Data-Driven: Digitally Share CAD Data Throughout the Product Lifecycle

CHRISTIAN GESSNER: Hello, and welcome to Data-Driven-- Digitally share CAD data throughout the product lifecycle. This class is about connecting your corporate system and sharing your CAD data in order to avoid data silos. My name's Christian Gessner. I'm a co-founder and technical evangelist with COOLORANGE.

My job is to help our customers to use the right technology. I have a software development background and was working on Vault automation and integration projects. And prior to COOLORANGE, I was working at Autodesk in the data management software development team.

After short introduction of COOLORANGE, I will talk about systems that can and that should be shared, data, CAD data in particular, with each other. After that, I will talk-- I will walk you through the different technologies that we use to integrate and connect our customers' system and also list some limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of the different technologies that we usually use. And at the end, and this is my personal highlight of this session, I have the pleasure to showcase four customers that already eliminated their data silos and benefit from the system integrations.

So with that said, let's get started. Who's COOLORANGE? COOLORANGE was founded in 2009. And since then, we have delivered software tools and implementation services for Autodesk manufacturing customers. Our focus has been improving common engineering workflows through automation and connectivity. COOLORANGE was founded by former Autodesk employees that worked on the Vault development team, as well as in the product management.

Our headquarter is in the beautiful Valley in North Italy. And we have offices in Germany, in Spain, and in the US. And we are an Autodesk development partner and Autodesk platform service certified partner. And with that, 100% focused on Autodesk products and technologies.

More than 1,000 customers in countries all over the world benefit from our products. And the renewal rate of more than 95% shows our customers' commitment, which drives us continuously improve our solutions. We maintain partnerships with companies around the globe to serve and support our customers in their individual time zones. And all our partners are either Autodesk resellers or other service partners with a lot of experience in the manufacturing and engineering business.

The solutions that we offer actually consist of three main areas, load, automate, and connect. The purpose of the first pillar, the load, is to import huge number of CAD files and metadata into customers' PDM systems, usually this is Vault. This CAD data comes from other PDM systems, such as SolidWorks, from Windows file systems, or often this is also a merge or cleanup from different Vaults into a single Vault.

The second pillar is the automation product powerJobs, which adds automations and guardrails to our customers' Vaults, helping to avoid manual data entry tasks and enforcing data quality and processes. The third pillar, which is actually in the spotlight of today's class, is to connect products powerGate and powerPLM that are designed and built to connect data of different systems with each other and with the focus of CAD data and engineering data.

All these products and solutions have one thing in common. They're all compatible across different Autodesk product versions. We made this possible by adding a PowerShell customization layer to our products. And this PowerShell layer actually hides the complexity of the Vault APIs and allows our customers, partners, and our own consulting teams to create individual business logic and customizations that remain compatible with future Autodesk product versions.

And this turned out to be major advantage of our customers-- or for our customers for various reasons. This secures their investment and this gives them the flexibility to upgrade their Autodesk ecosystem whenever they want to without the need for waiting for third-party software developers to update their tools made for their custom environments.

I will talk about some of our products later in this class. But for now, let's talk about data and systems in a manufacturing company. If you look at the complete span of a product lifecycle, the complete phases in a manufacturing company, we always see systems like CRM, DMS, PMS systems. Also ERP system is something that almost every manufacturing company has installed and is used.

We noticed companies use Product Lifecycle Management and Product Data Management. And we also see that there is a need for CAM, for Computer Aided Manufacturing, and also add DXF or STP files because this is used for machining their products. To share and to deliver their designs, there is often a need for BIM or for other sharing systems. And, finally, there are MRP or MES systems for resource planning and for manufacturing execution.

And at the center of all this, we see the CAD applications. And, you know, Autodesk has quite a lot of them. And these produce the real intellectual property of a company and the single source of truth. And what's noticeable is that aspects of this CAD data need to be shared with all the systems throughout-- in different phases, but throughout the complete product lifecycle.

However, the sad thing or the sad reality is that this sharing too often happens manually. Engineers literally sit in front of two monitors entering item and BOM information from one system into the other to make them available for other stakeholders or they send emails sharing this information or asking for other information.

