Introduction to Forge and Manufacturing

00:00

[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:08

Hi, my name is Bastien Mazeran.

00:10

I will be your presenter today.

00:13

We are going to talk about Forge and going over an introduction

00:17

to the platform, and focusing primarily

00:21

on the manufacturing capabilities of the Forge

00:26

platform.

00:27

I hope you'll find this introduction informative.

00:31

Today, the goal is to cover and clarify the following point

00:35

for you so that you understand what the Forge platform is.

00:39

So the first thing we'll try to achieve

00:41

is a clear understanding of the technology

00:44

and the functionality that 4G offers in the manufacturing

00:47

space.

00:48

You'll hopefully gain some insights

00:50

on setting up a development team for developing a new Forge

00:53

application.

00:54

You'll also understand the tools and the debuggers

00:57

you'll need to develop Forge applications.

00:60

And will also deep dive into how you can transition

01:03

your automation that you may have already developed

01:06

on desktop CAD to the cloud.

01:09

So those covers Inventor Automation, AutoCAD Automation,

01:15

Here's the agenda of today's presentation.

01:18

We'll start with explaining what the Forge platform is

01:22

and what you can do with it today.

01:23

We'll go over some demos so that you have a clear understanding

01:27

of what you can build with Forge, some example

01:31

from other customers or from partners

01:34

so that you see the potential of the platform.

01:38

We'll go as well into how you form a development

01:42

team, the kind of resources they'll

01:44

need to learn the tools, they'll need to develop,

01:47

and the best practices as well.

01:50

And last but not least, we'll go over

01:53

a quick overview of the Forge APIs, the functionalities,

01:57

and the pricing of all those functionalities in more

01:60

details.

02:01

Here is the safe harbor statement.

02:03

Essentially, I may make some statement here.

02:06

They're forward looking.

02:08

Please do not make a purchase decision based on that.

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All right.

02:12

So let's go into the first section of this presentation.

02:16

It's essentially covering what the Forge platform is

02:20

and what you can build with it.

02:23

So first of all, Forge is a cloud API platform.

02:27

It is not a product, very different

02:30

from AutoCAD or Revit.

02:32

It's actually a platform.

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That is a collection of functionality

02:35

that are very vast and diverse.

02:38

Essentially the way you interact with this platform

02:42

is by calling web APIs.

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API stand for application programming interface.

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And it's just a mechanism.

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It's actually industry standard in the web

02:52

to allow web applications to communicate with one another.

02:56

So in this image, you can see that you

02:59

can connect to the Forge servers via multiple types of devices,

03:03

from iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktop,

03:07

anything that can connect to the internet or the web will work.

03:13

You can see as well that every time you make a call to Forge,

03:17

it has to go through the HTTP protocol.

03:19

So essentially, you're making requests from your clients

03:22

and you're getting a response back from the Forge servers.

03:26

Earlier I mentioned it is a platform.

03:28

We actually like to call Forge the platform

03:32

for the digital transformation of design and make.

03:36

The reason for this is because it

03:38

is a set of functionality, a collection of APIs that

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allows you to extend and integrate

03:46

with existing Autodesk web application.

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So you can essentially go through various use cases

03:52

from Reality Capture to interacting

03:55

with your BIM360 data, creating some visualization,

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as well as automating some of your design workflows.

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It's also important to note that it is a common technology

04:07

stack for us.

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Forge is the foundation of many of our web application

04:12

that we own today at Autodesk, BIM360 being one of them

04:16

and Fusion as well.

04:17

So all those-- all the platforms are actually running on Forge.

04:22

I mentioned visualization.

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We do have a component on the platform, an API, that's

04:28

specific to viewing.

04:30

It's essentially some web technology,

04:32

visualization technology that you

04:34

can use to visualize in 3D or CAD models

04:37

into any web portal of your choosing.

04:40

So what can you do is Forge.

04:42

The high level goal is to build online workflows

04:46

and experiences around your design and engineering data

04:49

so you probably have a lot of [INAUDIBLE] today

04:53

in various forms from AutoCAD to Revit, to maybe Inventor.

04:57

And you would like to create some online experiences

04:60

and workflows around those files.

05:02

Well, you can do that with the Forge platform,

05:05

by simply uploading to the cloud those design files

05:09

or engineering files and creating some automation

05:13

connection with an enterprise system such as ERP, CRM,

05:17

Financial, PLM.

05:19

Today, we support over 65 formats.

05:22

It's not just CAD file format.

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We also support PDF, Office Documents, et cetera.

05:28

When I talk about online workflows and experiences, what

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I want to highlight as well is that you

05:33

can interact with your design data in the sense

05:37

that you can create design data.

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You can read it.

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You can update it, or delete it using the Forge APIs.

05:43

You can also run CAD engines in cloud, very valuable use case,

05:48

especially for democratizing CAD Automation to non-CAD users.

05:53

So essentially you could have non-CAD users who

05:57

don't have Revit, or Inventor installed

05:60

on their machine and license.

06:02

They could still start some automation,

06:04

CAD automation in the cloud from a web browser.

06:08

Another thing that you can go and use Forge for

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is Reality Capture.

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So it's the entire drone photography use

06:16

case where you basically capture a lot of pictures

06:20

and the output is a

06:24

In terms of the community where we are today, the data you see

06:29

is recent as of this month, we have

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around 2,500 monthly active developer

06:35

accounts on the platform with 138 enterprise

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customers evaluating Forge today,

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and 37 Forge certified system integrators.

06:46

So a lot of activity on the platform.

06:49

And again just to reiterate, it is a developer platform

06:53

in the cloud.

06:54

So to users or the community that we're working with

06:59

are mainly developers.

07:01

Here is the portion where I will quickly

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go into a demo to show you the Forge portal,

07:07

which is your entry point to anything Forge related.

07:10

So to access Forge, you simply need an Autodesk ID.

07:15

And you need a browser.

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And you can navigate to forge.autodesk.com.

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You'll find of course a lot of information from documentation

07:25

and the APIs, to blogs, through how

07:27

you get supports, the pricing, lots of valuable information.

07:32

But the first thing you will need to do

07:34

is to log in to the Forge platform with your Autodesk ID.

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And I will share with you the experience.

07:44

So after you log in with your Autodesk ID,

07:47

that Autodesk ID is converted to a Forge account user.

07:52

You can see from the Autodesk ID avatar,

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you have access to your Forge application

07:58

as well as usage analytics, so all the consumption.

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What I want to show you next is the process

08:04

of creating a Forge application, which is the first thing you'll

08:06

do as a developer.

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A Forge application is essentially a unique pair

08:11

of keys, or credentials.

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And we'll see what that means.

08:16

First thing that you need to do when you create a Forge

08:19

application is to select the APIs that you will be coding.

08:23

So always remember to limit access to the APIs

08:27

you really need for your application.

08:29

So if you're building an application that will solely

08:32

focus on drone photogrammetry, the idea

08:37

would be to just choose Reality Capture API in that case.

08:41

So we'll give it a name and the description.

08:52

Write a callback URL, and click on Create Application.

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So really very simple step here, process.

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What we've essentially done is we've

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registered a new Forge application on the Forge

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servers.

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And what you end up with is what we

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call the unique pair of keys, mainly the client

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ID on the client's secrets.

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Those represents your application credentials

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you will need those credentials to authenticate to the Forge

09:23

platform with the Forged server to be able to interact

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with those APIs.

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So I'm not going to go into further details,

09:30

but I just wanted to show you how easy it is

09:33

to create a Forge application.

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Now another thing to consider that's quite important

09:38

is potential business model for Forge application.

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So when you are creating a Forge application,

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the first thing you'll need obviously

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is a development team.

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You'll need to have developers on staff that

09:51

are capable of writing front-end application

09:54

web, front-end applications as well

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as the backend application.

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It will be on the backend application

10:00

that most of the interaction with Forge will happen.

