Breaking Silos – Share Your Design Data Across Tools with Autodesk Data Exchange

PHILIPPE VIDEAU: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our class, Breaking Silos-- Sharing Your Design Data Across Tools with Autodesk Data Exchange. My name is Philippe Videau, and I'm here with my colleague, Gaurav Bhamre. And today, we're going to talk about how you can connect your data across the different applications you use every day, be it Revit, Civil 3D, Rhino, Inventor, Power BI, and more.

Just a quick little bit about ourselves. Like I mentioned, my name is Philippe Videau. I'm a senior product manager on our cloud data team. I've been working at Autodesk for over seven years in our cloud platform, bridging the divide between our different applications and bringing desktop data to the cloud.

Gaurav has been with Autodesk over a year. He's got a solid background in architecture and BIM management, and he works alongside our team to build out our connectors. And we'll get into what those mean in a few slides here.

We're super thrilled to have you with us. If you made it to AU, hope you had a great AU. And if you're watching this recording afterwards, hope these next set of slides and demos will be fun and helpful for your workflows.

Before we jump in to the meat of this, this is just a safe harbor statement. I'm not going to read through the whole thing, but basically, we're going to say some forward-looking features we'll be building out, products we'll be building out. Don't make any purchasing decisions based on just what you see in this presentation.

All right, so here's the session outline in summary. We're going to start out, I'll cover a couple slides around our cloud platform introduction, introducing it, as well as the vision behind the cloud platform and how this relates to all this data flow that we're talking about between your different design applications and the importance of that. We'll then get into what Autodesk Data Exchange is and how you might be able to use it today in your interoperability and sharing workflows.

And then we'll get into three demos. So I'll cover this first one here around design development. Gaurav will then get into infrastructure site coordination and 2D and 3D BIM model evolution, using those different tools that you see on the screen right now. He'll then cover what's coming next, so some roadmap topics and items, and then we'll get into how to get started, how can you get your hands on Autodesk Data Exchange and on these connectors. And actually, I think we flipped those last two ones, so we'll start with getting started and then go to roadmap.

All right, so let's kick it off with the first piece here. And I'm going to talk a little bit before getting into interoperability and sharing data across teams, I want to take a step back and talk through why this is important and why this evolution requires really a platform mindset, not just a tool-specific view of how to use data across your design to make workflows. And really, this platform mindset is a change across our industry, not just a change in Autodesk as a software provider, but really, from your perspective as folks who work within the AEC, design and manufacturing, and media and entertainment industries, as well.

One piece that has become more and more critical to our industry, especially with the onset of more analytics, AI, machine learning, all this kind of new stuff that has been coming over and evolving over the past 10 to 15 years, really what's at the center of that is data. It's the new fuel of our industry.

Not only does a ton of data go unused across AEC projects, but there's also a rapidly growing desire from owners, contractors, architects to make better use of data across a more connected design, building, and handoff process. You see there over 80%-- this has probably grown since we've taken this survey-- of owners and operators want to drive better decisions from building data. And that goes all the way to the conceptual design, early design process, as well.

And to power all these new analytical systems, AI, machine learning, real-time insights from past and current projects, all the way to influence better and future projects, data really needs to flow seamlessly across the tools you use every day, across the cloud services you might use every day. That's the way it's going to be most useful. And when data gets locked into a specific tool, that's the first hindrance to its use.

And so to actually realize the full opportunities we're talking about here around unlocking those insights, it's important that data flows across industries, too. Buildings don't just involve today the use of architectural and engineering tools in a silo. They evolve. They're becoming more like products themselves through processes like industrialized construction. They're requiring more visualization and interactive tools, like digital twins.

So again, these traditional silos that existed between our industries are also collapsing, too. They're starting to converge. And a platform that can surface and connect data easily across these industries can best unlock those opportunities. And that's what we've built and continue to evolve on Autodesk cloud platform.

So with that, let's narrow our focus a little bit more on one of the-- or on the platform tool we're going to talk about today. This is one of our newest interoperability tools, called Autodesk Data Exchange. And this focuses, like I said, on interoperability and sharing and connecting data across the tools you use every day. We released our first set of connectors last year, and we've been evolving this ecosystem pretty rapidly. And we'll talk about that in the next few slides.

We started this platform journey several years back because we heard from customers and software sales the fragmentation in how data flowed across our products. Collaboration, as many of you know and live and breathe through every day, is fragmented in AEC. For one, this happens because there are a ton of tools used across an AEC project.

