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Autodesk has announced that it is shifting to a new buying process to streamline and improve the buying experience for your Autodesk subscriptions. These changes will take place on June 10th, 2024 for customers in the United States and Canada.
Acquisition Strengthens Symetri’s position as a leader in digital solutions, helping customers deliver projects more efficiently.
Addresses the urgent need for enhanced sustainable practices, reduced embodied carbon and CO2 emissions in the AECO and manufacturing industries
Autodesk has announced that it is shifting to a new buying process to streamline and improve the buying experience for your Autodesk subscriptions. These changes will take place on June 10th, 2024 for customers in the United States and Canada.
Acquisition Strengthens Symetri’s position as a leader in digital solutions, helping customers deliver projects more efficiently.
Addresses the urgent need for enhanced sustainable practices, reduced embodied carbon and CO2 emissions in the AECO and manufacturing industries
Customer Introduction
Founded in 1964 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Gordon, Inc. has grown to over 175 employee-owners with a state-of-the-art 255,000 square-foot facility and a global network of 70+ independent agents. Specializing in sustainable architectural metal products for various environments, Gordon, Inc.’s offerings include specialty metal ceilings, wall systems, and trims. The company has expanded through strategic acquisitions, creating divisions for cleanrooms, acoustical systems, security ceilings, exteriors, and data centers. Known for custom CNC fabrication and eco-friendly finishes, Gordon, Inc. emphasizes environmental responsibility and ethical behavior. As an ESOP company since 2010, Gordon, Inc. fosters a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring top-tier client service and product quality across its diverse markets.
Where innovation, design & engineering, along with fabrication are concerned, Gordon, Inc. solution systems are always unique in some way, which means that even if a system is standard in its foundational design and form, there will be nuances with every applied system that make them incomparable.
“Gordon, Inc. stands out by offering custom solutions for architects, turning their dreams into reality. This is what truly sets Gordon, Inc. apart from the rest.” -Amy Cain, Design Quality Check (DQC) Engineer
Customer Challenge
Gordon, Inc. found itself at a technological crossroads where historic design methods and manufacturing systems were intersecting with available newer technologies and methods. Because Autodesk Revit had, over time, become the collaborative link between their internal design team and intermediate project architects and general contractors, they needed the ability to utilize Autodesk Revit to create shop drawings that could also enhance their communications with their supporting subcontractors and end-client through both the design and manufacturing stages of a product’s lifecycle.
While their design and innovation tools were still relevant, they realized that they needed to increase their understanding of the advanced capabilities available in those existing tools.
Training for new hires became an obvious and critical need in ensuring that the team members are using the creative Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) tools efficiently and consistently with corporate methods and standards. Their leadership conclusion was that if a new hire is left to train themselves, their compliance with corporate standards and methods is an extremely low probability.
Tailored and personalized training was essential in unifying their diverse team, which had varying levels of experience and familiarity with Autodesk solutions. This customer training aimed to transform the team into a cohesive, highly efficient unit, working collaboratively toward shared goals of efficiency, productivity, and on-time delivery of customized solutions to their clients.
“You can take all the classes you want, but if you don't use the knowledge day-to-day or at least practice with it, you won't retain what you've learned. Therefore, when considering continuing education and training, the adoption and practice of what is learned are crucial, ultimately benefiting the end client.” – Alissa Frazier, Lead CAD Designer
Project Goals
In less than 18 months as Engineering Manager, Patrick Larkin reported that the top request from both the design and engineering teams was for custom training.
Gordon, Inc. is experiencing significant growth due to expansion and acquisition. As a result, their "work in process" is increasing at a rate that necessitates an enhancement in their throughput capabilities to achieve their corporate objectives and address the rising client demands.
Gordon, Inc.’s corporate business case and looming challenge was to equip their design team through increased proficiency with Autodesk Revit to create shop floor drawings within a 6-to-12-month period while also becoming more proficient with the advanced features of Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD.