10:04

At the backend of the web application

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will make HTTP calls, HTTP request to the Forge servers

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to retrieve information about the design data

10:14

that you have on your Forge platform,

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on Autodesk cloud application.

10:18

As an enterprise business customers,

10:20

you can ask your customer success manager

10:24

to add Forge to your contract.

10:27

There's no fee with this.

10:30

A simple email will suffice.

10:33

Once you have Forge on your Token Flex agreement,

10:36

the developers can start building

10:39

the front-end application and the logic

10:42

around calling the Forge APIs and building

10:47

an online experience and workflow experience, a web

10:51

experience with the Forge API.

10:53

So essentially you'll end up with a web application.

10:58

And the users could be internal users, your employees,

11:03

as well as potential external vendors, contractors,

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these type of things.

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So any users that connect to your Forge web application

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will go through some workflows.

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They will go through some processes

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that your web application will offer to them.

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And as they progress and make HTTP request

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to the Forge servers, we will charge cloud credits

11:27

based on whatever API they're coding that has

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a cost associated with it.

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So that's the business model, how it ties up together.

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So let's talk quickly about the pricing model for enterprise

11:43

business customers.

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Again adding Forge to the platform,

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there's no access fee.

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Note that the use of Forge APIs can consume tokens

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from your token pool.

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Not all Forge APIs incur cost.

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Some are free.

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And we'll go into those details later.

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In terms of the rates, they're expressed as cloud credits.

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You'll have to know that 1 cloud credit is

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the same as 1 EBA token.

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And finally, the current default model

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is a single user subscription model,

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which means that you can only assign the Forge entitlements

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to a single Autodesk ID user, but that

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can be adjusted as well.

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So I don't want to go into too much details,

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but it's really high level.

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That's kind of the pricing model for Forge on Token Flex.

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Here's the steps you need to go through

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to add Forge to your EBA agreement,

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and the person, the Autodesk ID that has the Forge entitlements

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will be the person creating the Forge application.

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So you saw me log in to the Forge portal

12:47

and creating Forge application earlier on.

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It won't be that person.

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Whoever has the Forge entitlements,

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that Autodesk ID will have to log into the Forge portal

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and create the Forge application.

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That's how we connect the Token Flex entitlement

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to the Forge application.

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So now I want to go into some industry examples.

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So actual Forge application that were developed

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by all the customers, all their partners, some proof of concept

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application developed by our Forge evangelist team.

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So there's a lot of application today, code samples available.

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So I'm not going to go into all of them.

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But what I wanted to make you aware of,

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first, is of really cool websites

13:34

that our Forge evangelist team has put together.

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It's called a Forge Showroom.

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And essentially it's a website where

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you have access to the collection of all

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the Forge application, the proof concept application that

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have been built so far.

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You can see that you can filter by applications.

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If you're a retail customer, you can click on Retail,

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see what's happening.

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If you're interested in Digital Twin Workflows,

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you can click on that.

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If you want to explore AR/VR with Forge,

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there's also some code samples for you.

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So here's their link.

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If you click on the Link to Showroom,

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it'll take you to that page and feel free to explore.

14:13

Because this presentation is primarily

14:16

focusing on manufacturing and how

14:20

you can use Forge in the context of manufacturing application,

14:23

I want to highlight the number one use

14:26

case that you'll probably be looking at or considering

14:30

as a manufacturing customer.

14:31

And you're most likely using Inventor as your engineering

14:34

design tool today.

14:36

And there's a lot of use cases around product configurators.

14:41

So what I want to walk you through

14:43

is a video of a code sample that highlights

14:49

potential use case for Inventor product configurator.

14:53

So in this example, we have a web application

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where we have some Inventor models and assemblies that are

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stored on the Forge platform.

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So it's in the Autodesk cloud.

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And what the user is doing here is changing some

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of the parameters of the model.

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When you click Update, essentially the web application

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is sending a request to the Forge server

15:20

asking Forge to do some design automation type workflow where

15:25

we'll be running Inventor in the cloud

15:28

or putting that Inventor assembly consuming

15:31

the new parameters, the new dimensions,

15:33

and generating a new Inventor model and drawing from it.

15:37

And so what you can see here is essentially the workflow

15:41

where we're generating new inventive

15:43

models based on new parameters, all that from the web page.

15:47

Let's move on to the next use case, Digital Twin.

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This is a buzz word, but essentially the idea

15:56

is that you have a physical prototype.

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So let's imagine a jet turbine engine.

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So you have a physical prototype in your factory

16:07

and you have instrumented it with IoT sensors,

16:11

and you would like to create what we call a Digital

16:15

Twin, which is a copy of the physical prototype,

16:19

but in a digital shape and form.

16:21

So with Forge, you can essentially

16:24

build a web application where you can aggregate both the IoT

16:29

sensor data with the 3D CAD model, the geometry,

16:34

the visualization.

16:35

So in this case, we're looking at the Forge Viewer.

16:39

That's embedded into a Forge web application.

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We can also see that we have some IoT data showing

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in some nice graphs and charts.

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And you can connect the two.

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So you can create some real visualization experiences

16:55

where you can overlay maybe the temperature information

16:59

on top of the 3D model.

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You can also do some exploding.

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A lot of things can be done that way.

17:05

So very powerful use case.

17:07

These specific use case is on the Forge Showroom,

17:11

so you just have to search for the Digital Twin.

17:14

Another variation of a Digital Twin,

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this time instead of a jet turbine engine,

17:19

we're going to look at the factory floor.

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So you can see you have conveyor belts with different assets

17:26

in the factory.

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And we're going to go through some maintenance

17:30

workflows, the factory, the visualization of it,

17:34

again using the Forge Viewer.

17:37

And you can see that you can create some web experiences.

17:42

We're selecting components.

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Let's say a fire extinguisher.

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You can customize the Forge Viewer

17:50

to open a PDF file that contains the specification

17:58

of that asset.

18:01

But it could be machine specification.

18:05

If you have maybe a robot or a 3D printer,

18:09

you could essentially connect the technical specification

18:13

to PDF and connect that with the 3D you have.

18:16

So very good experience here.

18:18

So Moicon is a partner of ours, so you can go to their website

18:23

and learn more about what they do.

18:26

OK, another use case here is around part ordering.

18:31

So parts ordering is another common use case

18:35

in manufacturing.

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So let's imagine you have sold one of your machines

18:41

to one of your customer and the customer

18:44

has the machine installed on their sites.

18:47

Unfortunately after three months of machine run, one of the part

18:52

breaks.

18:54

They need to order a new part.

18:56

So we can create, again with the Forge APIs and the Forge

19:00

Viewer, an online experience where

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a customer can go to your website

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to order a replacement parts.

19:09

So you can see we have the shopping basket experience

19:12

but also enhanced with visualization

19:17

that is provided by the Forge Viewer.

19:19

And again CADShare is also one of our partner.

19:24

So I hope all those demos help you understand

19:29

the breadth of web application you can build today

19:33

with the Forge APIs and what the Forge platform can deliver.

19:36

Now we're going to double click on how to successfully build

19:41

a development team that will be successful at developing Forge

19:45

application for you.

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Now you probably have been an Autodesk customer

19:50

for a long time and you've most likely

19:52

have used our primary Desktop CAD

19:56

applications such as Inventor,

20:01

And throughout the years, you probably

20:03

have developed some automation with those Desktop CAD engines.

20:08

And I'm pretty confident that you

20:10

have some developers on staff that

20:12

know how to build Revit in Inventor add-ins,

20:16

AutoCAD Lisp routine to automate some of the work.

20:19

Now when you're going to Forge, and the Forge platform,

20:24

we're dealing with a cloud platform.

20:25

We're dealing with cloud API.

20:27

So we have to shift our mindset from desktop to cloud.

20:31

What that means is that we're going away

20:34

from files into URLs.

20:37

So every time you interact with data with Forge,

20:41

you need to interact through a file that has been uploaded

20:45

to a cloud storage location.

20:47

So maybe BIM360 Docs, maybe Fusion Team, maybe Box, maybe

20:53

Dropbox, et cetera.