With lots of vendor offerings, sharing data is inconsistent across the board, even between Autodesk products. And this data sharing is pretty time-consuming. It takes teams away from the creative work. It takes you away from work that differentiates your business. It can be super costly to maintain all these different plug-ins. And oftentimes, it takes a lot of manual effort to pass data around between applications, which can lead to a lot of manual errors.

And then secondly, we work in a very collaborative world. Especially since COVID, it feels like it's even become much more collaborative. Delivering different projects requires multiple firms and stakeholders across the globe. So on top of those fragmented tools, you have now to manage cross-company data flows. And managing who has access to what data can become very, very complex. And in some cases, it's very top of mind, especially when your company needs to protect your own design IP and share only what's needed with stakeholders.

Lastly, projects aren't getting simpler. So the amount of bespoke, custom requirements that your project stakeholders are imposing on projects or asking you to deliver on is only increasing. And given that tool fragmentation, this makes keeping all those different stakeholders up to date even more difficult and more costly using traditional tools. And especially when many of you are looking to automate your different workflows, having connected tools and, below that, connected data is even more important.

Now, a big reason why there's fragmentation in the AEC industry is because, frankly, file-based collaboration is very painful. Today, files are the smallest unit of collaboration. And as you move files between different products and organizations, there's a patchwork of different standards, which results in challenges like translation and the fact that multiple disciplines can't work simultaneously on the same design.

It leads to mistakes as teams try to manage different versions of these files. It's very costly to do those translations. And then lastly, like I mentioned, there can be IP concerns with transferring an entire file to a stakeholder that contains a bunch of data you might not want to share.

So what we're doing at Autodesk is we're cracking those files open, and we are breaking those files into valuable bits of data, different objects and properties that represent a building, a product, you name it. We're breaking that up and we're storing that, we're standardizing that, and we're managing that in the cloud in a much more transparent way. And by transparent, I mean open way that applications can read and write data to.

By doing that, we can start standardizing how teams collaborate across the cloud in our different products. And we can do that by starting to provide customers-- and this is what we're doing-- curated ways to share durable subsets of data across their applications. We'll get into this, but data stays in sync when updates occur upstream and downstream applications can consume those.

So that's what we started to build. We started to build an experience that allows customers to share the right data with the right person in the right context. And that's what we call Data Exchange.

And our mission here is, again, to tackle those challenges of a fragmented ecosystem and build a much more connected application ecosystem, whether that includes Autodesk tools or third-party tools and other vendor tools. It's really important that we start, as an industry, to think of these tools needing to be much more connected, despite the vendor it comes from.

Secondly, what's really important is that you are able to curate the data you share. You're not just sharing a massive file with all your stakeholders. You can filter down the data you need and share that with the stakeholders who need it at the right time. And then lastly, we're going to deal with the challenges of connectivity across different apps and services by creating durable, reactive data that stays up to date for your stakeholders when you make changes.

So let's get into just a quick overview demo of Data Exchange and how this works, and then we'll get into some demos.

All right. So I'm just going to fast forward this a little bit.

All right. So like I mentioned, Data Exchange is all about sharing just the data you need. So in an abstract way, let's say you want to share a staircase across different stakeholders who might be using different tools, like Rhino, Inventor, Power Automate to automate those workflows. That data, that subset of data can be shared with those tools and then sent back to different tools.

So let's take, again, a look at some of these high-level workflows. So you might be an architect working in Revit. You can use our connector, which you see on screen there, and select just the data you need and share that data to a folder and project and account in Autodesk Construction Cloud. That shares just that subset of data. And anyone who has access to that subset of data can go and view that in the cloud environment on a web browser.

A designer in Rhino, who has been given access to that subset of data, can use the Rhino connector, which you see there in the top right, to bring in that data. And we're not just talking about 3D geometry data. You'll see, we'll pull up here all the different properties that come in, which can be very important to 3D design and BIM workflows. In a similar take, a user and Inventor can also bring in that data. Now, what's important here is that these changes made upstream are durable. So it's really pretty easy. It's a couple of clicks to update the exchange here. And stakeholders can then get notified and bring in that exchange into their environment whenever they see fit.