Now, let's think about the consequences of keeping this data in silos or sharing this information manually. The consequences, I think, are obvious. However, I need to talk about them for a second. We waste time, we reduce the quality, and we lose money. Manually entering same data in different systems is obviously time consuming. The same is true for uploading files to siloed systems, right?

And also the use of barely known or unfamiliar systems for engineers that are used to work in CAD and Vault is a time-consuming thing, right? And then the reduced quality, manually duplicating data opens the process for errors. That's a fact, right? And decisions that are based on inaccurate, or outdated, or even on no data at all are bad decisions and most likely lead to quality lost.

And then there's the money that we lose when we produce incorrect-- when we produce products based on incorrect data or even penalties that we have to pay when we deliver not in time because of all these mistakes, right? So the question is, does it really make sense not to integrate the systems? Can we really afford keeping the data separated in silos? I don't think so, especially because there is technology available to eliminate the data silos.

And I want to show you some of the technology that we at COOLORANGE typically use in our integration projects. And I've divided these technologies into four different groups, the product features, the web technologies, the integration platforms, and the integration software. I know the product features.

There's a lot more products or product features that I would be able to talk about, Shared Views in Vault, or the Fusion 360 Python, or C APIs, Inventor iLogic, just to name a few. But I want to reduce it to those not only because of time reasons but this is the most commonly used technology in our projects. The web technologies, I want to quickly talk about web services and webhooks.

And the integration platforms, it's worth mentioning the Autodesk Platform Services as well as Microsoft Power Automate. And, finally, we'll have a look at the integration software made by COOLORANGE, powerGate and powerPLM. The point with all these integrations, however, is that customers really start benefiting from these technologies once we combine the technologies with each other and offer solutions rather than just products or services.

So let me get started with Project Sync, Vault Project Sync. Vault Project Sync is an out-of-the-box functionality of Vault that allows you to share CAD data with external collaborators on either Autodesk Docs or Fusion 360. It synchronizes Vault folders either scheduled or manually through Buttons in Vault UI.

And you can set it up to either upload or download files or synchronize them bidirectionally. It also allows to handle only specific files based on customizable filters and it uses the Vault Desktop Connector in the background for the synchronization with the Autodesk cloud products. It's simply a great tool if you want to share CAD data with external collaborators. However, there is also some limitations that I want to inform you about.

So first thing is that it doesn't respect any custom attributes from either Autodesk Docs or Fusion 360 Manage. So there is custom attributes you can set up. In Vault, you have user-defined properties. If they don't match to each other, this tool doesn't synchronize this information. Another restriction is that it's not tied into the Vault workflows. So when you release a file, this doesn't actually automatically lead to a synchronization to the Autodesk cloud platforms.

And if you set it up to work scheduled, the latency is very high. It's eight hours so probably this is also a limitation in your environment. And last but not least, we have the project limitation, which is 40 projects that can be handled by Vault Project Sync. Just be aware of that limitations or restrictions if you want to use Vault Project Sync to share your data with other stakeholders.

If you want to learn more about Vault Project Sync, I can recommend a couple classes from AU, which is Putting Vendors to Work While Keeping Them at Arm's Reach from Carlos Caminos and Joshua Wilson with Bridgestone, or a case study using Autodesk Vault and Autodesk Construction Cloud together from our friends Kim, Andrew, and Chancellor with Team D3, and Get More Out of Your Connected Vault Professional with Mike Thomas.

The next topic I want to talk about is the Vault Software Development Kit, or Vault SDK. The Vault SDK is based on a .NET framework. In the background, the client and the server communicates using a SOAP protocol but this .NET framework wraps this up into more easy understandable API calls. This allows us to create UI extensions, so Buttons, new Tabs, or Dialogs inside of Vault.

It allows us to create custom jobs that are executed by the Vault job processor. It allows us to subscribe to Vault events such as a Lifecycle Transition. And we can create standalone applications with that. And custom numbering schemes can be created that are used by Vault or even by other applications that talk to Vault. Also there is a great documentation and a lot of samples available.

Talking about restrictions, it's using a .NET framework, which actually means that any program that is not capable of or does not understand the .NET framework cannot consume this SDK, right? So this is a limitation especially when we talk about system-to-system integrations.