20:54

You'll also have to worry about authentication.

20:58

You cannot interact with your design data that's in the cloud

21:02

without properly authenticating with the Forge server.

21:05

So there is security concerns.

21:07

And that's why there's some very strict authentication

21:11

protocol that must be met before you can interact with your data

21:14

in the cloud.

21:15

You'll have to learn more about HTTP in general.

21:19

What is a request?

21:20

What is a response?

21:21

How does that work?

21:22

Because essentially all the APIs you

21:25

have on the Forge platform are RESTful APIs meaning

21:29

they're web APIs and essentially they're

21:32

HTTP endpoints that you will have to interact with.

21:35

And there's also some new technology

21:37

that you need to start learning about, is WebHooks, essentially

21:42

ways to listen to specific events in the cloud

21:45

and react to it.

21:46

So those are I would say things you need to start

21:50

looking into reading about--

21:53

there's tons of resources on LinkedIn Learning

21:56

and other learning platform.

21:59

Now what skills do you need to be

22:03

successful at developing Forge web application

22:06

or mobile application.

22:07

As a matter of fact, you can create both web

22:10

and mobile experiences.

22:12

So the first thing that I want to highlight

22:15

is that the Forge platform is a set of RESTful APIs.

22:19

What does that mean?

22:20

It means that their own HTTP web APIs.

22:24

We're not asking you to learn any new programming languages.

22:28

Essentially you can continue using any of the development

22:32

programming languages you've used today as long

22:35

as those programming languages have libraries that allows

22:39

you to make HTTP request.

22:42

So JavaScript can do that.

22:43

Node.js can do that.

22:45

ASP.NET, but also Python, Ruby, Java.

22:49

You can continue using all those programming languages.

22:53

There's only one exception, is that the Forge Viewer is not

22:57

a RESTful API.

22:58

It's technically a client-side JavaScript component.

23:01

So this is the only time.

23:03

If you want to do visualization workflows,

23:06

you'll have to learn a little bit of JavaScript.

23:08

But for anything else on the Forge platform,

23:11

you don't need to learn JavaScript.

23:13

You can continue using C-sharp.

23:16

Now here's a quick glimpse at all the tools

23:21

you'll probably be using to develop web application.

23:24

So if you're a .NET programmer, please continue using Microsoft

23:28

Visual Studio.

23:29

Note that we have Forge SDKs on the NuGet server.

23:35

So you can install those NuGet packages for Forge.

23:37

That will greatly accelerate your development efforts.

23:41

If you're a JavaScript developer,

23:43

we have Visual Studio Code, very powerful IDE

23:47

for web development.

23:49

To note, we have a Forge extension on Visual Studio Code

23:53

marketplace.

23:54

So please use it.

23:55

It will make your life so much easier.

23:58

But if you are more familiar with WebStorm and NetBeans,

24:01

feel free continue using it.

24:03

In terms of web debugging, of course,

24:05

you'll be dealing with REST APIs.

24:07

So using REST clients such as Postman,

24:10

Insomnia will become invaluable.

24:13

So please consider learning about REST clients,

24:17

how to use them.

24:18

They will allow you to test all those RESTful APIs

24:21

and essentially documenting all those HTTP requests

24:24

that you are making to Forge.

24:26

You can document them in collections

24:29

and go back to them to validate.

24:32

It will help you with the troubleshooting as well.

24:35

Obviously, if you're troubleshooting some issues,

24:37

you'll probably have to debug the client side as well.

24:40

So that's where the developer console of your browser

24:42

will become very useful.

24:45

So please use that.

24:46

Chrome has one.

24:47

Microsoft Edge has one.

24:49

Firefox-- so use those tools.

24:51

For collaboration, you'll find that GitHub

24:54

is the industry standard to store all your code samples.

24:59

You can have private repositories as well as

25:02

public repositories.

25:03

So it's up to you to decide if you want to make it public.

25:06

But to note, we have an entire site

25:09

on GitHub called Autodesk-Forge that

25:13

has all the proof of concept application, the code samples

25:16

that we've developed today.

25:17

We have over 60 code samples out there for you

25:20

to download and play with.

25:23

Because we are focusing today on manufacturing,

25:27

I want to highlight a Visual Studio project

25:30

template that our development team has created,

25:33

and they will greatly reduce the time for you

25:36

to get started with building Forge Design Automation

25:39

application with Inventor.

25:41

So here is the Blog Article.

25:44

You'll find a link to download that Microsoft Visual Studio

25:47

Project Template to do all set up for you, a new Visual Studio

25:51

solution with three projects.

25:53

One is the actual Inventor add-in.

25:55

The second is how to deploy that add-in to the Forge platform.

25:59

And third is the actual design automation piece

26:02

of Forge on how to submit new Design Automation jobs

26:08

and whatever else needs to happen to make it work.

26:12

The other thing that I mentioned earlier on

26:13

was the Forge Extension and Visual Studio Code.

26:17

I personally find this tool extremely valuable.

26:20

I've used it countless amount of time.

26:23

It allows you to support multiple Forge environments,

26:27

meaning you can look at the data and all the information

26:31

you have for different Forge applications.

26:33

So you can have environments that are

26:35

different per Forge client IDs.

26:38

There's also a nice blog article that walks you

26:41

through how to do design automation with AutoCAD

26:45

from Visual Studio Code without writing any code.

26:49

So very powerful example.

26:50

Please go through it and you'll understand why

26:54

I'm advocating for this tool.

26:56

Now in terms of resources, knowledge, things

26:60

you need to go through to become a Forge expert,

27:03

so we have obviously the API Documentation.

27:06

So please make sure you read through it.

27:09

There's a lot of details around HTTP request, the headers,

27:14

the bodies, et cetera.

27:16

And also rate limits, this type of information,

27:20

you'll find all of that in the documentation.

27:23

There's also a tutorial called Learn Forge.

27:25

The screenshot you're looking at is

27:27

an example of one section of that tutorial.

27:31

It's focused on modifying your model.

27:34

So this is Design Automation API for Inventor.

27:37

They'll take you step by step on how to build Forge web

27:41

application from scratch and to Design Automation

27:44

Workflows with it.

27:44

It's pretty powerful tutorial.

27:46

You can, of course, ask any question.

27:49

If you're a developer, you can go to Stack Overflow.

27:51

We have a presence on Stack Overflow for Autodesk Forge.

27:55

Go there, ask questions.

27:58

You can search to see if other people have

27:60

asked that question before.

28:01

So feel free to rely on the community.

28:05

If your question is more confidential,

28:08

you don't want to publicly ask it,

28:10

note that you can use the forge.help email alias.

28:14

So feel free to use it.

28:15

Also placed a link to Autodesk-Forge on GitHub.

28:19

That's the place where you'll find all the code

28:21

samples we've developed so far.

28:23

So a lot of good example for you to get started.

28:26

And of course, we have more Enterprise Priority

28:29

accelerators, such as the one I'm presenting today.

28:32

So please connect with your customer success manager

28:35

or designated support specialist,

28:36

and we can deliver more Forge content for you.

28:40

Now the final section, the Umbrella of Forge,

28:44

in this section we'll quickly glimpse

28:46

through the actual APIs, the functionality

28:50

available on the Forge platform today.

28:53

So on the Forge platform, you'll find nine APIs available today.

29:00

The first one that you'll need to learn

29:02

is the Authentication API.

29:05

Without it, you won't be able to use any of the other API

29:09

that you see on this slide.

29:11

Without properly authenticating with the Forge server,

29:15

you won't be able to access your data that you've stored

29:18

in BIM360 Docs or Fusion Team.

29:21

The next API that you'll probably

29:24

be using with the first one is Data Management API.

29:27

This one allows you to interact with your data in the cloud.

29:30

And I'll go into the details.

29:32

BIM360 is all about interacting with the information

29:36

you have in BIM360.

29:38

However, the Viewer is the Visualization API,

29:42

the technology you can use to visualize your 3D.

