Forge for Project Data Analytics: A Case Study of the Data Management API

TADEH HAKOPIAN: Welcome, everybody to Autodesk University session Forge for project data analytics-- case study of the data management API. I am Tadeh Hakopian, your host. Let's get started. Quick introduction. This agenda, we're going to talk about data strategy for app creation, creating a user plan and story for the app, developing the app with Forge, and getting it to a beta phase, and then plans for growing the app. So it's going to be built around data, planning, and app technology with Forge.

A little bit about me. I am Tadeh Hakopian. I am a design technologist developer with HD architects in Los Angeles, California. Backround in architecture. 10 years of experience BIM and VDC and data workflows. And I've been speaking on those topics, Dynamo, and coding content over the years. And so it's a pleasure to be here and talk with you all.

And also a little bit my team at Digital Practice agency, we're always trying to push the envelope of what we can do with technology and data for designers and people in that world of design. So that they can get the best results out of their projects. And one of the things we look at is what technologies, including Forge.

And before we get into the app itself. We'll talk a little about our data strategy. In this world, data is everywhere. We use data for shopping, and for learning information about the world around us. Everything you can imagine. So that makes it hard to ignore data, including if you're an architect, like HMC architecture that can see the benefit of using data for its own projects, winning projects, pursuing projects, designing better, getting better results for the owners we design for, making our staff better educated in using data and all that.

So it applies to everyone these days. You cannot really be separate from the data, but you can also start learning how to use data for your own purposes. at HMC, give a context of our organization. We have 300 people with over 200 designers on our staff. So we got lots of different people working on lots of projects.

We have over 250 different facilities we designed for with thousands of projects under our belt. And they're all hosted on BIM 360 cloud. We had eight studios and they each do different market sectors with $100 million of revenue over time. So we have a lot of growth behind us. We're not huge, but we're not small. So we can definitely find ways to activate and use data to our advantage these days, because it's something we built up over the years with all these project histories.

And the project types we have are really pretty compatible data health care, education, and government institutions. We have these sectors that really would be interested in our data. Health care and education in particular are more interested in using data for their own projects and their own facilities than ever before. So that's the thing we can really focus on. It's a great place to be to use data for operations.

And here's our lobe of our challenges with data. This is what we want to do, how we want to get is to manage data from different sources, and integrate into one repository, and get insights from the BIM model data, but also user data and project data and time sheet data and everything. And then make it so it's easy to get that information and put on the web for any project manager to see.

That's all we really want to do. It sounds simple. But we have to have a plan first. It sounds like, Oh, you just go do it, but you really do have to plan it out. So we want to get real time information out of our projects. Targeting that we want model metrics, room information, project use case, how much time we spend on each project. User metrics, how often are people using the project.

How long it takes them to work in the project. So we know if they need a little support or something more complicated, we can figure out if there's a need to help them out on the user level. Project information itself, how long the project lives before we have to close it out. Information about the project directory itself. Operation metrics, about our own operations. Training and all that.

So we have to figure out what we want to get out of our metrics, before we could do anything else. So within Digital Practice, our internally we plan for all this like how do we actually-- what we want and how we would get there. And our goal is to make a data warehouse that could connect all sorts of different data sources, whether it was from, say, BIM 360 or delta division time tracking, or a training system, or anything else. Or so many different data sources that if you actually have to map out a number of different data sources an organization, big or small, you are surprised.

So we want to put it into one place. A data warehouse, where we can connect all that data. It automates the connection between the data source and these database call data warehouse. And from there we can use potentially machine learning and AI to extract that data and analyze it for dashboards. Sounds easy. It's challenging.

So ultimately, you want to get decisions from the data. We don't want to just have data for the sake of data. We want to get visuals, show what's going on at the project, the staff, the cost management of a given project we're on. Learn about it. Get some information, move on. Really have it useful for our operations. At least internally. And that does take time to build.

It is something that it takes a long time to build. And once you get there it automates itself and it becomes an asset to your operations. So one way we want to dive into that, because it's a big project is to start with something that doesn't require a warehouse for us to build. And that was already our been through 16 common data environment.