It's often hard connecting systems that do not speak that language. And another restriction is the cross-version compatibility. So whenever you go to a new Vault version, whenever you update to a new Vault version, you have to recompile all your customizations, all the things that you have done with the Vault SDK. Keep this in mind.

Another Autodesk product that we often target in an integration project is Fusion 360 Manage. Fusion 360 Manage is a powerful scripting engine that is based on JavaScript. It allows us to build scripts for conditional checks, for validations, and for actions. It's based on the JavaScript 1.5 engine.

And it has a limited script runtime, four seconds for conditional scripts, nine seconds for validations and actions, which directly brings me to the restrictions. It has a runtime limitation, meaning that if you want that script to consume any APIs that need a login and some authentication, and then need to transfer huge amount of data, probably these nine seconds for an action script is not enough. So we run into this situation.

Another limitation that I want to mention is the JavaScript engine. It's a really old JavaScript engine and this makes it hard to consume modern web services such as SOAP or OData web services, right? Especially for connection projects, this is a limitation you have to be aware of.

And speaking about web services, this brings me directly to the next chapter, the web technologies that we usually utilize for our system integrations. This is the most obvious web technology. And web services are based on HTTP. They are built upon standard protocols such as SOAP, or REST, or OData.

And because of that, they are program language independent. You can consume that with any technology, whether it's .NET, JavaScript, Python, or any other modern programming language. Web services are the state-of-the-art technology when it comes to exchanging data between different systems.

Another integration technology that is essential for system integrations in most cases is the webhook technology. Webhook is a term for web development method and it's based on HTTP, as the web services are. And it sends callback messages using the HTTP POST method. So whenever a resource is created, updated, or deleted, a callback gets sent to any other system.

Most cloud systems actually support webhooks and can send webhooks when their resources changes. Also the Autodesk products, Fusion 360 Manage, Upchain, Prodsmart, or even Autodesk Docs can send webhooks when their resources changes. And this allows our system integrators to react on changes and synchronize data in other systems. To enable webhooks in the Autodesk products, we can use the Autodesk Platform Services, or APS.

And speaking about APS, or Autodesk Platform Services, formerly this has been known as Autodesk Forge, this is a technology stack for developers and system integrators to build products such as dashboards, or digital twins, product configurators, or even system integrations for their own customers.

APS consists of different web APIs, including authentication, data management, data exchange, manufacturing data model, model derivative, and webhooks, and many more. This is just a list of services that we use when we connect different products with each other. I personally love this technology. It opens so many intuitive ways to present and interact with CAD data even though there are some major limitations that we ran into in past projects.

So one of them is the 3-legged authentication. This is an authentication method that actually is not very useful for system-to-system integrations because it needs a third leg for authentication, and this is the user sitting in front of a computer. For system-to-system integrations, we don't have that user, which makes it hard to consume some of these services. So-- and then there is some missing webhooks that we also experienced in projects.

For instance, if you look at ACC and you create an issue inside of ACC, there's no webhook that actually allows sending of a webhook or callback to another system just because this entity doesn't support any webhooks. But I think is-- Autodesk is working on that and we will soon get more webhooks and even a solution for the 3-legged authentication issue that we have with system-to-system integrations.

The second integration platform that I want to talk about is Microsoft Power Automate. Power Automate is a no-code, low-code platform for both web applications as well as desktop or Windows applications. And they can interact with each other. This makes it super interesting, especially for projects where you have cloud systems and on-prem systems.

The Microsoft Desktop Automation can run PowerShell scripts. And there's even data input triggers that can receive the webhooks from other systems that we talked about earlier, right? And there are also various pre-built connectors, Power BI, Teams, SharePoint, Business Central, and many, many more. And this makes it perfect to wire the different technologies together and use this platform basically for wiring and for messaging purposes.

Restrictions that we have seen so far is a limitation in the pre-built connectors. Even though there is a way to create your own connector, some of the pre-built connectors doesn't support the entire system. For instance, Business Central, I was able to create items, read items in the Business Central ERP system for Microsoft. However, there was no mechanism in these connectors that allowed me to transfer bill of material information. So connectors are fine but limited.