So that person using Rhino can bring in those updates. It may be later a person halfway across the globe, who's using Inventor, can bring in that data for further engineering or context and factory layout. We can even power automation workflows. So here, you'll see that same exchange being used to power a Power Automated workflow. This is a Microsoft tool that you can hook up different systems to write. For instance, to a Power BI dashboard, or like you see here, an Excel table extracting just that property information. We have connectors, like I mentioned, between Rhino and Revit. So you can start to pass data between those conceptual design tools all through the Cloud.

And like I mentioned, let's say our designer in Rhino goes ahead and updates that exchange. Well, those updates are durable. It can be passed to the architect in Revit. So you see that data brought in can load data in as well. Here we make a few updates, and those get sent throughout the system. And again, these are not one to one application connectors. What's important is that Data Exchange can be read into multiple different applications, so long as we have a connector. So you see here, that same exact subset of data that's been shared through the Cloud can be read into Inventor. Or even a subset of that can be read in-- just the panels.

Because you might want to go ahead and detail and fabricate those panels in Inventor or in another manufacturing tool. So that's a basic overview of Data Exchange. We're going to get into some more real workflows here. I just have a couple slides, and then we'll get into those. But that's an overview. You can find that video on YouTube as well. Typing in Autodesk Data Exchange. All right. So again, to summarize, what are we trying to do with Autodesk Data Exchange? We're sharing curated sets of granular object based data across your different applications and across company boundaries with a high level of trust and control.

So why use Data Exchange? Well, we're simplifying interoperability here. We're sharing data, not files, beyond the Autodesk ecosystem. That includes that rich geometry parameter web viewable data, all which is useful for not just design disciplines, but all those project managers or all your different business stakeholders who might need to inspect valuables, who might need to take a look at different properties to do cost estimates, for instance. So we're bringing more disciplines into the design process earlier. There's curated collaboration. So like I mentioned, you're just sharing your subsets of data, not your entire model. These include gated workflows that allow you, as you saw in the previous video, to push and pull data when ready in your tool of choice.

All you need is that tool of choice. Download the connector for free off the Autodesk App Store, and you just need to have a subscription to Autodesk Docs in order to write that exchange to the Cloud and read it in. And that's that common data environment, is Autodesk Docs. And it comes with these out of the box permissions, so you can start to manage data and those permissions in a familiar way. And on top of that, you can start to leverage Autodesk Docs workflows and modules like issues, transmittals, and bridging workflows across different accounts. So hopefully, that gives you an overview of Data Exchange. We're going to get into the meat of the presentation right now with some workflow demos. So let's just jump right in.

I'm going to kick us off with a detailed design fabrication and dashboard reporting workflow. I know, a mouthful. So just an overview here. We're going to-- imagine we're designing a canopy across a few different teams here. We've got the building design team that's going to be providing the building context, some different attachment points for the canopy design. We've got our design team that is going to be using tools like Rhino and grasshopper to actually do the canopy design with all the panelization of those canopy elements. And then we'll pass it on to a fabricator, who's using a tool like Inventor, to develop the detailing even further and provide sheets to the shop floor.

And lastly, we'll be doing dashboard reporting. So we'll be reporting out on different metrics in the project to different stakeholders who might not have access to those design tools, might not know how to necessarily use those design tools, but know how to interpret the data coming out of those tools. And all this will happen through Data Exchange and through the different Data Exchange connectors we have for those applications on screen.

All right. So let's kick it off. So as in many design development workflows, like I mentioned, a designer needs some context. So imagine our architect here is going to send over just a section-- just a portion of the model-- to our designer in Rhino and in grasshopper. They don't need the whole model. They don't need all the data here. We could filter this down even further, but we'll just take this 3D view here. And that's what you need in Revit to use Data Exchange today. You need a 3D view, which is oftentimes how folks will filter data down. Here, you can name that Data Exchange and navigate to the Autodesk Docs Project in folder to share that in. So again, you can leverage those permissions in Autodesk Docs to limit who has access to that exchange.

We also have some further filtering capabilities. So you can filter on the categories here in Revit when you're actually sharing that exchange. So here, that gets created in Autodesk Docs. And once that Data Exchange is created, it comes along with a 3D viewable. So like I mentioned in the previous video, anyone who has access to this Data Exchange can go and actually view it and can go and share it, so long as they have the right permission. So here, I'm going to share it to my colleague. I'm actually going to go and share it to myself, but let's imagine someone else is doing that. And they'll get sent an email with a link, and they can go and access that exchange immediately.

