About Forma Data Management

Forma Data Management is the storage location for your Collaboration for Civil 3D projects.

Accounts

• It is recommended that you understand Forma Data Management user access levels, roles, folder permissions, and project organization.
• When Forma Data Management account administrators invite members to an account, they can assign the new member to a company and a role. The company and the role can be used to streamline the process of providing access to projects and project folders. The account administrator can also import member names from a spreadsheet. For more information, see Manage Account Members in the Forma Data Management Help.
• Forma Data Management project members don't automatically get access to the project folders. In addition to inviting members to a project, the project administrator needs to give permissions to the team members to access the project folders. For more information, see How Do I Access Autodesk Collaboration for Civil 3D?.
• For tracking and communication purposes, it is recommended that user accounts in Forma Data Management use the users' real names.

Data shortcut projects

• It is recommended that you create a new project in Forma Data Management instead of moving an existing project to Forma Data Management and continuing the work.
• You can migrate existing project files into Forma Data Management, but you will need to take some actions to ensure that the project is properly configured. For more information, see Best Practices for Migrating an Existing Data Shortcut Project to Forma Data Management.
• Several of the data shortcut-related commands require Autodesk Collaboration for Civil 3D when you are working in an Forma Data Management project. If you don't currently have access to the functionality, the data shortcut commands that require Autodesk Collaboration for Civil 3D will display a message after you select them to alert you of the requirement.

  For more information, see About Working With Data Shortcut Projects in Forma Data Management and How Do I Access Autodesk Collaboration for Civil 3D?.

Uploading, saving, and opening documents

• When you upload files to Forma Data Management, avoid attempting to upload unsupported files. For more information, see Supported Files.
• The specified path and file name for uploaded files must be less than 244 characters. If this length is exceeded, the files might not upload successfully and you could experience unexpected behavior. For more information, see Long Path Connector.
• The document version starts at V1 and is increased by 1 each time a file is saved. You can view the versions in the Forma Data Management Viewer. For more information, see To Use Forma Data Management Viewing and Markup Features for your Civil 3D Drawings.
• You might not be able to open Forma Data Management documents in the following cases:
  • You are working offline (either using the Desktop Connector offline mode, or you are not connected to the internet) and you attempt to open a document that has a status of Online.
  • Your Forma Data Management permissions have changed.
  • You have not signed in to Autodesk Account.
• Only documents that you can open directly in Civil 3D (DWG, DWT, DWS, and DXF) are displayed on the Forma Data Management page and the Recent page of the Start tab.

Data storage environment

• A data shortcut project and its associated drawings need to be stored in the same data storage environment. For example, when you are working in a data shortcut project that is stored in Forma Data Management, the drawing files must also be stored in Forma Data Management.
• If the current drawing is in Forma Data Management, the working folder needs to be in Forma Data Management.
• It is not supported to associate a local drawing with an Forma Data Management project, or to associate an Forma Data Management project with a local drawing.
• Referenced files (xrefs, data shortcuts, and others) need to be in the same data storage environment as the host drawings. If the referenced files do not share the same data storage environment as the host drawing, you will be prompted to migrate the references.
• Messages will be displayed to alert you if you attempt to use different data storage environments within the same project.
• Store project data and content in Forma Data Management. For example, store fonts, materials, drawing templates, reference templates, standards, and so on, in Forma Data Management.
• To prevent files from being uploaded to a related data folder when files are uploaded to Forma Data Management, it is recommended to avoid saving or uploading drawings to Forma Data Management that contain references to local files. Store files in Forma Data Management that you plan on making references to, and when referencing data in a drawing or in a template, make the reference to file located in Forma Data Management rather than to a file on a local drive or a local server.

Locking

• When you open most document types from Forma Data Management in Autodesk Civil 3D 2027, the documents are locked automatically so no one else can edit them. For more information, see About Locking Documents Stored in Forma Data Management.
  Note: If you are working in Civil 3D 2020.1 or a previous version of Civil 3D, or any version of AutoCAD or an AutoCAD-based product, locking is not automatic when you open a drawing that is stored in Forma Data Management.
• You can use the CloudCollabModifiedOption system variable to control when DWG files and DWT files are unlocked in Forma Data Management after they are closed in Civil 3D.
• Some files that you might typically work with in Civil 3D do not have automatic locking support and will need to be locked and unlocked manually. Automatic locking and unlocking are not supported for survey databases. You need to manually lock and unlock these files when working with them to avoid editing conflicts.
• To unlock files that are locked by others, you need Folder Control permission. For more information, see Folder Permissions.

Markup and archiving

• You can use the Forma Data Management viewing and markup tools with the drawings you have stored in Forma Data Management. You can create issues and use the markup tools to add notes. For more information, see To Use Forma Data Management Viewing and Markup Tools for Civil 3D Drawings.
• You can use Forma Data Management to archive a project and its data. For more information, see Manage Projects.