And from integration platforms to integration software. And now I want to talk about the products that we offer at COOLORANGE. PowerGate-- powerGate is our solution to connect Vault with ERP, DMS, or EMS systems, or other systems. It basically allows us to transport live information from these systems into Vault and into Inventor and, with that, provide the information to the users inside of Vault, right?

It also eliminates the need for entering bill of material or item data into the ERP system because there is mechanisms that automatically transfer items and BOMs. It also allows us to insert raw materials and virtual components directly from the ERP system into the CAD application so that we don't have to maintain this information in Vault or in any other databases than the ERP system.

powerGate brings also some guardrails to ensure data integrity. And it comes with a process automation solution that actually is creating PDF files, STP files, CSF files. Whatever is needed in the ERP system can be created inside of Vault and then automatically sent to the ERP system or to other systems, right? And also powerGate works with Vault files or with Vault items and it's customizable using the PowerShell scripting engine.

Let me show you some short examples of how powerGate looks like in a real environment. So this is how powerGate has a pre-built UI and this is how powerGate brings this information live into the Vault interface. We change some information like the price or the stock information inside of the ERP system.

And when we refresh the view involved, we see the information in the right context, live from the ERP system, and with that, eliminate the need to open the ERP system, search for the information, search for an item first, then get this information and work with that information. An engineer inside of Vault directly has this information at the fingertip.

powerGate also completely eliminates the need for manually entering item or BOM data into the ERP system. So we can see a structured file here or an assembly with subassemblies and parts. And we built some UI into Vault. When you click that, it opens a window. And this window is used to bulk update and insert items from Vault into the ERP system, right?

So users can visually see what's the changes between the ERP system and the CAD data. So it compares all the items, all the metadata in the background and then displays a list of things that have been changed or things that need to be created in the ERP system. And on a single button click, you can transfer all this information so no need to enter data manually.

And the same is true for the bill of material information. So it checks all the bill of material in the complete structure up from-- yeah, all the structure of the bill of material including all the subassemblies. And it displays which rows have been added, which rows have been deleted from our bill of materials.

And then, once again, on a single button click, everything is transferred, the user don't have to enter any data at all, right? And in the ERP system, we see the updated bill of material. It's just there and available for purchasing or for other departments to be consumed. And powerGate also ensures data compliance by checking the ERP data during Vault workflows. So, for instance, when an item is blocked inside of the ERP system, you cannot release it in Vault.

So whenever you try to release an item that's associated with an ERP record that is blocked, probably because it's not available currently, Vault shows you, hey, you cannot release this because the Business Central, the ERP, the MES, whatever item is blocked. And you should not use this in your CAD design. So this is a perfect example how to bring information from other systems into workflows in the manufacturing.

And all this is possible because powerGate's innovative live connection architecture that actually consists of a server part, that's a middleware, and usually this is installed on the ADMS server and the clients that are installed together with the Vault machines. And the clients provide the user interface and the business logic. The client natively talks to the server and the server actually has a plug-in system.

So we can create plug-ins that create, read, update, and delete files from other systems using web services, using APIs, or even using database access. And with that technology, we're able to exchange part information, bill of materials, or even documentation and binary files from one system to the other. So far, we used this technology to connect Vault to almost 40 different ERP, DMS, MES, and PLM systems.

Another integration software from COOLORANGE is powerPLM, which is exclusively connecting Vault and Fusion 360 Manage data. It comes with an item and BOM publishing workflow and a change management workflow. It is integrated in Vault workflows and lifecycles. And just like powerGate, it can display PLM data inside of Vault.

powerPLM also ensures data integrity and quality by adding guardrails. And the solution also automates processes inside of Vault. And it's customizable in-- with a PowerShell layer. If you want to learn more about powerGate and powerPLM, I recommend to watch the AU class Connect Vault in realtime with ERP and PLM, where my colleague Milt Capsimalis presents the products in more detail.

So, as you can see, there are a lot of different and valuable technologies available. And in the last chapter of this class, I want to showcase how our customers and partners as well as our internal consulting teams utilize different technologies to share their CAD data between different systems. And you know what? I'm super happy and excited that the following four innovative customers agreed to share their stories with us. Let's get started with the company Hauer and their front loaders.

