Creating a Carbon Report using iModel Data

Introduction

One Click LCA is a third-party construction Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) software company. Bentley’s iTwin platform integration with One Click LCA allows you to export Quantity Takeoff Reports created using the iTwin Reporting platform to One Click LCA for convenient Life Cycle Analysis for both infrastructure projects and buildings. The iTwin Platform enables the incorporation of engineering data created by various design tools. A summary of the design data is exported through this integration, allowing you to gain insights into the environmental impacts of your infrastructure project. This integration also allows you to work with the third-party certifications and standards.

This tutorial will cover all the fundamental steps to create a carbon calculation summary based on an insights report.

1. Set up your permissions

Use of the Carbon Calculation APIs requires some iModel/Project level permissions. For these permissions, you must be an Organization Administrator for the organization that owns a given project or have administration_manage_roles permission assigned at the Project level. If you do not have admin access to the Project or iModel you would like to use, contact a Project Administrator. As a Project Administrator, you can use APIs described in the Manage Project Team Members tutorial to create a role and update it with "permissions": ["REPORTINGVIEW", "REPORTINGEDIT", "CARBONCALCULATE", "imodels_read", "imodels_write"]. Once this is done and the role is assigned to you, use any iModel inside your project to finish this tutorial.

1.1 Required materials

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Node.js v12 (must be greater than 12.10.x)

This tool provides the backend JavaScript runtime necessary for your computer to read and render code appropriately. It also allows you to run NPM command line (required for every iTwin project).

Git

This is the source code control system for the iTwin repositories.

1.2 Suggested materials

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Google Chrome

This software helps you to develop and debug front-end JavaScript problems.

Visual Studio Code

This is our recommended editor and debugger tool for developing iTwin.js applications. It is free, open source and includes a GUI for working with GIT.

Postman

If you want to test the REST API calls directly, you can use Postman or any other application capable of sending HTTP requests. If you do it this way, you will require an authorization token for the HTTP requests to work.

To learn more about how authentication and authorization works in an iTwin powered application, check out the full documentation on how to obtain a valid token.

1.3. Step-by-Step Guide to Create a Report through the Reporting APIs

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First you will need a report. For guidance on creating a report, see Creating an Insights Report using iModel Data. The report and associated mapping should contain all the elements and required properties of One Click LCA’s Life Cycle Analysis.

Take note of the reportId. This will be used later as reportId.

1.4 Create One Click LCA user account

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An account with One Click LCA is required to use this integration. User accounts are created at One Click LCA. For guidance on One Click LCA, please contact One Click LCA support: support@oneclicklca.com.

2. Get One Click LCA access token

In order to use One Click LCA APIs for carbon calculation, you need an access token. A user token is acquired by sending a POST request to https://oneclicklcaapp.com/app/api/login with request body:

{
  "username": "username",
  "password": "password"
}

Take note of the access_token in the response which will be used as token later.

Creating a bearer token requires having a valid user account and a license for One Click LCA.

3. Create a carbon calculation job

Next, trigger a carbon calculation job to export your report to One Click LCA with the token and reportId we have created.

Alternatively, use the Try It button on the Create One Click LCA Job page to execute the request directly.

Save jobId in the response for progress monitoring.

4. Monitor carbon calculation job progress

The job might take some time. We provide an endpoint to track the progress of carbon calculation process linked with jobId. The response status might be one of the Queued, Running, Succeeded or Failed.

Alternatively, use the Try It button on the Get One Click LCA Job Status page to execute the request directly.

Once the export is complete, save the job -> _links -> oneclicklca -> href link to view the result.

5. Use our UI interface

We have a public NPM package One Click LCA React. Follow the steps in the README file, you will get the same result.

Conclusion

Congratulations on completing this tutorial and running your first carbon calculation report using the APIs. Now you can create your own customized groups, group properties and map them to your own customized report and calculate carbon emission based on it.

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