The American vendor found traces of its product being used by Russian companies and disabled it for them, a source in one of the major developers told RBK. After that, according to him, developers began to actively switch to Russian software, fearing data loss if the system was disabled. He explained that some developers now use only their own developments, combining them into a common data environment, in particular, this is what the A101 group of companies does.