& Construction

Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing

Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
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.
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.