We were pretty much BIM 360 shop. We have, like I mentioned earlier, 250 plus projects. But in those projects we have over 1,000 revit models with over 200 active users, and 1,400 people altogether, including external users from consultants and what have you.

So we have a ton of stuff. Just about everything we do was on BIM 360. So let's just start with that, because we're pretty busy with all the different modules, different services that we use on BIM 360. So a great accommodating environment. And we would be using it one way or the other for our data management efforts.

And that's where we go into the Forge data management API talk here. And just to give you a sense of where we are. Getting our app started. So we weren't quite at the warehouse stage yet, but we do want to show the benefits, though was a bit of a chicken and egg. Well I want to show you what's so great about this data, but at the same time we couldn't really get started in the warehouse due to just the timeline, the time frame, budget, staff and all that.

So we didn't have full time developer support on it. We're not even sure what it will look like when we finished it. So we have to look at options. And one of them was forged. It's a bit of an uphill climb, but we could get started with something we had out of box, which has BIM 360 and Forge.

And what is Forge? Hey, helps you build blocks of Minecraft. The Forge API for Minecraft. I'm just kidding. It's just a place that you can help you build sites from your autodesk data. And data to connect to a file types autodesk supports. That's all it is. At the end of day, it's just another service from Autodesk lets you customize. So out of the box, Forge isn't going to give you an app, but you can use it and make your own app.

That's the difference within other softwares that Autodesk provides. And it's a common data environment. It lets you scale operations, aggregate data, create your own apps. Do things like data checking, visual reporting, accessing content. So again, it's there for you to make custom applications with your autodesk supported formats-- autodesk product supported formats.

And could you do this without forge? Could you make something like that for Visual reporting and data checking without Forge? Yes. There's tools out there that you could just do it without forge whatsoever. You can customize it with different sorts of tech stacks, but it's for just tailor made on one hand to work with BIM and CAD applications. On the other hand, it's already pretty much integrated Autodesk environment like BIM 360.

So 90% of the work you'd be doing would be taken care of Forge on it's own. So that's all you started there instead of using something else. That was already the vast majority of the work you have to do is taken care of by forging the cloud. And you could take any file type that's supported by it. There's over 60 file formats, whether it's Revit, SketchUp, CAD, you name it. It's all there.

Connected to Forge, and with forge, you can make your application, whether it's a view, plan, schedule, extraction. You can do just about anything as long as it's possible on the web. And Forge has some way of connecting the file type to the solution trying to make it's possible. So it gives you an open field to work on.

And a little bit about what an APIs for those who don't. It's an application programming interface. It's defined set of rules that explain to computers how to communicate with one another. If you have a database, the database goes to a web server. The web server then works on API to do requests that are authorized to go to a page for results. Everything you ever use on the internet is based on APIs.

So it's pretty common and Forge has a collection of APIs. You could use all of them. You could use one of them. This is just a small set of APIs that forge has. They always have more. So it's like, which API would you like to use. Why is it dividing into multiple APIs. Well it could be just one giant API, but that'd be hard to digest and manage to learn how to use that. Whereas if you want to learn just how to use reality capture or data management, it's a set of APIs speciffically for that.

Easier to work on a subset than the whole thing at once. So you can pick and choose which ones you want every time you get app. So we only use the essentials like BIM 360, data management. So we don't use everything, but it is these interfaces lets you make requests to create a web page. Simple as that.

And when we look for Forge was just a simple stuff a data management, BIM 360, model derivative, authentication, viewer. This is part and parcel for more sports projects. If you didn't know where to start it's usually some of this. It's usually something to authenticate. Usually do involve a 3D viewer. Data management in this case. Specifically, and if you use BIM 360, that one too. So on and so forth. So it just depends what you want to make with it.

And the data management, API in particular, is a unified way to get data from all different apps you displayed, whether it's BIM 360, stocks, Fusion, doesn't matter. It'll be able to extract information. And that's what we want to do. We're not going to augment the bottles or anything like that. At this point, we wanted to show a use case of the data. So we were going to read it basically.

We didn't display in a way that makes sense to people. So it's a read-only data extraction that we could use from our existing set of models. And this is a perfect solution for what we were trying to achieve with just BIM 360 out of the box. And maybe down the road we talk about how we can augment existing content on the cloud with different APIs, besides data management, but this is the starting point.