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- Hauer is a family business with a long-standing tradition since 1932. In 1962, the founder, Ludwig Hauer, passed the baton on to his son Franz, who built the first front loader, a landmark step in the history of the innovative manufacturer in lower Austria. Today, the company employs 130 people and is run by Ronald Hauer, who has been at the helm since 2002.

As an innovation driver, the Austrian market leader is expanding in the international market. Made in Austria, the high quality products generate more than 90% of the added value at the home factory in Statzendorf. State-of-the-art engineering requires up-to-the-minute manufacturing technologies, such as 3D measuring and robotic welding.

The products are carefully designed and present practice-driven solutions for agriculture, forestry, and communal services. The success is based on value for money and cost effectiveness created by longevity and a customer-minded approach. The XB Bionic series of front loaders underscores the innovative ambition.

The world's first front loader, which has parallel control and tilting cylinders integrated in the boom, features the patented X-kinematic control, a 30% greater breakout force, optimum damage protection, and superb visibility. Hauer, innovation and tradition for life.

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CHRISTIAN GESSNER: Innovation is the key at Hauer. And the same is true for Artaker, our partner which actually realized this project. Artaker is based in Vienna, Austria, and provides consulting, software, and trainings for their customers in the manufacturing and AC industry.

One thing that I really want to mention here in this class, which is very unique, is the people, the people that are working at Artaker at the company because they are always willing to go the extra mile for their customer success. And you will see this when I show you the solution that they created later. And one of the employees that I want to mention in particular is Daniel Stockinger, a good friend of mine and technical lead at Artaker.

He was in charge of the project. And the challenges that he faced in this project is very unique because Hauer had an ERP integration, a Vault-to-ERP integration before. They connected Vault with their ERP system proALPHA. And when Hauer called, they were in the process of changing the ERP system, migrating from another system to SAP Business One.

And they also reported that they constantly run into issues because how they work is they have AutoCAD. And in AutoCAD, they create bill of materials. And what they do is they need to, for their front loaders, they need to add cables and similar parts to the bill of material. And what they did is a manual process. They manually typed in the ERP numbers of these cables.

And it's humans, this actually led to errors because of typos or anything. And, consequently, these errors were transferred back to the ERP system ending in an incorrect bill of material inside of the ERP system. So Daniel and his team got back and developed a solution for Hauer that's actually eliminating that issue for Hauer and their engineers.

For the integration, they used Autodesk Vault Data Standard, they also used the API of SAP Business One, and the COOLORANGE powerGate product that's actually consuming the Business One API and pass it to Vault Data Standard so that it's available in Vault and also in the CAD application. And this is how it looks like.

So basically at Hauer, an engineer creates a new drawing and then Daniel actually created a dialog that allows you to select the numbering scheme and to select a template from SAP Business One. So they know which template they want to use, type in number, select this template, and, with that, pre-populate all the item information into this drawing.

So the drawing inherits from the template and the drawing gets a new part number from the ERP system. And on a single button click, this item is created inside of the ERP system. So when you search for that particular number, we see we get all the metadata.

So we get a new item that's been created automatically by the interface that AutoCAD created and it has all the properties from that drawing. And that's a huge benefit, right? So nobody needs to type this in, nobody needs to open the application. But the CAD engineer can, on a button click, populate all the information to the ERP system.

They also did this for bill of material transfer. So when they click the button, the powerGate dialog pops up that allows you to compare items and bill of materials. And as you can see, a new bill of material needs to be created for that, a new header, and new BOM rows.

And on a single button click, powerGate extracts all the information from the CAD file and sends it over to SAP Business One, right? And in there, we see the bill of material has been populated and created. And we see all the different position numbers, the quantities, the right part numbers. And all this is available to other stakeholders.

And as for the last challenge that Daniel was facing, the inserting of the cables or other parts. So what they did is they created a dialog that allows you to search in the ERP system for that particular cable, select this cable, and then automatically add it to the bill of material.

All you need to do is you have to specify a quantity and place it inside of your drawing. And with that, the cable or the other part from the ERP system gets added into the bill of material, into the CAD file, and is available there to be transferred to the ERP system.