29:45

Token Flex API is all about acquiring the consumption

29:50

information, the usage data, all your Autodesk products

29:52

that are on Token Flexs.

29:54

So this one can only be used by enterprise business customers.

29:59

We have also WebHooks API, Design Automation API,

30:03

Model Derivative API, and Reality Capture.

30:06

So let me go into the pricing, and then we'll

30:09

go into each API in a little bit more detail.

30:12

So when we make HTTP request to Forge,

30:16

depending on what we are doing, we'll be charged cloud credits.

30:22

Again, 1 cloud credit is the same as 1 EBA token.

30:26

So here is the translation.

30:28

Depending on what you are doing, the pricing model will change.

30:33

So if you're running a CAD engine in the cloud,

30:36

like Inventor through Design Automation or AutoCAD

30:39

through design automation, you'll

30:41

find that the pricing model is based on processing hour.

30:46

What that means is that it's the time it takes

30:49

to upload the CAD models to the cloud,

30:52

to run Inventor in the cloud.

30:55

Open those files, run the add-in, the command, the custom

30:60

command, and download the output.

31:03

So processing hour includes all those activities.

31:06

And so let's imagine you have some automation for Inventor

31:11

and it takes 20 minutes per job, you'd

31:16

have to run three jobs to be charged 6 tokens.

31:20

Model Derivative API, a little bit different.

31:24

Here it's not about the translation.

31:27

We don't count how long it takes to run on our servers.

31:30

We charge you based on each translation.

31:33

So Model Derivative API is the API

31:36

that you use to prepare your CAD files for viewing.

31:41

So this is the API you'll be using

31:44

prior to using the Viewer API so that you can visualize your

31:49

[INAUDIBLE].

31:50

Reality Capture API, again this is photogrammetry workflow.

31:53

In this case, we're dealing with pictures.

31:56

That's why we're charging against pixel process.

32:00

So you can see.

32:02

So just to be clear, those three APIs

32:04

are the only one today that will have a cost for you.

32:08

Authentication API.

32:09

So this API allows you to log in to the Forge servers.

32:13

And essentially what it returns is

32:16

what we call an access token.

32:18

And it's using the industry standard for authentication,

32:22

is the OAuth2 process.

32:25

You can see that it's a free API.

32:27

You won't be charged for logging in into Forge.

32:30

But essentially what you get back is an access token.

32:33

That access token is an encoded long chain

32:36

of strings and numbers.

32:38

Essentially you can see if we decoded,

32:40

it contains information about the Forge application client ID

32:45

as well as the scope prior to the permissions for that access

32:48

token.

32:48

That access token is valid for an hour.

32:51

And any other API you call, so let's imagine Data Management

32:55

API or Model Derivative API, whenever

32:58

you place the call to that, you'll

32:60

have to pass that access token information into the HTTP

33:04

request you make to the Forge server.

33:06

And obviously after one hour, if the token has expired,

33:10

you'll have to ask for a new one.

33:13

Data management API.

33:14

So this one also is free but very powerful.

33:18

And you'll definitely be using.

33:20

This one allows you to interact with your files in the cloud,

33:25

in the Autodesk cloud.

33:26

It's not just CAD files.

33:29

It's also a PDF, Office Documents

33:32

that you can interact with.

33:33

You can see that we have connectors

33:35

to BIM360 Docs to Fusion Team, to BIM360 Team as well.

33:40

OK.

33:41

So data management API is API you

33:43

use to interact with your data in the cloud.

33:47

BIM360 API is also free, most likely

33:51

because you already have a BIM360 subscription.

33:54

So you're already paying for BIM360

33:56

through your subscription.

33:58

Therefore, access to the API is free.

34:01

So to note, allows you to access the accounts information,

34:06

issues, checklist, as well as some other workflows,

34:09

like publishing the documents, this type of things.

34:13

You can see there's also some beta APIs.

34:15

They are public, around cost management

34:18

and model coordination.

34:19

So we keep on adding more APIs to the BIM360 API area.

34:26

Model Derivative API is the API you

34:28

use to translate to prepare the CAD files for viewing.

34:32

So you have uploaded some Inventor files.

34:36

You can call the Model Derivative

34:37

API to translate that Inventor model into a file format

34:42

that the Web Viewer or Forge can actually read.

34:47

So you'll hear that on file format svf,

34:50

you'll hear it being mentioned, but that's essentially what

34:53

that translation is all about.

34:54

So it's a service.

34:55

It's a translation pipeline.

34:57

You can translate over 65 format through its Navisworks, Revits,

35:03

Inventor, AutoCAD.

35:04

You can see that it's not about just translating the geometry.

35:08

It's also you could just generate thumbnails.

35:11

You can also extract metadata from the files.

35:14

So if your Inventor file as [INAUDIBLE] properties,

35:18

you could extract that as well.

35:20

The Forge Viewer, so again this one is not a RESTful API.

35:23

It's the client-side JavaScript library.

35:25

But essentially it allows you to do 3D visualization

35:29

in the browser.

35:31

What that means is that you can integrate this Viewer web

35:35

component into any web application.

35:39

So if you have a custom portal today,

35:41

you can enhance your customer experience

35:43

by adding 3D visualization of your products

35:47

into your customer portal.

35:48

So a lot of things can be done with this.

35:52

As well as these Web Viewer can be customized.

35:55

You can customize the toolbar and add

35:58

new buttons, extensions.

36:01

And you can create some custom experiences

36:04

that your business needs, that can

36:06

be specific to your workflow, your need.

36:10

So it's customizable.

36:11

Design Automation, so we covered it.

36:13

It's essentially running AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit

36:16

and 3ds MAX in the cloud.

36:19

WebHooks, it's an API that allows you

36:22

to listen to specific events.

36:24

So I'll give you a concrete example.

36:26

Let's imagine you are uploading a new version

36:29

of a file to BIM360 Docs while you could register

36:32

WebHook for that event.

36:35

When that occurs?

36:36

When you upload a new version of a file in BIM360 Docs,

36:40

the WebHook will be called.

36:43

And that WebHook will make an HTTP request somewhere else.

36:49

That D else could be calling the Slack API or the Twitter API

36:56

or Salesforce API or even an Autodesk API.

36:60

And if we go back to Slack, we could maybe post a new message

37:05

to a specific user saying the new version of the file

37:08

has been created, please go check.

37:11

So this is the type of experience

37:13

that a WebHook allows you to do.

37:15

Reality Capture.

37:16

So we have two modes, the object mode and the drawing mode.

37:21

So you can do two type of things.

37:24

It's always about taking pictures and generating

37:27

a 3D mesh model from it, but those pictures

37:30

can be taken from a drone, or if you are on the factory floor,

37:35

you can use a camera and have an object rotate,

37:38

and you'll generate a

37:43

Last but not least, the Token Flex Usage Data API.

37:47

This API is only available to enterprise customers.

37:51

It's free of use.

37:53

It allows you to query your token consumption and product

37:58

usage for Token Flex.

37:60

So it allows you to build custom reports

38:03

on maybe your Revit product usage, your AutoCAD product

38:07

usage, but also cloud services.

38:10

Thank you for watching.

38:11

I hope you found his presentation informative

38:15

and that you'll have some ideas to start

38:20

new Forge application for manufacturing at your own pace.

38:25

And if you need any help from the Autodesk team,

38:29

please work with your customer success manager and designated

38:33

support specialist.

38:35

Thank you again for watching.

Video transcript

00:00

[MUSIC PLAYING]

00:08

Hi, my name is Bastien Mazeran.

00:10

I will be your presenter today.

00:13

We are going to talk about Forge and going over an introduction

00:17

to the platform, and focusing primarily

00:21

on the manufacturing capabilities of the Forge

00:26

platform.

00:27

I hope you'll find this introduction informative.

00:31

Today, the goal is to cover and clarify the following point

00:35

for you so that you understand what the Forge platform is.