So we just want to read data. And data management takes care of that. And all it does is it draws information from either project, the data, service, the schema, whatever. From Forge itself. Some form Forge a data management API can then draw information and put into the applications. And it's scalable. You can make it one big application, and it can make 20 applications. It doesn't matter. It just draws the same bucket of information. And you can use it to spin out different charts and information and apps in different ways.

So it's pretty flexible and scalable in that sense. And all it does-- is this is the beauty part of it. Just follows the same structure. You have the BIM360, you have the hub account, which is your entire company's account. From there, you have all your projects. From there, you have folders, and subfolders, files, that are items. And those items, you can look the version history, great. That's what we have already and for each of those.

So going down to the version history, you can then extract data. So it had everything. This is what we're seeing here is if you have BIM 360, everything is there. The whole project history, every version sync is in data management API. So great. This is what we want. And want something that can get all the history, whether it's folder, changes to the files. It doesn't matter. This is exactly a data service side we want to get out of it. And it does a pretty good job of extracting that.

And what we want to use with it was like, OK, let's get information out of 360. Let's find a way to use information out of the Revit model. So that's what we work on-- that's our day to day work with Revit models. We don't use anything else. And from there, let's get a data set and get a report from that data set. It's all we want. And that was our use case. And be clear, again, why do we use forge instead of other things. It directly connects to your auto services.

There's lots of code examples out there. And it's a developer community built around BIM CAD with web services so it was basically tailor made for people like us, who just wanted to use what they had for their existing content in revit than format on the cloud, without having to take too many more steps. It's a really good strong point to start from.

And all we're going to do here is create a dashboard like we've seen in the middle here. Get some internal data reported to it. And use the BIM 360 projects we already. Have we have again, hundreds of projects on 360. Use of forged APIs and sync it all together. This is a simplified diagram, but that's kind of it. You just need your account information. Using the Forge web services and whatever internal data you need to cross-reference it. And then you get some dashboards.

We'll talk a little bit about that. And I also got a little bit of inspiration from this class last year about enabling digital transformation through Forge in 2020. Very cool presentation. I have a link to the bomb there. I was like Oh, that'd be great to have. Something that shows you the projects through the interactive interface. Look at the model information through some charts, and maybe get some user data.

Something like that. This is something we want to see. And not just for me, and my savvy people in agency Digital Practice, but also project managers may not understand what we're talking about. They may be disconnected to our day day work, and may not have the knowledge we have about this. We want to make it easy for them to see it. So a Visual with the model they be working on some simple, easy to click through things for charts will be really beneficial.

So that's what we want to get out of this. Straightforward, easy to view. And something that looks like it can dig in deeper to more data. So we'll talk a little bit about the tool made for this effort. And we're going to talk about the story mode for forge. So we can learn about how we got there. I think just like we had a data strategy to help us plan out what we want for the data, and we're just shooting from the hip.

We also want to have an app strategy, and figure out how to make an app that was relevant, and logical, and also useful as a framework to make other apps. So here's a little bit of story about that. The steps we took was we had to plan it out, plan out what we want from the app, how to zone look, set it up, and make sure we had the right tech stack, and also launch it and make it useful for people to use.

That's in a nutshell the steps we took to get there. And starting in the big picture, this example right here, maps all the different data sources, and different ways we use information in our company with different services. From whether it's our time sheet tracking system to BIM 360 to anything else. It's all in this big chart here. And you can see in the little red spot in the middle. That's Forge tying into how we use project analytics.

So we have to map out this whole thing comprehensively, and then we figure out, OK, where can we work with forge here. So again, we weren't just tossing it out there. We wanted something connecting and unified. And I recommend this for anybody else who's interested in this process. How do you connect and unify these steps.

I think big picture first. Map out everything. I highly encourage you to do that as much as you can. So you know where different resources can play the best role in what you're doing. And from there, once we're like OK, forge can definitely help us with starting a project and analytics. We listed out some ideas. This whole chart here, we listed out 24 examples of things we could do here. And we focus on a handful. Can we use it for 3D visualization, automating some content, uploading and viewing models, without having to do any editing or Revit.