So the powerGate dialog gets opened once again. The powerGate dialog recognizes the changes between what's currently inside of the ERP system and what is newly added in the CAD file. And on a single button click, Hauer-- the engineers at Hauer can transfer this information and the bill of material in the ERP system is updated.

All right. That was the project from Artaker, from Daniel Stockinger and his team. And now from front loaders in Austria to steel production from Austria. The next customer I want to introduce is Primetals.

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- It takes a sense of adventure to conquer true innovation, to find a path that no one else has walked before. We explore new possibilities. In the face of obstacles, we turn challenges into opportunities. And we will persevere until we've reached our destination. The steel plant of tomorrow.

This is a plant that is fully automated. It benefits from cutting-edge digital technologies and brings transparency to the entire production process. It uses synergies between the most advanced solutions in steel production. The result is unparalleled efficiency and end products of the highest quality.

This plant of the future illustrates our determination to push the limits in the world of metals. Together with our customers in the metals industry, we are on a journey of discovery. Together, we explore what's next. We are pioneers at heart, Primetals Technologies.

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CHRISTIAN GESSNER: Yes, Primetals Technologies, pioneers at heart. Primetals Technologies is a worldwide leading engineering, plant-building, and lifecycle partner for the metals industry.

When they introduced Vault Professional a couple years ago, they also started partnering with us at COOLORANGE to work on their Vault-SAP integration. While we at COOLORANGE implemented the SAP NetWeaver communication, employees from Primetals, [? Ranikhet ?] and [? Klaus ?] [? Capella, ?] two fantastic guys, by the way, created all the automations, and the Vault client extensions by themselves.

This was simply needed due to the fact that they have very complex processes, and multiple plants, and multiple tenants inside of their SAP systems, and also because they continuously want to add functionality to make their engineers' life easier. So all we did was the powerGate NetWeaver integration and we also provided some consulting services. And together with [? Rani ?] and [? Klaus, ?] we developed a great solution.

So this solution is using Vault Data Standard for implementing user interfaces inside of Vault. It uses the SAP NetWeaver Gateway, which is consumed by COOLORANGE powerGate. And the result is that they completely automated their processes for transferring items, for transferring bill of materials, and also for uploading documentations files to SAP DIRs, materials, bill of materials, and originals. So let me show you how this works.

At Primetals, engineers usually start working in Inventor, or in other Autodesk CAD applications, or even in third-party applications. So they finish their CAD design and check it into Vault. Once it's checked into Vault, you can see immediately in Vault that this file has been created and this file also automatically got a document number.

So if we go to SAP, search for that document number, it's not there yet. It says not found, right, because nothing has been transferred so far. However, if the engineers at Primetals change the state of these files to draft, automatically the customization comes in place and the user is asked to enter credentials for SAP.

And in the background-- actually there is a progress bar implemented by [? Klaus ?] and [? Rani, ?] all the transfer to the SAP system is taking place. So if we go back to SAP, we now see that this document, this DIR, document info record, has been created inside of SAP. And also in the UI of Vault, they implemented some checkboxes that you can see the progress of the current file.

At the same time in the background, PDF files have been created for not only the CAD files but also for related Excel spreadsheets and so on. And when an engineer or a project manager at Primetals approves the files, again, the interface comes into place, connects to SAP, and transfers the other information.

A material is going to be transferred, the PDFs are transferred that were attached to the file, and also the status in Vault updated, right? So if we go to SAP now, we will see that we don't only have the DIR, the document info record, but the document info record also has been updated, so it says approved.

And we have the originals, so the PDF files that are attached, and with that available to other stakeholders outside of the engineering. And also there is an object link to a material. And this material is also pre-populated with all the information from the CAD design.

So as a final step, and this is not automated due to the processes at Primetals, is the bill of material transfer. So they implemented a special functionality that engineers can use, select, and then they are asked what kind of BOM they want to transfer from Vault to their SAP system.

But once they click that, everything is happening in the background automatically. So-- and as a final result, if we go back to SAP and search for that bill of material, we are going to see the bill of material has been automatically created and is available for purchasing, for production, and other stakeholders.

Just amazing what [? Rani ?] and [? Klaus ?] at Primetals created, right? Another astonishing company is Vow from Norway.