00:39

So the first thing we'll try to achieve

00:41

is a clear understanding of the technology

00:44

and the functionality that 4G offers in the manufacturing

00:47

space.

00:48

You'll hopefully gain some insights

00:50

on setting up a development team for developing a new Forge

00:53

application.

00:54

You'll also understand the tools and the debuggers

00:57

you'll need to develop Forge applications.

00:60

And will also deep dive into how you can transition

01:03

your automation that you may have already developed

01:06

on desktop CAD to the cloud.

01:09

So those covers Inventor Automation, AutoCAD Automation,

01:15

Here's the agenda of today's presentation.

01:18

We'll start with explaining what the Forge platform is

01:22

and what you can do with it today.

01:23

We'll go over some demos so that you have a clear understanding

01:27

of what you can build with Forge, some example

01:31

from other customers or from partners

01:34

so that you see the potential of the platform.

01:38

We'll go as well into how you form a development

01:42

team, the kind of resources they'll

01:44

need to learn the tools, they'll need to develop,

01:47

and the best practices as well.

01:50

And last but not least, we'll go over

01:53

a quick overview of the Forge APIs, the functionalities,

01:57

and the pricing of all those functionalities in more

01:60

details.

02:01

Here is the safe harbor statement.

02:03

Essentially, I may make some statement here.

02:06

They're forward looking.

02:08

Please do not make a purchase decision based on that.

02:12

All right.

02:12

So let's go into the first section of this presentation.

02:16

It's essentially covering what the Forge platform is

02:20

and what you can build with it.

02:23

So first of all, Forge is a cloud API platform.

02:27

It is not a product, very different

02:30

from AutoCAD or Revit.

02:32

It's actually a platform.

02:33

That is a collection of functionality

02:35

that are very vast and diverse.

02:38

Essentially the way you interact with this platform

02:42

is by calling web APIs.

02:45

API stand for application programming interface.

02:48

And it's just a mechanism.

02:50

It's actually industry standard in the web

02:52

to allow web applications to communicate with one another.

02:56

So in this image, you can see that you

02:59

can connect to the Forge servers via multiple types of devices,

03:03

from iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktop,

03:07

anything that can connect to the internet or the web will work.

03:13

You can see as well that every time you make a call to Forge,

03:17

it has to go through the HTTP protocol.

03:19

So essentially, you're making requests from your clients

03:22

and you're getting a response back from the Forge servers.

03:26

Earlier I mentioned it is a platform.

03:28

We actually like to call Forge the platform

03:32

for the digital transformation of design and make.

03:36

The reason for this is because it

03:38

is a set of functionality, a collection of APIs that

03:43

allows you to extend and integrate

03:46

with existing Autodesk web application.

03:49

So you can essentially go through various use cases

03:52

from Reality Capture to interacting

03:55

with your BIM360 data, creating some visualization,

03:60

as well as automating some of your design workflows.

04:03

It's also important to note that it is a common technology

04:07

stack for us.

04:08

Forge is the foundation of many of our web application

04:12

that we own today at Autodesk, BIM360 being one of them

04:16

and Fusion as well.

04:17

So all those-- all the platforms are actually running on Forge.

04:22

I mentioned visualization.

04:24

We do have a component on the platform, an API, that's

04:28

specific to viewing.

04:30

It's essentially some web technology,

04:32

visualization technology that you

04:34

can use to visualize in 3D or CAD models

04:37

into any web portal of your choosing.

04:40

So what can you do is Forge.

04:42

The high level goal is to build online workflows

04:46

and experiences around your design and engineering data

04:49

so you probably have a lot of [INAUDIBLE] today

04:53

in various forms from AutoCAD to Revit, to maybe Inventor.

04:57

And you would like to create some online experiences

04:60

and workflows around those files.

05:02

Well, you can do that with the Forge platform,

05:05

by simply uploading to the cloud those design files

05:09

or engineering files and creating some automation

05:13

connection with an enterprise system such as ERP, CRM,

05:17

Financial, PLM.

05:19

Today, we support over 65 formats.

05:22

It's not just CAD file format.

05:24

We also support PDF, Office Documents, et cetera.

05:28

When I talk about online workflows and experiences, what

05:32

I want to highlight as well is that you

05:33

can interact with your design data in the sense

05:37

that you can create design data.

05:39

You can read it.

05:40

You can update it, or delete it using the Forge APIs.

05:43

You can also run CAD engines in cloud, very valuable use case,

05:48

especially for democratizing CAD Automation to non-CAD users.

05:53

So essentially you could have non-CAD users who

05:57

don't have Revit, or Inventor installed

05:60

on their machine and license.

06:02

They could still start some automation,

06:04

CAD automation in the cloud from a web browser.

06:08

Another thing that you can go and use Forge for

06:11

is Reality Capture.

06:13

So it's the entire drone photography use

06:16

case where you basically capture a lot of pictures

06:20

and the output is a

06:24

In terms of the community where we are today, the data you see

06:29

is recent as of this month, we have

06:31

around 2,500 monthly active developer

06:35

accounts on the platform with 138 enterprise

06:39

customers evaluating Forge today,

06:42

and 37 Forge certified system integrators.

06:46

So a lot of activity on the platform.

06:49

And again just to reiterate, it is a developer platform

06:53

in the cloud.

06:54

So to users or the community that we're working with

06:59

are mainly developers.

07:01

Here is the portion where I will quickly

07:04

go into a demo to show you the Forge portal,

07:07

which is your entry point to anything Forge related.

07:10

So to access Forge, you simply need an Autodesk ID.

07:15

And you need a browser.

07:16

And you can navigate to forge.autodesk.com.

07:21

You'll find of course a lot of information from documentation

07:25

and the APIs, to blogs, through how

07:27

you get supports, the pricing, lots of valuable information.

07:32

But the first thing you will need to do

07:34

is to log in to the Forge platform with your Autodesk ID.

07:41

And I will share with you the experience.

07:44

So after you log in with your Autodesk ID,

07:47

that Autodesk ID is converted to a Forge account user.

07:52

You can see from the Autodesk ID avatar,

07:55

you have access to your Forge application

07:58

as well as usage analytics, so all the consumption.

08:02

What I want to show you next is the process

08:04

of creating a Forge application, which is the first thing you'll

08:06

do as a developer.

08:07

A Forge application is essentially a unique pair

08:11

of keys, or credentials.

08:14

And we'll see what that means.

08:16

First thing that you need to do when you create a Forge

08:19

application is to select the APIs that you will be coding.

08:23

So always remember to limit access to the APIs

08:27

you really need for your application.

08:29

So if you're building an application that will solely

08:32

focus on drone photogrammetry, the idea

08:37

would be to just choose Reality Capture API in that case.

08:41

So we'll give it a name and the description.

08:52

Write a callback URL, and click on Create Application.

08:58

So really very simple step here, process.

09:03

What we've essentially done is we've

09:05

registered a new Forge application on the Forge

09:08

servers.

09:09

And what you end up with is what we

09:11

call the unique pair of keys, mainly the client

09:15

ID on the client's secrets.

09:17

Those represents your application credentials

09:20

you will need those credentials to authenticate to the Forge

09:23

platform with the Forged server to be able to interact

09:26

with those APIs.

09:28

So I'm not going to go into further details,

09:30

but I just wanted to show you how easy it is

09:33

to create a Forge application.

09:35

Now another thing to consider that's quite important

09:38

is potential business model for Forge application.

09:43

So when you are creating a Forge application,

09:46

the first thing you'll need obviously

09:47

is a development team.

09:49

You'll need to have developers on staff that

09:51

are capable of writing front-end application

09:54

web, front-end applications as well

09:56

as the backend application.

09:58

It will be on the backend application

10:00

that most of the interaction with Forge will happen.

10:04

At the backend of the web application

10:06

will make HTTP calls, HTTP request to the Forge servers

10:11

to retrieve information about the design data

10:14

that you have on your Forge platform,

10:16

on Autodesk cloud application.