Using it for project starts. So these are the things we started to focus on. Like, OK, this would be the ones that would be the most useful early on. The rest can come later. So we highlight the ones you want to work on. And from there, we created a user story of how people would actually interact with the tool. Activities at the top there. Somebody wants to check in on what's happening to the project. That's the highest level.

So somebody wants-- what's happening my project, what's happening a little hospital examining. Let's check that out. And then the task to get there is OK, I want to check the project activity. I want to get a team roster. I want to get user content. I want to see that that's a task that come out of the activity.

And the subtasks-- we organized here and releases. The subtasks would be I want to see the active project list. I want to see companies on the project. I want to see users in the projects. So we said, OK, let's focus on that first stack of releases there has more relevance. It's probably easier for somebody to see the active project list and companies involved in the second really stage, which is exporting things and comparing projects. That will come later.

We want to first get this primary release schedule going first. So we said OK, we had to build with the user in mind to make sure the activity we could make with the app made any sense to their day to day work. So that's how we made a hierarchy of this. Again, think about how people are going to use it. You can make the best app in the world on a technical standpoint, but people don't know how to use it. And we've all been there. We've all these apps. We have no idea how to use it.

Then it's can be very awkward for them. And you have to go and reengineer the whole thing. So we made sure we looked at how people would actually interact with the app. And then we did a little mock up. Again, just where would things go on the page. Do you want the center of the screen to be the visuals. Do you want it to be be up to the side.

Think about where the buttons go. This is all pretty straightforward. You can sketch this out of the software out there like Adobe XD, or figma. They can help you do this. It's pretty cool to develop this as you make a use case for the app. And doesn't take too long.

And then we also made it clear that we weren't going to make it be complete 100% version of this. We're going to start with the MVP-- minimal viable product. Start small, build something that's functional. It does something the core service you walk by and then build it up. It doesn't have to have fully featured rich content yet, because what you want to do is built in that be launchable, usable and then get feedback.

You don't know where the thing is going to evolve. You might assume you want to go one way. But until you get the user feedback, and a little bit of practice and experience from deploying it, you're not going to know where it goes. So you want to start very small to a point where-- this example, you wants to convey people.

So you start with a skateboard for wheels. That's not the most amazing vehicle in the world, but it does its job. And from there you can evolve it into more and more feature rich and developed applications. And that's where we went with this. So the first pass is very, very minimal. And what had happened it was very functional for what it did have. And we figured all that out. We were like OK, great. Now we know what this does. We have to use the story. We have it mapped out in our data plan. Great.

But again, we didn't have any developers. I knew a few things. A couple that staff knew a few things about putting it together. But we didn't need help. So we reached out to see if we can get advice from the Forge team. They're very available to us. And wouldn't you know, they have lots of examples. And they have a ton of examples.

This one-- this is a data connector dashboard demo. They had off the shelf. They actually built a ton of different applications that you can then tie into your own Deployment Services. So they'll help you either use an existing example and modify it for your project, or just create something from scratch if it really needs to be created from scratch.

So big shout out to them, they have examples. On their public GitHub. Check out force platform GitHub. It has everything. It has hundreds of examples, and you can always reach out to his team for more. So this is-- if it wasn't for this, we wouldn't really have gone very far, because they had like a 90% of the work done already for other projects.

And that in a tech stack here, which is HTML CSS JavaScript node.js. You have to be an expert web developer to use this. It helps, but the forge team can help you fill in the gaps. And if you do want to learn more, none of these are hard to learn. Takes time, but this is what we use for our apps. So I recommend you guys check this out. They use port. NET. C-sharp, PHP.

You don't have to learn this specific tech stack, but it's very flexible. So this is what we had. And for the app setup we just had a hosting mechanism. You could do local hosts until you're ready to deploy it. But you could be a simple hosting mechanism. You provide the Account Access, you connect your own account, and you launch it. It's pretty straightforward once you have it ready to go.