So here, I can open that exchange in that web browser. Super easy to do. And back in Rhino-- this is a different tool-- I can use the connector for Rhino to load in that exchange. So here, it'll pull up. I don't even have to go to Autodesk Docs to do this. I just have to be in Rhino, the tool I'm comfortable with, and I can navigate to the exchange that's been shared. I can preview it, or I can load it in directly.

So what's great here is, I can place the objects on different layers according to their categories. I can also bring in specific parameters associated with those categories. So this is some lightweight mapping that we offer between the Revit and Rhino connectors. We're going to be developing this further. Gaurav will talk a bit about this in our roadmap to provide much deeper mapping functionality across these different connectors and applications. That mapping really gives consumers, and ultimately, authors control over what data they bring into the model.

So in Rhino, I've Martha Stewarted this design. So I've got the attachment points all created. I'm not going to necessarily go through the entire design process here, because we're trying to highlight how you can filter and share data easily. So here I've got the attachment points and a simple canopy that I've already designed. What I can do again, using the Rhino connector here, is just in a few clicks send just the attachment points in the canopy back over to Autodesk Docs. And my partner back in Revit can pull just those attachment points and canopy in. So that's what I'm doing here. I'm, again, selecting that Autodesk Docs folder. Might be a different folder. Might be the same one depending on how we've set up our collaboration. And I can share that data pretty easily.

So at this point, this would create a new exchange. Right now, we don't have multi authoring from the different connectors. So once you create an exchange from Revit, it can only be updated from Revit. The same goes with Revit and our other-- sorry, Rhino and our other connectors. So with this exchange in Rhino, I can only update that exchange from the Rhino client itself. Again, we're going to be looking at multi authoring, where you can update the same exchange from different applications, later on next year.

So here, I've created that exchange. And once that's been sent over to the Cloud, the architect in Revit can now view that and then pull that data in so that he can do more iteration on the designs.

And you'll notice, across our connectors, the experience is pretty consistent. And we want to make sure that that's a part of our entire connector ecosystem. Consistency and familiarity is really important to us. There are a ton of different applications and tools out there. And having sharing be consistent across those tools is something that'll certainly ease the process of collaborating with different stakeholders.

So here, I've made some pretty dramatic changes to the canopy design. I've got a grasshopper script going. Just another tool that interacts with Rhino here. A visual programming tool. So here, what I've done-- I've also penalized the canopies. So I've added those panels for fabrication, and I've added different parameters that are going to be important to send over to the architect. So I've added-- you'll see colors here, panel colors. I've added different panel sizes. I've designated the panels differently depending on their size. And then we have, of course, different panel IDs. So this is much later in the design process. Still probably in the early design phase though. But there's been a lot of iteration back and forth, and potentially, a lot of different exchanges or exchange data passing between the two applications.

So here in green, you'll see those properties like I mentioned. So we can use the Data Exchange connector for grasshopper as well. We've got a-- we've got a connector for that tool. That allows you, again, directly from within grasshopper to create or receive exchanges. So here, we've sent that over to Autodesk Docs. See that getting created there? And then again, this data is accessible to any application that has a connector. It's not just DynamoDB or Revit. It's Inventor. It's Power BI. And we'll get to that in a little bit here.

But here, our architect opens yet another tool. This is DynamoDB. This is a low-- or this is a visual programming tool that works with Revit as well. And we're going to use this tool to add a bit more information onto the exchange. When that exchange data comes into Revit through our Revit connector, it comes in today as direct shapes, generic models. That's going to be improved over time. But using the DynamoDB connector, like you see here, we can add more information to the incoming exchange so that it acts much more like native Revit elements. So we can create adaptive components, for instance, from these panels that are coming in, which is what we're going to do here versus a generic model, which has use, but not as much use as adaptive components in this workflow.

So here, we've set up that script to read in the exchange using the DynamoDB connector, and then it's passed through to create those adaptive components, which we now see manifested in Revit. We can then create a schedule from these adaptive components to provide information to other stakeholders. So that's what we're going to do here. We're going to send over a bit of information, and that'll be useful for project stakeholders who might be using Power BI who need to visualize this information in a more accessible way.

So there's that schedule with all the different points, X, Y, Z, the panel type, and then the panel size as well. Before we send that data over to Power BI, we're going to send it over to our fabricator though. And again, here we're going to open the Data Exchange connector for Inventor. We're going to access an exchange that has been shared. This is a subset of the canopy. You could definitely bring in the whole canopy if you wanted to. This is just for simplicity. I'm going to bring in a subset of that. And here, again, really simple to bring this data in. Just a couple of clicks, and you've got that data available here as surfaces. The Inventor user engineer here, who's doing the detailing, can then continue the workflow in Inventor.