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- Endless volume of waste that pollute our environment, global warming out of control. These are two of the biggest challenges that face the world and the reason for Vow.

- We are turning waste into CO2 neutral energy and raw materials that help industries decarbonize. We are finding ways to recycle carbon and remove carbon from the atmosphere. In short, we are fighting climate change and, at the same time, bringing end to waste.

- Vow started its journey at sea. And together with cruise operators, we have developed solutions for cleaner oceans.

- Long gone are the days when wastewater and garbage were discharged to sea. Together with cruise companies, we are building a sustainable future for this global industry.

- With Vow solutions inside, cruise ships today are operating according to the highest discharge standards at sea. And we are now also standing firmly on land.

- Our technology is increasingly attractive and relevant for land-based industries. We are delivering systems that replaces fossil fuels in energy production and fossil carbon in a wide range of industrial processes. We are working with leading energy companies, metallurgical industry, utilities, and others to reduce their carbon footprint and develop new business models within the circular economy.

- So why are they turning to Vow for help?

- Because we've mastered technology and have a unique delivery model, which allow us to deliver complex solutions on an industrial scale. We have done that for more than 20 years. We are doing it every day but we have only just started. We are unstoppable.

- Vow, decarbonizing industries.

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CHRISTIAN GESSNER: Vow, what a great company focused on sustainability and managing technology. And Vow got help from another great company also focused on technology. And this is Addwize. Addwize is located in Norway. And my friend Markus Gundersen is a co-founder from Addwize and was responsible for the implementation of the following project that I want to introduce.

So Vow uses Autodesk Vault Professional for managing their files. They use the PLM system Autodesk Fusion 360 Manage as an item master for change management and for their quality management. They use Microsoft's ERP system Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations for procurement, for logistics, and for manufacturing. And on top, they use Microsoft Power BI for reporting and dashboards.

And the main challenges they were faced with was Vow's workflows are truly product and CAD data-centric. So all systems must share CAD data, talking to each other, but also taking a specific business logic into account to not overcomplicate things to make stakeholders-- to allow stakeholders to make right decisions based on the information that they need.

And the technologies that Markus and his colleagues at Addwize used for this integration project was the Fusion 360 Manage scripts based on JavaScript, the Microsoft Dynamics Finance and Operations APIs, and COOLORANGE powerPLM

to allow Vault to talk to Fusion 360 Manage, hard to say.

So data from all these systems are connected with the product at the center, which basically means, in this case, Vault properties, files, and bill of materials as well as attachments are transferred from Vault to PLM to Fusion 360 Manage. Project data and ECO validations are transferred and used inside of Vault.

And metadata and bill of materials from Fusion 360 Manage get transferred to the ERP system, to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. And on top of that, Power BI gets the data from both the PLM and ERP to render their dashboards and to have the information for their dashboards and reports.

So mechanical engineers and product developers at Vow, they want to make decisions very early. And for that reason, they want the right information at the right time, which was challenging for Markus and Addwize. But to make this possible, not all the details from the Inventor BOM should be transferred to Fusion 360 Manage.

But only special or only a special business logic needs to be applied so that when they transfer the BOMs, normal parts include the BOM in Fusion 360 Manage but purchased parts are created without BOMs. Inseparable parts should not have BOMs unless they are purchased, right? So-- and it's a complex business-- is a complex business logic that Markus and Addwize needed to implement for Vow.

But thanks to powerPLM and its customization capabilities, they were able to build up that special business logic for Vow and allow making people decisions early. And due to the nature of Vow's products and since time is critical in their workflow, especially when they work on changes or change management, the Fusion 360 change management and the Vault lifecycle is tightly connected together.

And actually this is also business logic that Addwize created for Vow, which just makes it possible to not forget anything on the either or the other side. And, finally, this enables Vow to involve the right persons at the right time. And these people don't even have to understand Inventor or Vault or have to open it. They just can use the change management in Fusion 360 Manage.

We all know Fusion 360 Manage is perfect for a change management process with change tasks, and orders, and requirements, requirement management. And they can just use it inside there without changing the system. And at the same time, the lifecycle involved is controlled by the Fusion 360 Manage change orders.