And this is what looks like on a chart. The hosting connects to the different account and authorizations from the BIM 360 API. So you do have to connect to the APIs. And then from there, you can launch the app, which then views everything through the viewer. So it's basically suppose that the hosting and the Forge services work together to make the app viewable. And then you can see it from there. It's not hard. None of this is particularly hard to follow, in my opinion.

And then if you want do some testing before we launch, Postman works great with autodesk Forge. If you don't know about Postman, just google it. It's a very great resource. If you want the deploy of any money, we could pay for things. We wanted to do low cost initially, until we had a more scalable system.

Heroku was great. GitHub pages. They're all free hosting, and it does work with these forged products. Even through doing 3D visualization, because between the Forge account that you have, and these products, it's pretty much taken care of for the hosting. So pretty easy stuff to host. And then you load up your app.

Once you have everything together, once you make the app, you just load it up. And from there, you get something like this. This is the app we created. It is a 3D viewer of all our projects that we have in our HMC BIM 360 account. And once you dive into the like we saw that early example we had the project the account. In the projects and the folders and all that. Same thing. You see here we're diving into the architecture folder into the Revit model, going down to the latest release version of this model.

And we see on the middle there is the model itself. Its full of glory on the cloud 3D rendered. And we see off the right is charts. This is the low hanging fruit we wanted to get. Because people usually think of the BIM model, even though it's been building information modeling. They don't think charts, and graphs, and data points. It's all there. That's what we see here. It's actually loads on the web to your right there as information.

In this case, one set of charts was showing you the work Sets. Useful if you're trying to figure out did anybody actually bother using the work sets, or if there is content in the works sets what does it look like. That's a quick breakdown. If you want to get a complex data model. And also it's really pretty cool. You can get a breakdown of materials put into this model as well. As long as you have actual materials being used.

So it's useful if you take a quick glance at the information in the model. And you can add all sorts of different charts. You can put category information in here. You can put information on different types of elements you have there. How many doors and all that. So it's very extensible. And this is something anybody can see and look in 3D. Review the data. And ask if you're like Oh, cool. I didn't know you work for other materials. Can you also do room data.

It's all possible, because it's all part of a revit model. If it's part of the Revit model, Forge APIs can then show it here as charts. Very convenient. Very easy. And it's also great that you just browse through everything. This browser here you can see every one of our projects that we use. And this is something of it's own hidden power I want to bring up is my gripe with BIM 360 out of the box is you cannot see all the projects right away. Very easily.

In my opinion, it's awkward with this. I can actually browse every single project I have access to. And it just a very easy way to see what you have. I don't-- it's always very valuable. You can see every file that you have. You don't have to dive into each project one by one. Basically open a new project let it load. Go to the folders and all that. It's all here. So this is really amazing that you can see everything loaded in the browser.

And to give you a sense of the source code and Yap in action. All those dashboards we saw there is just part of this code we have and that Forge team provide a lot of this. But the dashboard is part of the dashboard folder. And you can see highlighted dashboard. JS. That's where the code goes for the charts you saw and it's just this. This is the source code itself. And within one function in the blue there, you have the bar chart works set.

Showing the work set. You have a pie chart showing material. Those are the two we saw. The others you didn't see were bar chart showing category of elements. The pie chart showing work sets. So it's really that simple. You could actually just keep adding more and more like the series. I could add 10 more in the same pattern. If I know what is I'm trying to refer to. As long as it exists in the API, the API says, OK, I can you categories, work sets, materials, levels, whatever is in the API. And from there you can then include it into the code.

And if you already have this set up, and you're like I want more. I want either a pie chart, or bar chart, or this that and the other thing. That's all you have to do. Tell it which chart you are, and what kind of category or content you want from Revit. And then you load it up, and the way it goes. It's that simple.

I can literally do this myself or hand it off to somebody else, explain how that works. And they can add more charts. It's really that simple. What else is cool about is you can actually add more features that you wouldn't get with the Revit itself. In some cases, 360 like this explode mode. This is a slider. Lets you blow up the building if you want to see what's inside of it, or see the parts of it.

And it just loads in the browser very smoothly. As long as it loads up, you can do this in the web in your browser. And just renders everything as part of the forge environment in the 3D viewer API. And you can also use this new cluster tool that I did not know existed until I tried this app, which also puts everything into its constituent parts into categories and subcategories and families from there. Very cool. Very quick way to see what's in your model.