Here, we're just going to do some light extrudes on the surface. And we'll do some very basic panelization. This is obviously a lot more involved in some of the real workflows that you all engage in. So we'll add different materials, and again, framing on the panels. But this workflow can continue in Inventor all the way down to the shop floor. So you can create not only 3D models and Inventor, but also sheets. And Gaurav will get to some of the other manufacturing tools that will be integrating and creating connectors for.

So while this is happening-- we'll go over to Power BI in just a second here-- a completely different workflow can be happening as well. We can bring in data into other tools, like you'll see in Power BI, for reporting out. So this is our Power BI connector. By the time of this recording will be out, this will probably be in a beta. It's currently in alpha right now. Here in Power BI, we can load in the data from an exchange, which you see on the right hand side. It brings in all those rich parameters from that exchange, depending on which application it's coming from. Here, we're showing a Revit based exchange. So we can bring in the 3D view, and we can start to color the categories, families. And basically, any of the different parameters that come in through that exchange-- you can start to color and filter.

So here we've just done it to a couple of different categories here. We can bring in that data into different tables and graphs so that it's more useful, again, for those perhaps non designers or disciplines that don't have access to those authoring design applications. And what's great about this connector is, you can start to filter data down. So you can start to multiselect. You can select by different families or categories, and it will highlight. It will correspond to that 3D view, giving you more context on what you are viewing with different stakeholders. We can do the same thing with that exchange that's coming over from Rhino. So again, these connectors are not just 1 to 1. This Power BI connector can read data coming in from a multitude of tools that we have connectors for.

And we can bring in that data that's coming in that we saw on the schedule for instance, or that was designated in Grasshopper. So we see all those different points, and we can even add on cost calculations to that. So we've done that-- I believe we did that through DynamoDB. It wasn't shown, but you can always add that in into your different scripts or different tools and push that to a tool like Power BI. All right. So that wraps up this design development workflow. I'm going to pass it on to Gaurav to cover our next workflow. Gaurav?

GAURAV BHAMRE: Thanks, Philippe. So next up, we have site infrastructure coordination workflow. Essentially here, we will be having a look at a workflow, particularly applications. One is your Revit. Second is civil 3D. And all of that is coordinated via ACCDocs, where our exchanges reside. So this workflow is basically used for site coordination, where you can coordinate your architectural model with your site infrastructure and utilities, such as plumbing lines or roads, [INAUDIBLE], terrain, bridges, et cetera. So let's see how it works, and let's dive into the workflow. Phillipe, can move to the next slide?

Cool. So for this example, we are taking a very simple structure of a parking lot, and we will be sharing a conceptual design for a road and the location of the fire hydrant and the storm sewer connection. So here, we are creating an exchange. And as you can see, we can filter down just the elements that we require for our exchange. So we'll be filtering side elements as well as the road that we've created over here. So you can see the little thumbnail that gets updated according to your selection. So once you create an exchange, as we've seen, the exchange gets saved on ACCDocs. We'll quickly go and view the exchange on ACC just to make sure all our selection has been grabbed correctly, and just to validate.

Cool. So seems like we have our roads, the fire hydrant, and the storm sewer connection in the exchange. Now we'll go to Civil 3D and open the connector in Civil 3D. As you see, the process of creating and loading exchange is quite consistent across different connectors. So here, you also get an option of mapping your categories to layers in Civil 3D. So our exchange is loaded. You can see the road. So this is just a conceptual location or a placeholder for a road to get an idea of our inside infrastructure. So what we'll be doing here is, we will be connecting the city utilities like the fire hydrant and the storm sewer connection with high pressure pipe network. And another one is the storm drains.

And then we will move it back to Revit and see how it comes up in Revit.

Along with these elements, like pipes, also corridors, alignments, and profiles are supported from Civil 3D. So you can also share those elements from Civil 3D to Revit or any other application of your choice for which we have connectors today. So say, for example, we can share this information with Rhino, Inventor, and AutoCAD as well. So now we are creating a storms sewer line. Just dragging it at the center of the road, [INAUDIBLE]. That's it. Cool. Now we will go to the Data Exchange connector and create a new Data Exchange of just the pipe network here.