10:18

As an enterprise business customers,

10:20

you can ask your customer success manager

10:24

to add Forge to your contract.

10:27

There's no fee with this.

10:30

A simple email will suffice.

10:33

Once you have Forge on your Token Flex agreement,

10:36

the developers can start building

10:39

the front-end application and the logic

10:42

around calling the Forge APIs and building

10:47

an online experience and workflow experience, a web

10:51

experience with the Forge API.

10:53

So essentially you'll end up with a web application.

10:58

And the users could be internal users, your employees,

11:03

as well as potential external vendors, contractors,

11:07

these type of things.

11:08

So any users that connect to your Forge web application

11:12

will go through some workflows.

11:15

They will go through some processes

11:17

that your web application will offer to them.

11:20

And as they progress and make HTTP request

11:23

to the Forge servers, we will charge cloud credits

11:27

based on whatever API they're coding that has

11:31

a cost associated with it.

11:33

So that's the business model, how it ties up together.

11:38

So let's talk quickly about the pricing model for enterprise

11:43

business customers.

11:45

Again adding Forge to the platform,

11:47

there's no access fee.

11:49

Note that the use of Forge APIs can consume tokens

11:53

from your token pool.

11:55

Not all Forge APIs incur cost.

11:58

Some are free.

11:58

And we'll go into those details later.

12:01

In terms of the rates, they're expressed as cloud credits.

12:05

You'll have to know that 1 cloud credit is

12:08

the same as 1 EBA token.

12:10

And finally, the current default model

12:13

is a single user subscription model,

12:15

which means that you can only assign the Forge entitlements

12:19

to a single Autodesk ID user, but that

12:22

can be adjusted as well.

12:23

So I don't want to go into too much details,

12:26

but it's really high level.

12:27

That's kind of the pricing model for Forge on Token Flex.

12:32

Here's the steps you need to go through

12:35

to add Forge to your EBA agreement,

12:38

and the person, the Autodesk ID that has the Forge entitlements

12:42

will be the person creating the Forge application.

12:44

So you saw me log in to the Forge portal

12:47

and creating Forge application earlier on.

12:49

It won't be that person.

12:51

Whoever has the Forge entitlements,

12:53

that Autodesk ID will have to log into the Forge portal

12:56

and create the Forge application.

12:57

That's how we connect the Token Flex entitlement

13:01

to the Forge application.

13:03

So now I want to go into some industry examples.

13:08

So actual Forge application that were developed

13:12

by all the customers, all their partners, some proof of concept

13:16

application developed by our Forge evangelist team.

13:20

So there's a lot of application today, code samples available.

13:25

So I'm not going to go into all of them.

13:28

But what I wanted to make you aware of,

13:31

first, is of really cool websites

13:34

that our Forge evangelist team has put together.

13:37

It's called a Forge Showroom.

13:39

And essentially it's a website where

13:41

you have access to the collection of all

13:44

the Forge application, the proof concept application that

13:46

have been built so far.

13:48

You can see that you can filter by applications.

13:52

If you're a retail customer, you can click on Retail,

13:54

see what's happening.

13:55

If you're interested in Digital Twin Workflows,

13:58

you can click on that.

13:59

If you want to explore AR/VR with Forge,

14:03

there's also some code samples for you.

14:05

So here's their link.

14:07

If you click on the Link to Showroom,

14:09

it'll take you to that page and feel free to explore.

14:13

Because this presentation is primarily

14:16

focusing on manufacturing and how

14:20

you can use Forge in the context of manufacturing application,

14:23

I want to highlight the number one use

14:26

case that you'll probably be looking at or considering

14:30

as a manufacturing customer.

14:31

And you're most likely using Inventor as your engineering

14:34

design tool today.

14:36

And there's a lot of use cases around product configurators.

14:41

So what I want to walk you through

14:43

is a video of a code sample that highlights

14:49

potential use case for Inventor product configurator.

14:53

So in this example, we have a web application

14:56

where we have some Inventor models and assemblies that are

15:01

stored on the Forge platform.

15:03

So it's in the Autodesk cloud.

15:06

And what the user is doing here is changing some

15:10

of the parameters of the model.

15:14

When you click Update, essentially the web application

15:18

is sending a request to the Forge server

15:20

asking Forge to do some design automation type workflow where

15:25

we'll be running Inventor in the cloud

15:28

or putting that Inventor assembly consuming

15:31

the new parameters, the new dimensions,

15:33

and generating a new Inventor model and drawing from it.

15:37

And so what you can see here is essentially the workflow

15:41

where we're generating new inventive

15:43

models based on new parameters, all that from the web page.

15:47

Let's move on to the next use case, Digital Twin.

15:51

This is a buzz word, but essentially the idea

15:56

is that you have a physical prototype.

15:60

So let's imagine a jet turbine engine.

16:04

So you have a physical prototype in your factory

16:07

and you have instrumented it with IoT sensors,

16:11

and you would like to create what we call a Digital

16:15

Twin, which is a copy of the physical prototype,

16:19

but in a digital shape and form.

16:21

So with Forge, you can essentially

16:24

build a web application where you can aggregate both the IoT

16:29

sensor data with the 3D CAD model, the geometry,

16:34

the visualization.

16:35

So in this case, we're looking at the Forge Viewer.

16:39

That's embedded into a Forge web application.

16:42

We can also see that we have some IoT data showing

16:46

in some nice graphs and charts.

16:49

And you can connect the two.

16:51

So you can create some real visualization experiences

16:55

where you can overlay maybe the temperature information

16:59

on top of the 3D model.

17:01

You can also do some exploding.

17:03

A lot of things can be done that way.

17:05

So very powerful use case.

17:07

These specific use case is on the Forge Showroom,

17:11

so you just have to search for the Digital Twin.

17:14

Another variation of a Digital Twin,

17:17

this time instead of a jet turbine engine,

17:19

we're going to look at the factory floor.

17:22

So you can see you have conveyor belts with different assets

17:26

in the factory.

17:27

And we're going to go through some maintenance

17:30

workflows, the factory, the visualization of it,

17:34

again using the Forge Viewer.

17:37

And you can see that you can create some web experiences.

17:42

We're selecting components.

17:45

Let's say a fire extinguisher.

17:48

You can customize the Forge Viewer

17:50

to open a PDF file that contains the specification

17:58

of that asset.

18:01

But it could be machine specification.

18:05

If you have maybe a robot or a 3D printer,

18:09

you could essentially connect the technical specification

18:13

to PDF and connect that with the 3D you have.

18:16

So very good experience here.

18:18

So Moicon is a partner of ours, so you can go to their website

18:23

and learn more about what they do.

18:26

OK, another use case here is around part ordering.

18:31

So parts ordering is another common use case

18:35

in manufacturing.

18:37

So let's imagine you have sold one of your machines

18:41

to one of your customer and the customer

18:44

has the machine installed on their sites.

18:47

Unfortunately after three months of machine run, one of the part

18:52

breaks.

18:54

They need to order a new part.

18:56

So we can create, again with the Forge APIs and the Forge

19:00

Viewer, an online experience where

19:04

a customer can go to your website

19:06

to order a replacement parts.

19:09

So you can see we have the shopping basket experience

19:12

but also enhanced with visualization

19:17

that is provided by the Forge Viewer.

19:19

And again CADShare is also one of our partner.

19:24

So I hope all those demos help you understand

19:29

the breadth of web application you can build today

19:33

with the Forge APIs and what the Forge platform can deliver.

19:36

Now we're going to double click on how to successfully build

19:41

a development team that will be successful at developing Forge

19:45

application for you.

19:46

Now you probably have been an Autodesk customer

19:50

for a long time and you've most likely

19:52

have used our primary Desktop CAD

19:56

applications such as Inventor,

20:01

And throughout the years, you probably

20:03

have developed some automation with those Desktop CAD engines.

20:08

And I'm pretty confident that you

20:10

have some developers on staff that

20:12

know how to build Revit in Inventor add-ins,

20:16

AutoCAD Lisp routine to automate some of the work.