And this is part of the app, because you know what? I don't think anybody see this before in my company at least. And like this is a great way to show what's in there. And in this example, you can see here you can see like there's walls or curtain panels and everything, but off to the right you can actually Zoom in and see every single little piece of equipment and material used. Roofs, walls, desk, chairs, you name it.

So I'm like Oh, it's pretty cool If somebody wants to see what's in the model. That they want to take a quick review of the content. That's a great visualization technique if they want to see what they got in there for one reason or another. Maybe just for fun. Maybe just to see if they have a certain type of furniture in there. It's all laid out. You don't have to dig for it. It's already in the model.

And again, all those things are in the Forge viewer file here. It's under-- not the dashboard, but under the folder the JavaScript folder. And again, the code is basically literally document browser and Visual clusters. That's kind of it. That's all you have to do to make that work. the browser was that list of files you saw earlier on Visual clusters is what makes the layout that we saw just how possible.

You can keep adding to this. It's just the list. It's just another way of getting information out of the model. It's that simple to add more features and that's really what we find useful about forge. It's so simple to expand upon it out of the box. I have to code this. I just make my own 3D viewer online. It's all out of the box.

So we found this be very nice. Once you have it set up, you just add more to it, repurpose it. Very useful. Added value to the team is they get a better experience using BIM 360 and data, whether it's charts or viewing the model in 3D. They can get insight into project activity, and maybe they can see what's possible with that. And say, hey guys, this actual chart data that you can load pretty instantaneously on the web browser. You don't have to grab it or anything like that.

And that might be something they want to learn more about. And we deploy the app and we'll continue to evolve it at that point, because it's scalable. And we want to get some user feedback about what the average person wants to see out of this app. So this is something that makes it easy to produce that kind of distance between project activity and what people are doing day to day.

Again, it's always towards a team. It's not just for my sake or for my team sake. It's for the whole 200 plus people in our company making their ability to design better. And some future plans. You always have to plan things out. And what we want to do is get more data. Plan things out, put into a road map. A road map of what we want to get into the next phase of project. Get some user feedback and expand the app.

Always plan things out. Even if you feel like you have a pretty good place to pause. It costs you nothing to have a little road map strategy to figure out what you want to do. In our case, we already did it earlier steps, which is we got the data. We had a web service, we narrowed down. We built a prototype. Next thing is you tested and relaunch it.

That's all we did as a roadmap. You can keep it that simple to remind people OK, this is the general direction. This is what we're planning. So we already built the prototype let's continue from there with testing. And in the future, we're probably going to just keep trying more APIs with new apps, whether that might be for enhanced data visualization, VR, digital twins. I'm really excited about what's possible data extracted around. So it's going to give you a real nice deep dive into what's the information inside all your construction Cloud and being 360 pounds towards the data.

So once you get started on Forge, and you understand the system and there's nothing really hard to learn about it. Once you get the hang of it. So there's definitely room to explore and use different APIs really. Just try more things out. There's a ton of things you could do with it. You'd be surprised what you can do with it.

And what we got so far was with our goals and Forge, was we got the projects active through the simple interface. The browser. Look at model content data, and get some stats, which is great. So we knocked out a lot of our goals like any earlier on with Forge.

But app development is a never ending story. Like I said, we have room to expand. There's always a bug you can fix. There's always some workflow you want to expand upon or build. And once you build it, and of course, things change. The API gets updated. Web browsers get updated. So this is a great use case of saying, how can we use web development, how can we use web tools to our advantage.

That's a great way to put this use case to your organization. Say, hey, we are at a starting point. Let's continue, because it never ends. You never just stop working on these five forms everything's always in flux. So just get used to things not changing, but also get used to the idea that you can always have something new and something to explore. And it's probably easier to think it is.

A few take away's here. What we learned today. Create a strategy for data. If you don't have-- if you want to do anything with data whatsoever in any format, create a strategy. Like we did earlier, I explained the whole data strategy, where HGC was, what we want to do with the warehouse. And then we got into development efforts, because then we knew OK, this is what we want out of it. Let's focus on energy on the strategy instead of just shooting from the hip.