So we have multiple filtering options that is by layer, by item, and by category. So you can either create an exchange by layer, or a type of element that you want. Or you also have an option of selection, which will grab the elements that are selected and pull that into your exchange. Cool. So now our exchange is created from Civil 3D. We'll try to load it back into Revit this is a workflow essentially where our architect and the Civil designers are working on the project at the same time, and they need to share a small, cost specific information in the real time. Most of these are dependent on coordination meetings or Navisworks just to coordinate the location of these utilities.

But using data exchange is easier when you have just a specific subset to share. So here, you can see we've got all of our plumbing lines into Revit. They are showing up at the correct location. And when I say location, right now we support all the data exchanges, which are placed origin to origin when you create an exchange. All of the exchanges are placed origin to origin. What we're doing right now is just trying to move the location of the fire hydrant and see if the deltas are getting communicated to the Data Exchange. So all of your changes or updates are in sync with the rest of your stakeholders. You can simply go downstream and update the exchange or reload the exchange, and you can see the latest changes coming in.

All right. So you see the fire hydrant has slightly moved to the left. So that's the latest location. And now, I'll just try to align that location with the high pressure network pipe and another one for our sewer connection. So in the previous pipeline layout, it was clashing with our structural foundation. So we'll try to move it to right, and I will also increase the size of the sewer main just to show that, even if you change the element parameters, those are also carried over into your exchanges. Yeah.

This entire process of creating an exchange, reloading and updating exchange, you can draw a parity between Revit co-authoring where you can sync and relinquish your latest changes and immediately share it with your stakeholders. But on a broader level, where you can do this between different applications and different organizations as well. So now we are updating our latest exchange, and we can see those changes will be reflected into Revit as well. OK. So this is a simple example of coordinating site utilities and site infrastructure. This was just the sewer lines and the high pressure network pipes. But you can extend this example to your corridors as well as bridges and terrain as well.

OK, now let's quickly move to the next example or next workflow. Our next workflow is converting 2D drawings to 3D models. So this is very prominent where your teams or the design teams are mostly working on 2D layouts in the initial stage of projects, which are then converted to 3D models. So the applications here are AutoCAD, DynamoDB, and Revit that we'll be working with. Most of these workflows are for architectural layouts. So let's start diving into it.

Cool. So we're starting with the basic AutoCAD layout-- a floor plan. And what we'll be doing here is filtering out just the walls faces. So you can see those wall faces are selected now. And we will be creating an exchange only of the wall faces. So the good part is, our data exchanges support primitive geometry as well as 3D geometry. So if you just want to share the lines and points through Data Exchange, you can do that as well. And then feed it into applications like DynamoDB and grasshopper, which will do visual programming. And you can build on top of these primitive geometries. And that's exactly what we're going to do now.

So here, we are coming to DynamoDB. As you've already seen in the previous demos, we have a connector for DynamoDB as well, which provides us with a set of nodes that will allow you to load exchanges, create exchanges, and also filter the data coming in from your exchanges. You can filter it through as a geometry, or you can just get the parameters as well. Right. One of the reasons we're going through DynamoDB right now is, we are working on a native support for Revit, which will come in near future. But right now, if you want to get more native geometry from your 2D drawings, then you can do it through DynamoDB.

So when you-- now our layout has been loaded. Now we will be using the out of the box nodes in DynamoDB that will help us in creating walls. So here, we are assigning specific parameters that we need or the type and category, which we want for our wals to be shown in.

And just to reiterate, this model will be coming on-- will align origin to origin with your CAD layout. So that's something that we will have to keep in mind when working with different applications. All of these applications or layouts will be aligned to origin to origin. So here, you can see we've loaded the Data Exchange and created DynamoDB, created the walls using DynamoDB nodes. So these are your [INAUDIBLE] walls.

Cool. Now I'll go ahead and expand on that model. Just add a small floor to the same layout and share it back to our original source that is the AutoCAD layout. So this way, you can communicate the changes or any feedback from your 3D model to your 2D drawings. So your 2D designer, architect can go ahead and update that information into his 2D layouts as well. In this case, we'll be sharing out the entire model.

What we just saw is a pop up that we have every time. So data exchanges and our connectors make sure that any data that you shared is also saved. So that is a sync between your local files and the exchanges as well. All right. So if you view this exchange on ACC, you can see all the walls along with its properties as well. Yeah. OK. Now we'll try to load the same back into AutoCAD.

