We would have paid for this document before we started. None of it is in the vendor documentation in one place, and two of the findings only appear once you authenticate against a real tenant. If you are scoping this work for your own firm, take the findings and skip the three weeks.
What the four AEC platforms actually let you read, and what they do not
Before we would quote a firm on connecting its four systems, we went and found out what each one actually exposes. Not what the marketing page says. What an authenticated request returns. Three of the four are reachable at useful depth, one is conditional in a way that changes your build plan, and none of this is written down anywhere we could find. So it is written down here.
A design or construction firm's record for one live project is usually spread across four systems. The documents sit in Microsoft 365. The issues, markups and status history sit in Autodesk Construction Cloud. The model sits in Revit. And on a platform-led firm, a second version of the truth sits in 3DEXPERIENCE. Nothing in that arrangement is anybody's fault. Each system was bought to solve one job and each one solves it.
The problem arrives when somebody asks a question that spans them. What was decided about this assembly, when, and who approved it. That answer is a path across an email, a markup, a sheet and a date, and no single platform holds the whole path.
Microsoft 365 is the easy one
Graph exposes mail, files, sites and metadata at the depth this work needs, with a service-level authentication model that does not depend on any one person staying at the firm. If your record lives in SharePoint and Outlook, this part is straightforward and it is the right place to start.
Autodesk element data is reachable, and its commercial terms are changing
The AEC Data Model API exposes element properties and parameters. It works. The finding worth knowing is a commercial one: metering on that access began on 17 August 2026, so anyone who scoped a build against it before that date scoped it against different economics. Check the current terms before you commit a budget to it.
Construction Cloud gives you the history, and it authorises per user
Issues, comments, markups, custom attributes and status history are all reachable, which matters because that is where the decision trail on a live project actually lives. The catch is the authorisation model. Construction Cloud authorises per user rather than per service.
That single fact shapes the whole architecture. It means access is tied to a named person's permissions, so it changes when they change and it ends when they leave. Discovering that in week six of a fixed-price engagement is how a project becomes a loss. Discovering it in week one is a design constraint you plan around.
Geometry comes out without opening the desktop application, and it is in beta
Transformation data and mesh export are available without a Revit session. That is genuinely useful. It also carries no service commitment, which means it can change under you. We treat it as a finding to verify against a firm's own files before anyone promises it on a page.
3DEXPERIENCE has no self-service path at all
There is no self-service developer route. Access requires an ID tied to a paying company account, provisioned by that company's own administrator. On an engagement, that administrator is the client.
This is the one that changes how you plan. Your customer is a dependency inside your own build sequence, so the provisioning request has to be raised at kickoff. A vendor who has not told you this before signing has either not tried it or is not saying.
One question decides how much of the Autodesk side you get
The Autodesk surfaces only reach files published to Autodesk Docs. If a firm's models route into 3DEXPERIENCE through its own connector instead, that publishing step has to be settled before anything is promised against it. It is a five-minute question and it changes the answer to everything downstream.
What to ask a vendor before you sign
- Which of our four systems have you authenticated against, on a real tenant rather than a sandbox?
- Is your access to our Construction Cloud tied to a named user, and what happens when that person leaves?
- Which parts of what you are proposing sit on a beta API with no service commitment?
- What do you need our administrator to provision, and when do you need it?
- Do our models publish to Autodesk Docs, and have you confirmed that on our tenant?
A vendor who answers all five without hedging has done the work. A vendor who cannot answer the second and fourth has not authenticated against a real environment yet.
This is a record of what four platforms exposed to authenticated requests during testing in July and August 2026. Platform APIs change, and two of the surfaces above changed during the period we were testing them. Verify against your own tenant before you commit money to any of it. Nothing here is a claim that Mebbian has a live or certified integration with any of these vendors, and none of these companies is a partner of ours.
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