20:19

Now when you're going to Forge, and the Forge platform,

20:24

we're dealing with a cloud platform.

20:25

We're dealing with cloud API.

20:27

So we have to shift our mindset from desktop to cloud.

20:31

What that means is that we're going away

20:34

from files into URLs.

20:37

So every time you interact with data with Forge,

20:41

you need to interact through a file that has been uploaded

20:45

to a cloud storage location.

20:47

So maybe BIM360 Docs, maybe Fusion Team, maybe Box, maybe

20:53

Dropbox, et cetera.

20:54

You'll also have to worry about authentication.

20:58

You cannot interact with your design data that's in the cloud

21:02

without properly authenticating with the Forge server.

21:05

So there is security concerns.

21:07

And that's why there's some very strict authentication

21:11

protocol that must be met before you can interact with your data

21:14

in the cloud.

21:15

You'll have to learn more about HTTP in general.

21:19

What is a request?

21:20

What is a response?

21:21

How does that work?

21:22

Because essentially all the APIs you

21:25

have on the Forge platform are RESTful APIs meaning

21:29

they're web APIs and essentially they're

21:32

HTTP endpoints that you will have to interact with.

21:35

And there's also some new technology

21:37

that you need to start learning about, is WebHooks, essentially

21:42

ways to listen to specific events in the cloud

21:45

and react to it.

21:46

So those are I would say things you need to start

21:50

looking into reading about--

21:53

there's tons of resources on LinkedIn Learning

21:56

and other learning platform.

21:59

Now what skills do you need to be

22:03

successful at developing Forge web application

22:06

or mobile application.

22:07

As a matter of fact, you can create both web

22:10

and mobile experiences.

22:12

So the first thing that I want to highlight

22:15

is that the Forge platform is a set of RESTful APIs.

22:19

What does that mean?

22:20

It means that their own HTTP web APIs.

22:24

We're not asking you to learn any new programming languages.

22:28

Essentially you can continue using any of the development

22:32

programming languages you've used today as long

22:35

as those programming languages have libraries that allows

22:39

you to make HTTP request.

22:42

So JavaScript can do that.

22:43

Node.js can do that.

22:45

ASP.NET, but also Python, Ruby, Java.

22:49

You can continue using all those programming languages.

22:53

There's only one exception, is that the Forge Viewer is not

22:57

a RESTful API.

22:58

It's technically a client-side JavaScript component.

23:01

So this is the only time.

23:03

If you want to do visualization workflows,

23:06

you'll have to learn a little bit of JavaScript.

23:08

But for anything else on the Forge platform,

23:11

you don't need to learn JavaScript.

23:13

You can continue using C-sharp.

23:16

Now here's a quick glimpse at all the tools

23:21

you'll probably be using to develop web application.

23:24

So if you're a .NET programmer, please continue using Microsoft

23:28

Visual Studio.

23:29

Note that we have Forge SDKs on the NuGet server.

23:35

So you can install those NuGet packages for Forge.

23:37

That will greatly accelerate your development efforts.

23:41

If you're a JavaScript developer,

23:43

we have Visual Studio Code, very powerful IDE

23:47

for web development.

23:49

To note, we have a Forge extension on Visual Studio Code

23:53

marketplace.

23:54

So please use it.

23:55

It will make your life so much easier.

23:58

But if you are more familiar with WebStorm and NetBeans,

24:01

feel free continue using it.

24:03

In terms of web debugging, of course,

24:05

you'll be dealing with REST APIs.

24:07

So using REST clients such as Postman,

24:10

Insomnia will become invaluable.

24:13

So please consider learning about REST clients,

24:17

how to use them.

24:18

They will allow you to test all those RESTful APIs

24:21

and essentially documenting all those HTTP requests

24:24

that you are making to Forge.

24:26

You can document them in collections

24:29

and go back to them to validate.

24:32

It will help you with the troubleshooting as well.

24:35

Obviously, if you're troubleshooting some issues,

24:37

you'll probably have to debug the client side as well.

24:40

So that's where the developer console of your browser

24:42

will become very useful.

24:45

So please use that.

24:46

Chrome has one.

24:47

Microsoft Edge has one.

24:49

Firefox-- so use those tools.

24:51

For collaboration, you'll find that GitHub

24:54

is the industry standard to store all your code samples.

24:59

You can have private repositories as well as

25:02

public repositories.

25:03

So it's up to you to decide if you want to make it public.

25:06

But to note, we have an entire site

25:09

on GitHub called Autodesk-Forge that

25:13

has all the proof of concept application, the code samples

25:16

that we've developed today.

25:17

We have over 60 code samples out there for you

25:20

to download and play with.

25:23

Because we are focusing today on manufacturing,

25:27

I want to highlight a Visual Studio project

25:30

template that our development team has created,

25:33

and they will greatly reduce the time for you

25:36

to get started with building Forge Design Automation

25:39

application with Inventor.

25:41

So here is the Blog Article.

25:44

You'll find a link to download that Microsoft Visual Studio

25:47

Project Template to do all set up for you, a new Visual Studio

25:51

solution with three projects.

25:53

One is the actual Inventor add-in.

25:55

The second is how to deploy that add-in to the Forge platform.

25:59

And third is the actual design automation piece

26:02

of Forge on how to submit new Design Automation jobs

26:08

and whatever else needs to happen to make it work.

26:12

The other thing that I mentioned earlier on

26:13

was the Forge Extension and Visual Studio Code.

26:17

I personally find this tool extremely valuable.

26:20

I've used it countless amount of time.

26:23

It allows you to support multiple Forge environments,

26:27

meaning you can look at the data and all the information

26:31

you have for different Forge applications.

26:33

So you can have environments that are

26:35

different per Forge client IDs.

26:38

There's also a nice blog article that walks you

26:41

through how to do design automation with AutoCAD

26:45

from Visual Studio Code without writing any code.

26:49

So very powerful example.

26:50

Please go through it and you'll understand why

26:54

I'm advocating for this tool.

26:56

Now in terms of resources, knowledge, things

26:60

you need to go through to become a Forge expert,

27:03

so we have obviously the API Documentation.

27:06

So please make sure you read through it.

27:09

There's a lot of details around HTTP request, the headers,

27:14

the bodies, et cetera.

27:16

And also rate limits, this type of information,

27:20

you'll find all of that in the documentation.

27:23

There's also a tutorial called Learn Forge.

27:25

The screenshot you're looking at is

27:27

an example of one section of that tutorial.

27:31

It's focused on modifying your model.

27:34

So this is Design Automation API for Inventor.

27:37

They'll take you step by step on how to build Forge web

27:41

application from scratch and to Design Automation

27:44

Workflows with it.

27:44

It's pretty powerful tutorial.

27:46

You can, of course, ask any question.

27:49

If you're a developer, you can go to Stack Overflow.

27:51

We have a presence on Stack Overflow for Autodesk Forge.

27:55

Go there, ask questions.

27:58

You can search to see if other people have

27:60

asked that question before.

28:01

So feel free to rely on the community.

28:05

If your question is more confidential,

28:08

you don't want to publicly ask it,

28:10

note that you can use the forge.help email alias.

28:14

So feel free to use it.

28:15

Also placed a link to Autodesk-Forge on GitHub.

28:19

That's the place where you'll find all the code

28:21

samples we've developed so far.

28:23

So a lot of good example for you to get started.

28:26

And of course, we have more Enterprise Priority

28:29

accelerators, such as the one I'm presenting today.

28:32

So please connect with your customer success manager

28:35

or designated support specialist,

28:36

and we can deliver more Forge content for you.

28:40

Now the final section, the Umbrella of Forge,

28:44

in this section we'll quickly glimpse

28:46

through the actual APIs, the functionality

28:50

available on the Forge platform today.

28:53

So on the Forge platform, you'll find nine APIs available today.

29:00

The first one that you'll need to learn

29:02

is the Authentication API.