So again, all of these 3D elements will be mapped to a specific layer. Walls will be mapped to a wall layer, and then floors or ceilings will be mapped to a specific layer, depending on the standards. Right now, those are the ones that we're following. So Yeah, this is how you can transfer your 2D layouts to a 3D model and communicate the same in the entire life cycle of the project. Right. So these were the connectors that you just saw and what they can do. How can you get your hands on the connectors is what we'll see next. And so right now, we have a bunch of learning resources as well as a few helpful links that you can get.

We'll also be sharing this presentation with you. So we have all of our connectors on app stores. So you can just type in Data Exchange connectors, and you'll get a list of all the connectors that you can download it from there. Feel free to join our beta program so you can be in touch with our latest connectors or hear the latest updates on the Data Exchange. To learn more about data exchanges, feel free to go to our website, which has good resources as well as few webinars that we've had with our friends at McNeil. And for Revit and Rhino connector.

You also have a couple of blog posts for every connector, which highlights the capabilities of that particular connector and how they can be used in real world scenarios for any additional inquiries. Feel free to join our community forum and contact us directly in case you need any additional support. All right. Now, using these resources and what we have available on the forum, some of our partners have created their own connections or their own integrations using data exchanges. So a few of them are PowerPoint, Inventor, and automated [INAUDIBLE] analysis applications. So you can build your own application as well using the Data Exchange SDK.

Our Data Exchange SDK has recently went public beta, so feel free to join the public beta and try your hands out with the Data Exchange SDK. Moving on. So let's have a quick look at what we have on our roadmap and what's coming next for data exchanges. So today we have around 11 connectors already available on our public beta or [INAUDIBLE] general availability. Most of those connectors are focused on [INAUDIBLE] industry. We also have a few that are supporting the manufacturing and design. So moving forward, we would like to move our focused on manufacturing and design as well. Some of the connectors that we are currently working on are the SolidWorks Power BI connector, which helps the non design personnels to visualize the data and create dashboards or analyze the data.

The IFC connector that will help you to extract data from IFC formats instead of opening it in any other application. Similarly, we're working on Navisworks. And we're also extending our support to BIM 360 because right now, we only have ACC supported for data exchanges. Later next year, we are also planning to work on media and entertainment applications like Maya 3ds Max and a few more. Along with the connectors, we are also working on enhancing the capabilities for our data exchanges. So one of the major capabilities that we're working on this year is the property mapping, which will allow the users to map a certain property or an element to the native properties of that application. So this will give you a better control over the data when you receive percent data exchanges.

And this will also help in Native translations so that you can do more with the data exchanges in the Native application. Later next year, we will be working on data management for the exchanges, with which will have functionalities like searching across the exchanges, object version compare, which will allow you to compare between different versions of exchanges, and communicate any changes or comment, or review any changes that are in the latest versions.

We're also working on exchange templates, which will allow you to save the format or the settings of your exchange so that can be replicated on multiple projects or any repetitive workflows throughout your organization. So that's something we'll be working on. Along with the functionalities for data exchanges, we are also working towards developer enablement, so the developers can create their own Data Exchange connections or build similar connectors as we have. So the first steps toward that was our GraphQL API that we have released in public beta. So right now, we have our Data Exchange SDK that we just released in public beta. Feel free to join it through our beta forums.

Next year, we will be adding some enhancements to our Data Exchange SDK as well as publishing more Data Exchange SDKs beyond just C#. So that was our roadmap, and we have a public roadmap too. On the public roadmap, we show new connectors and features we are building into the ecosystem. Some are in progress. Some are under consideration. Now here, you can share your own suggestions and upload new connectors and let us know why they are important to you and your workflows. We are excited to hear from you and know your thoughts regarding what should be our next steps or next priorities that will help us understand the workflows that you would like to see us support.

And with this, I'd like to hand it over to Philippe.

PHILIPPE VIDEAU: Yeah. Thanks, Gaurav. And that wraps up our presentation on Autodesk Data Exchange. We want to thank you for taking the time to watch this recording. Hopefully, it was helpful for you to understand how you can level up your data sharing and collaboration workflows. We look forward to you trying these out-- the connectors, the platform itself. And like Gaurav said, share your use cases with us. Share your questions, share your stories on the forums or directly to us. This is how we build that ecosystem up. This is how we start to change the industry and have data flow much more consistently across the different tools so that we can, ultimately, all build better projects, better buildings, better spaces. So with that, we'll end it here. And thanks very much.