Apple - Force iCloud Drive to sync under Yosemite

Yes. The sync process is kicked off when you disconnect from all networks and then reconnect. You can debug things using brctl log -w on the Mac and AppleCare can also help you with iOS cloud sync diag logs if you have an issue that needs that level of debugging.

The brctl man page has information on diagnostic files and you can also use sysdiagnose to assist with cloud sync diagnosis.

The actual sync daemon is bird but you don't run it directly.

Lastly, before digging into the logs, I often use https://iCloud.com to verify that the Mac and iOS devices are either in sync with the cloud version so I know which of the three is lagging.