Forge Admin Tools

The Forge Admin Tools are a set of Grasshopper scripts, combined with a Rhino toolbar, that allow the user to perform batch operations in the Autodesk Construction Cloud through Forge (Autodesk Platform Services). The tools are designed to streamline the process of managing Autodesk Docs users, allowing the administrator to add multiple users to multiple projects at once. Users can be added via a CSV user list, or by choosing to invite all users from one project to another, or inviting a user to all of the same projects as another user. There are also features for modifying role based folder permissions, and exporting various reports.

These features were requested by the client due to their unique needs and the limitations of Account Admin. Some of these use cases are not very common, but having the options to batch assign many users to many projects, saves a great deal of time for the administrators tasked with managing many users and many projects.

The Rhino UI is used for more dynamic user input (Are you sure?). Grasshopper scripts are called via the Grasshopper Player. Using Hops within Grasshopper, data is sent to a Python Flask server which in-turn sends API requests to the APS APIs. The python server is hosted on Heroku, and the Hops components send data to the server. The server is designed to handle the API requests and responses, and to manage the data that is sent to and from the Forge APIs. It was designed this way as a workaround to issues experienced locally by the end user. Combinations of networking and antivirus restrictions were causing issues with Hops and the Python Server, so the server was deployed to Heroku to avoid these issues. I came to realize first-hand how valuable it is to build cloud-based solutions that can be accessed from anywhere, and how important it is to have a good understanding of networking and security when building cloud-based solutions.

Looking back, this solution was not the most elegant, but it was a good learning experience. I learned a lot about the limitations of desktop development, and working with dependencies that are still quite unstable. This was also my first bridge into working with the APS APIs, which I am glad I did.

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