29:05

Without it, you won't be able to use any of the other API

29:09

that you see on this slide.

29:11

Without properly authenticating with the Forge server,

29:15

you won't be able to access your data that you've stored

29:18

in BIM360 Docs or Fusion Team.

29:21

The next API that you'll probably

29:24

be using with the first one is Data Management API.

29:27

This one allows you to interact with your data in the cloud.

29:30

And I'll go into the details.

29:32

BIM360 is all about interacting with the information

29:36

you have in BIM360.

29:38

However, the Viewer is the Visualization API,

29:42

the technology you can use to visualize your 3D.

29:45

Token Flex API is all about acquiring the consumption

29:50

information, the usage data, all your Autodesk products

29:52

that are on Token Flexs.

29:54

So this one can only be used by enterprise business customers.

29:59

We have also WebHooks API, Design Automation API,

30:03

Model Derivative API, and Reality Capture.

30:06

So let me go into the pricing, and then we'll

30:09

go into each API in a little bit more detail.

30:12

So when we make HTTP request to Forge,

30:16

depending on what we are doing, we'll be charged cloud credits.

30:22

Again, 1 cloud credit is the same as 1 EBA token.

30:26

So here is the translation.

30:28

Depending on what you are doing, the pricing model will change.

30:33

So if you're running a CAD engine in the cloud,

30:36

like Inventor through Design Automation or AutoCAD

30:39

through design automation, you'll

30:41

find that the pricing model is based on processing hour.

30:46

What that means is that it's the time it takes

30:49

to upload the CAD models to the cloud,

30:52

to run Inventor in the cloud.

30:55

Open those files, run the add-in, the command, the custom

30:60

command, and download the output.

31:03

So processing hour includes all those activities.

31:06

And so let's imagine you have some automation for Inventor

31:11

and it takes 20 minutes per job, you'd

31:16

have to run three jobs to be charged 6 tokens.

31:20

Model Derivative API, a little bit different.

31:24

Here it's not about the translation.

31:27

We don't count how long it takes to run on our servers.

31:30

We charge you based on each translation.

31:33

So Model Derivative API is the API

31:36

that you use to prepare your CAD files for viewing.

31:41

So this is the API you'll be using

31:44

prior to using the Viewer API so that you can visualize your

31:49

[INAUDIBLE].

31:50

Reality Capture API, again this is photogrammetry workflow.

31:53

In this case, we're dealing with pictures.

31:56

That's why we're charging against pixel process.

32:00

So you can see.

32:02

So just to be clear, those three APIs

32:04

are the only one today that will have a cost for you.

32:08

Authentication API.

32:09

So this API allows you to log in to the Forge servers.

32:13

And essentially what it returns is

32:16

what we call an access token.

32:18

And it's using the industry standard for authentication,

32:22

is the OAuth2 process.

32:25

You can see that it's a free API.

32:27

You won't be charged for logging in into Forge.

32:30

But essentially what you get back is an access token.

32:33

That access token is an encoded long chain

32:36

of strings and numbers.

32:38

Essentially you can see if we decoded,

32:40

it contains information about the Forge application client ID

32:45

as well as the scope prior to the permissions for that access

32:48

token.

32:48

That access token is valid for an hour.

32:51

And any other API you call, so let's imagine Data Management

32:55

API or Model Derivative API, whenever

32:58

you place the call to that, you'll

32:60

have to pass that access token information into the HTTP

33:04

request you make to the Forge server.

33:06

And obviously after one hour, if the token has expired,

33:10

you'll have to ask for a new one.

33:13

Data management API.

33:14

So this one also is free but very powerful.

33:18

And you'll definitely be using.

33:20

This one allows you to interact with your files in the cloud,

33:25

in the Autodesk cloud.

33:26

It's not just CAD files.

33:29

It's also a PDF, Office Documents

33:32

that you can interact with.

33:33

You can see that we have connectors

33:35

to BIM360 Docs to Fusion Team, to BIM360 Team as well.

33:40

OK.

33:41

So data management API is API you

33:43

use to interact with your data in the cloud.

33:47

BIM360 API is also free, most likely

33:51

because you already have a BIM360 subscription.

33:54

So you're already paying for BIM360

33:56

through your subscription.

33:58

Therefore, access to the API is free.

34:01

So to note, allows you to access the accounts information,

34:06

issues, checklist, as well as some other workflows,

34:09

like publishing the documents, this type of things.

34:13

You can see there's also some beta APIs.

34:15

They are public, around cost management

34:18

and model coordination.

34:19

So we keep on adding more APIs to the BIM360 API area.

34:26

Model Derivative API is the API you

34:28

use to translate to prepare the CAD files for viewing.

34:32

So you have uploaded some Inventor files.

34:36

You can call the Model Derivative

34:37

API to translate that Inventor model into a file format

34:42

that the Web Viewer or Forge can actually read.

34:47

So you'll hear that on file format svf,

34:50

you'll hear it being mentioned, but that's essentially what

34:53

that translation is all about.

34:54

So it's a service.

34:55

It's a translation pipeline.

34:57

You can translate over 65 format through its Navisworks, Revits,

35:03

Inventor, AutoCAD.

35:04

You can see that it's not about just translating the geometry.

35:08

It's also you could just generate thumbnails.

35:11

You can also extract metadata from the files.

35:14

So if your Inventor file as [INAUDIBLE] properties,

35:18

you could extract that as well.

35:20

The Forge Viewer, so again this one is not a RESTful API.

35:23

It's the client-side JavaScript library.

35:25

But essentially it allows you to do 3D visualization

35:29

in the browser.

35:31

What that means is that you can integrate this Viewer web

35:35

component into any web application.

35:39

So if you have a custom portal today,

35:41

you can enhance your customer experience

35:43

by adding 3D visualization of your products

35:47

into your customer portal.

35:48

So a lot of things can be done with this.

35:52

As well as these Web Viewer can be customized.

35:55

You can customize the toolbar and add

35:58

new buttons, extensions.

36:01

And you can create some custom experiences

36:04

that your business needs, that can

36:06

be specific to your workflow, your need.

36:10

So it's customizable.

36:11

Design Automation, so we covered it.

36:13

It's essentially running AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit

36:16

and 3ds MAX in the cloud.

36:19

WebHooks, it's an API that allows you

36:22

to listen to specific events.

36:24

So I'll give you a concrete example.

36:26

Let's imagine you are uploading a new version

36:29

of a file to BIM360 Docs while you could register

36:32

WebHook for that event.

36:35

When that occurs?

36:36

When you upload a new version of a file in BIM360 Docs,

36:40

the WebHook will be called.

36:43

And that WebHook will make an HTTP request somewhere else.

36:49

That D else could be calling the Slack API or the Twitter API

36:56

or Salesforce API or even an Autodesk API.

36:60

And if we go back to Slack, we could maybe post a new message

37:05

to a specific user saying the new version of the file

37:08

has been created, please go check.

37:11

So this is the type of experience

37:13

that a WebHook allows you to do.

37:15

Reality Capture.

37:16

So we have two modes, the object mode and the drawing mode.

37:21

So you can do two type of things.

37:24

It's always about taking pictures and generating

37:27

a 3D mesh model from it, but those pictures

37:30

can be taken from a drone, or if you are on the factory floor,

37:35

you can use a camera and have an object rotate,

37:38

and you'll generate a

37:43

Last but not least, the Token Flex Usage Data API.

37:47

This API is only available to enterprise customers.

37:51

It's free of use.

37:53

It allows you to query your token consumption and product

37:58

usage for Token Flex.

37:60

So it allows you to build custom reports

38:03

on maybe your Revit product usage, your AutoCAD product

38:07

usage, but also cloud services.

38:10

Thank you for watching.

38:11

I hope you found his presentation informative

38:15

and that you'll have some ideas to start

38:20

new Forge application for manufacturing at your own pace.

38:25

And if you need any help from the Autodesk team,

38:29

please work with your customer success manager and designated

38:33

support specialist.

38:35

Thank you again for watching.

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