Create that strategy. Make it logical to a logical format. Explain what the big goals are. The payoffs. That can tie into all sorts of their efforts you on work today. And these days there's a lot of data use cases. So I think creating a data strategy and data governance plan for any company, big or small, is very prudent at this point.

And then once you get to that point, if you want to make an app, whether it's Forge based or not, just plan out what kind of app you want to make. What you want to do. Think about, Like I said, make some ideas for it, how does it work out in your data strategy, make some concepts for how user would interact with it. Again, this is all before you can start coding a thing or hire somebody to do it for you.

What do you want people to do with the app. Plan it out. And then say, OK, I want this experience for my team. This is the data I want to see. Here's a mockup. And then it'll give you a lot more direction of how to actually get there. Now unlike designing a building. If you've already have any experience in that world, you can translate the vast majority of that planning experience to making an app.

Like we did reach out for help. We didn't really know exactly what we wanted to start with forge. I did some tutorials and boot camps. But the Forge team itself is always very accessible. Very helpful to us. And they showed us hey, check it out. We actually have a solution. Let's work on it together. And let's makes something that can work for you. And we already have what we want to get out of it.

So we got the MEP rolling off the ground and expand features. So if you don't know what you want to get out of it. Or if you don't know what you want to build, or the end result, reach out. The people are there to help. That was a real great experience for me.

And recap. What we learned in data operations, and data management, API, creative data strategy for internal operations, address gaps with data capture. Like BIM 360 was addressing a gap when it came to not having warehouse or already had something close to it. And we hadn't been asked us to use. So we use what we had. Access web services like Forge to create information apps, deploy and host the service, get some feedback, and keep up making updates. That's what we learned today.

And ways to make your own app. Take the first step, don't be afraid. Did I know a ton about what development a year or two ago? Not really. But I took the first step because so much information on a problem to solve. That's the key thing. Planning to address that problem, reach out for help. I always-- not just forge. All of the internet for help. Experiment and continuously improve. Just keep building it. Keep learning.

You'd be surprised how far you get. So don't feel like you have to be a genius or hire like a whole staff developers. Just start to learn. And if you want to try it out, Forge actually has the whole tutorial section, they'll get you the vast majority of what you saw today with my app, you can do the vast majority of that through these tutorials. And they also have events throughout the year where they can either show you how to use footage in the first place. They have videos on YouTube and other training sessions.

You have Autodesk University. There's a ton of things. Try this out to get started as an entry point. These are all links to their own tutorial sites. And references about Forge API documentation, learn the forge tutorial, GitHub report for Forge, code samples from Forge. That's a great example set of examples of all the different possibilities you can use Forge.

Forge on Stack Overflow if you want them for asking questions. The Forge blog always has some new cool content to come out. Trust me. This is a great starting point for learning how to use Forge. And just what's possible. Even if you're not going to be developing the apps yourself. I think looking at these and seeing what's possible can really get the brain stirring of what you can do for your own organization, because a lot of that same use cases might have been accomplished somewhere else.

If you want to see the repo for the HMC app just direct message me. I won't have it hosted yet. So you do have to DM me for it. But it's not, I can't share it. So let me know if you're interested in seeing it. And you remember, it's Adventure Time for yourself.

This is now your chance to see based on what we saw the data management API, creating a simple app. And what you can do to extend expand upon it with the API. It's pretty simple. As we saw in this code snippets. Go and build something yourself.

Look at the links to the blogs, and the samples and everything. And just go for it. It's a pretty cool tool. Lots of great support from the Forge advocate team. They're always there to get you back. Trust me. That's been my experience with them. So I highly recommend you guys try out something. Reach out. Do a workshop. Do a session with them.

You won't be disappointed. And below contact information. You can reach out to me Tadeh Hakopian on Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub. The QR code to the right is not a scam. It's just LinkedIn. You won't get rick rolled or nothing like that. I promise.

It's all there, if you want to connect with me and talk. I'm more than happy to continue this conversation elsewhere. So Thanks, everyone. Thank you for attending my session on forge and data management API at Autodesk University. See y'all later.