So also Markus sent me a nice quote from the customer, from Knut Gaard. And I'm proud to cite him. He said, "powerPLM gives us the flexibility to achieve business logic from CAD/PDM to PLM/ERP." And I'm also happy that Markus from Addwize constantly says, "coolOrange provides the go-to tools for companies in need of extending their Vault usage." Thank you so much, gentlemen.

All right. And last but not least, I want to introduce Temperzone and their climate innovations made in New Zealand.

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- Hi, I'm Les Kendall, CEO of Temperzone. Innovation is at our core to produce ever more relevant technology, pushing the bounds of currently available solutions. Temperzone has embarked on our own decarbonizing and sustainability journey, reducing our impact on the environment and the way we operate at all levels and transitioning into a more sustainable and efficient organization.

Our products and services can assist others to make the transition and act as enabling technology to transition to zero carbon, pushing the bounds of currently available solutions and technologies that are safe and sustainable from the manufacturer, installation, maintenance, through to whole of life considerations and the circular economy.

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CHRISTIAN GESSNER: Innovative products thanks to innovative way to share CAD data with the Shopfloor. And this is an amazing project. Kevin Tucker from Temperzone built a web-based tool that shares CAD and ERP data to the users on the Shopfloor. That's just great.

And Temperzone's main challenge was that the files that are vaulted inside of Vault, they don't have any properties that indicate which project they belong to. At the same time, they wanted to provide all the project related information to their users on the Shopfloor.

So Kevin built an online tool that queries the projects from their ERP system Epicor based on a search query that users can type in. This identifies all the files that belong to that particular project. And with that information, the web portal gets back to Vault, asks for the information there, collects all the files, and represents all to the user in a browser.

And to realize that, they used ASP.NET to create the online portal, the shop viewer-- the Shopfloor Viewer itself. They use the Epicor REST API and the Vault SDK, the software development kit, to talk to the systems, to the ERP system and to the PDM system. And they use COOLORANGE powerJobs to generate the PDF files and DWF files that are at the end used as a viewable inside of this portal using the Autodesk APS Viewer.

And this is how it looks like. So a user on the Shopfloor can import the job number, which is basically a project number, and the system queries then this information from Epicor, goes back to Vault, queries the information there, and represents a combined view of all this information.

So you can see the user has different categories that can-- that he can select. This is categories that come from Vault, its assemblies or sheet metal parts. And once the user find the drawing or the file that he is looking for, actually the file that-- or the product he is going to work on, he can select a viewer, either the Vault view or a PDF viewer, and open the 2D file.

And what's so special about this is that it's not only the PDF file that's being rendered in the browser, it's also the job number that's printed. You can see this in green here on screen, the job number that indicates the job that the Shopfloor user needs to work on, right? And they also can use the same portal to query Vault directly so they can search for the part number, which is a different syntax than the job number.

And by that, the portal knows that it needs to search inside of Vault. However, since Vault does not maintain any information about the current project, the viewer just displays uncontrolled because it's not dangerous to produce this part because we don't know whether this belongs to the job that we are currently working on.

And this is just a great way to combine this information. And also the Shopfloor Viewer, because it's using the APS Viewer technology, it can render 3D models, right? So the user can select 3D model in the user interface and then he also gets 3D models displayed.

And with that, the users on the Shopfloor can explore the product that they're working on, understand the product in more detail, use all the functionality of the APS Viewer, such as an like exploded view, and many of the other advantages that they have with the 3D representation inside of the browser.

Once again, without any CAD software needed to be installed, without any knowledge, just by knowing the job number, this portal created by Temperzone provides all the information that are needed on the Shopfloor. So it's really great to see how our customers combine different technologies with each other to share their CAD data throughout their product lifecycles. It's just amazing.

And with that being said, it's time for me to wrap up with a short conclusion. So we have learned that many manufacturing companies have their CAD data at the center. And they also-- because it's their intellectual property and their single source of truth, they put this on the lifecycle control. In a PDM system, usually this is Vault.

We also learned that this data can and should be shared with other systems to allow all the people that are involved in a product lifecycle to make their changes based not on guess but on accurate and most up-to-date data. Decisions need to be made on data, that's the key. And we also learned that there is enough technology available to realize this. So the only question is, what are you waiting for? Connect your systems.