Ameera Azeez
As the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industry evolves to adopt more advanced technology, it’s essential that our collaboration tools and solutions develop in tandem to cater to the requirements of this transformation.
Introducing the Forma Board – a digital whiteboard that opens up new possibilities for collaboration amongst AECO professionals.
Built as an interactive solution within Autodesk Forma, the Forma Board empowers you to tell your design story in a way that is uniquely yours. More than being just another digital whiteboard, it stands out with its ability to draw from real-world context and environmental insights, such as sun hours, daylight potential, embodied carbon, etc., that you’ve derived for your schematic designs using Forma. With the latest connection between Forma and Autodesk Docs, Autodesk’s AECO data repository, the Forma Board can now also visualize designs and models created throughout the entire AECO lifecycle, and not just those made in Forma. This enhancement promotes improved collaboration and informed discussions among all stakeholders, including architects, engineers, contractors, and others.
Collaborative tools AECO professionals use and challenges they encounter
Designers, architects, engineers and contractors of today largely rely on external solutions that exist beyond the world of AECO, and in some cases, they even turn to traditional non-digital tools.
Even though these options may seem to serve the purpose, manually creating pin-ups on a conventional whiteboard – whether physical or digital – is tedious. It involves a time-consuming cycle switching between platforms, taking printouts, screenshots, cropping, editing and so many other redundant tasks that can certainly be avoided. Imagine the extra time you would get: to prioritize design creativity, prepare for presentations, or simply for yourself?
There should be a faster, easier and more effortless way to collaborate and convey design intent and visualize data across phases, and that is exactly the gap that the Forma Board aims to fill.
How to get started with the Forma Board
The Forma Board, designed to convey your design story and process, serves as a flexible companion to Forma’s design and analysis tools. It enables you to bring together, visualize and share your ideas and design stories. With the Forma <> Autodesk Docs connection, you can even visualize designs and models from other Autodesk solutions that are saved in Docs and effortlessly incorporate them into your design narrative.
You can use the board individually or as a collaborative tool to work along with your peers, project stakeholders, or clients. With the Forma board, you can present your ideas directly, or you can also involve collaborators, inviting them to review your projects, add notes, or to provide valuable input.
To get started, your Forma Board needs to be associated to a specific Forma project. Once you have your project details set up, you can start taking advantage of the Forma Board to highlight specific design concepts, to compare insights for informed decision-making, present trade-offs or to even enrich your designs with added context and details. You can also manage projects more effectively with the Forma Board, by using it to provide status updates, keep a process trail, facilitate easier feedback collection etc.
Based on feedback from some early testers of the Forma Board, we’ve also elaborated on a few simple use cases you can try out to begin with. But we want to highlight that this list is not definitive. This interactive board in Forma is extremely flexible and hence can be used in multiple other ways to facilitate your unique needs.
In what scenarios can I use the Forma Board?
- Present trade-offs between different design proposals:
The Forma Board is an effective tool for presenting design challenges and trade-offs linked to specific living qualities. It allows you to explore and comparatively evaluate various solutions based on how they each react to the challenges identified. Instead of just emailing screenshots of your findings to peers or other stakeholders, the Forma Board allows you to directly share your viewpoint, thus also simplifying your collaborative needs.
- Provide status updates on your project:
You can also take advantage of the Forma Board in your project meetings to clearly present to your colleagues what you are working on, your current line of ideas, and progress achieved. It lets you underline any design problems you’ve identified using Forma’s various analyses or other compatible Autodesk solutions. This encourages collective brainstorming on the directions you can explore for solving these issues. - Maintain records of your process:
The Forma Board can also be used to streamline your personal design processes. You can maintain the board as a visual record of your process specific to projects, frequently updating it with the design options tested, issues found, workarounds explored, and solutions implemented. These records can be a great source for coming up with ideas or for reference when working on similar projects in the future. - Facilitate easier reviewing of your projects:
You can use the Forma Board as an ally even while presenting to clients. Not only can you easily walkthrough your designs, you can also use the annotate feature to jot down feedback, notes or ideas for you to reflect on later. This board is also a great resource for showcasing before and after visuals, showing your clients exactly how you’ve included their feedback.
What tools and features are included?
While pulling your Forma proposals and their analysis results to be showcased on your board, you have the option to either include them as snapshots or as live analysis that stay updated in real time. You can further make changes to the analysis information, camera angle of the proposal viewed etc. based on your requirements.
To add files saved in Autodesk Docs to the Forma Board, click on the Add button, choose Docs from the drop-down menu, browse, and select one or more files you want to add. Alternatively, you can also paste the links to the files directly onto the board. This will create widgets with file thumbnails and include an in-board version of Autodesk’s File Viewer, allowing you to further explore the file in a modal window.
Additionally, the Forma Board also has many familiar in-built tools to help you add context to your project. These tools include the ability to embed videos and URLs, utilize frames, and multiple annotation resources such as pens, text, sticky notes, images, and shapes among other features.
Looking for more information on the Forma <> Docs connection. Check out this Autodesk News article.
Have a standalone Forma subscription or an AEC Collection subscription? This means you already have access to the Forma Board. And thanks to its intuitive design, you’ll be able to appreciate its benefits almost immediately.
Try out the Forma Board now!