Autodesk has announced changes to Forge

As part of a commitment to innovate and improve its customer services, Autodesk has announced changes to its offerings. AssetWorks has long invested in the Autodesk platform, as it offers the best opportunity for performance, features, and ongoing integration success for CAD drawings. Not only this, but AssetWorks seeks to align its solutions with dominant technologies.

AiMCAD, an AssetWorks product, provides the ability to link floor plan drawings in Autodesk AutoCAD to the associated facilities in the AiM database. This bi-directional link allows data from floor plan drawings to be exported to AiM to ensure accurate room counts and area calculations, as well as data from AiM can be reported/overlayed onto your floor plan drawings to generate accurate graphical reports. Options are also available to allow space planners to do "what if" scenarios and support for importing levels from Revit 3D models without the need to re-polyline. See more about AIMCAD here.

We understand that updates can create both improvements and at times, anxiety. As such, we wanted to share the prominent updates that will affect our usage of the Forge viewer and your AiM implementation.

Announced changes 

• Introduction of a new and faster API - Data Management OSS (Object Storage Service) migrating to a Direct-to-S3 approach (read more about it HERE)
• Changes to its credit and billing structure whereby they have transitioned from Cloud Credits to Flex Tokens for file conversion  (read more about it HERE) 

Why this is relevant for AssetWorks Customers

Changes to API

AssetWorks seeks to align its solutions with the dominant technology. In the case of CAD, Autodesk is undoubtedly the industry leader. Autodesk's long-term vision relies on cloud-based solutions and AssetWorks is confident that Forge offers the best opportunity for performance, features, and ongoing integration success.

AssetWorks received as part of our development partnership access to an early release of the announced API changes and has modified AiM in v13.1 to be compatible with them. This means that customers that upgrade to AiM v13.1 (released October 26, 2022) in their production environment prior to December 31, 2022 (or whenever Autodesk completes their deprecation of the old API) shouldn't see any degradation to functionality or performance. However, customers that choose to delay their upgrade will find the CAD Floor Approval process no longer functional once Autodesk switches to the new API. Customers on previous versions may continue to view AutoCAD floors that were approved prior to December 31 as well as continue to prepare and upload AutoCAD floors to AiM after December 31, but until they upgrade to v13.1 the CAD Floor Approval and Forge conversion process will not work after the API is deprecated.

Changes to Cloud Credits

In addition, to use the Space Viewer, AssetWorks' customers must have an Autodesk account and submit their properly prepped CAD/.dwg file to the Autodesk Cloud for conversion into a Forge-compatible file. To perform this conversion, Autodesk previously used a Credit system that charged a minimal toll for each submitted CAD drawing. As of November 7, 2022, Autodesk Forge has become Autodesk Platform Services, and has transitioned from Cloud Credits to Flex tokens. Customers are no longer able to purchase new Cloud Credits after this date, but will be able to use available Cloud Credits until their expiration date. After November 7, if you run out of Cloud Credits, you will need to purchase Flex tokens to continue uninterrupted use of premium APIs and services. There is no impact on AiM due to this change.

Please reach Customer Success at Brian.Carlson@AssetWorks.com with any concerns regarding the exposure of your operations to this planned change.