Gordon, Inc. aimed to create a more cohesive and connected relationship between their existing Autodesk solutions, enhance their team's efficiency, and fuel greater productivity.
Gordon, Inc. leadership established a commitment to improve team morale in their working atmosphere and collaborative environment by increasing investment in professional development for their team members.
Proposed Solution
After conducting an initial needs assessment, the Symetri training team recommended the Evolve tailored Training program to Gordon, Inc., as the most viable solution to address their business case and related challenges.
The Evolve Training program begins with an initial assessment for each enrolled student, creating a unique baseline reference point centered on the specific Autodesk software solution in which each student will be trained.
Additionally, because the Evolve training model supports remote delivery, Gordon, Inc. students can attend all training classes conveniently from their corporate offices or remote sites, thus accommodating all team members.
Business Outcome
Enhanced proficiency with AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor. The creation of shop floor drawings using Autodesk Revit has streamlined communication with the shop floor, intermediate architects, general contractors, and the end client. This has resulted in two key benefits:
Less than 18 months into the Evolve Training program, 19 students from Gordon, Inc. have completed over 287 classes in AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, and Autodesk Revit. The impact was so immediate and significant that they had not initially prepared a list of metrics to measure how the training was impacting their project lifecycles. They only knew they had tapped into an invaluable resource. Now they are beginning to establish real metrics to measure productivity gains.
To quantify these gains, a team member with moderate skills in both AutoCAD and Autodesk Revit was tasked with creating shop drawings from the same contractor input using both programs. The results were striking: the task took 12 hours in AutoCAD but only 90 minutes in Autodesk Revit. This experiment was repeated with another team member who was highly skilled in AutoCAD but a novice in Autodesk Revit, yielding the same outcome.
The training has also positively impacted team morale, the working atmosphere, and the Gordon, Inc. collaborative environment. The Gordon, Inc. leadership team feels that Evolve Training is the best investment they have made in recent memory. The Design Quality Check (DQC) team states that they have gained increased confidence in the integrity of project data, since all data, including the Bill of Materials (BOM), is integrated within the Autodesk Revit model, allowing for more efficient design checks and verification.
With greater knowledge and use of advanced features in their Autodesk creation software tools, the effectiveness of their workflows will improve significantly, enhancing their use of Autodesk Vault as their primary data management system for product and design data.
Bottom line, Gordon, Inc. is benefiting from an increase in visibility, traceability, and accountability through all project lifecycle stage-gates. These gains ultimately benefit their end clients with faster turnarounds, better collaboration among all project stakeholders, more efficient system delivery and installation, all resulting in better post-delivery long-term client support.
Conclusion
Through the training program, Gordon, Inc. was able to train all their design team members to a higher level of proficiency, allowing Gordon, Inc. to make significant strides toward meeting their corporate goals.
The Evolve training program is equipping Gordon, Inc. to not only preserve, but to elevate their commitment to their prestige as a "custom provider," as opposed to their "cookie-cutter" competitors, further emphasizing the value of tailored training programs like Evolve in maintaining their competitive edge.
Gordon, Inc. is “client-centric” in every way.
Company Overview
The University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) is one of the world’s foremost academic medical systems, with a history rooted in more than two centuries of pioneering leadership in healthcare. Penn Medicine, of which UPHS is a part, is home to the nation’s first hospital and the first medical school—the Perelman School of Medicine—Penn Medicine has built a legacy defined by scientific discovery, exceptional medical education, and outstanding patient care. The Perelman School consistently ranks among the top recipients of National Institutes of Health funding and has driven transformative breakthroughs, including CAR T cell therapy and the Nobel Prize–winning mRNA vaccine technology that reshaped the landscape of modern medicine.
Today, Penn Medicine operates as an integrated $11.9 billion enterprise supported by nearly 49,000 faculty and staff who work across a broad network of hospitals, outpatient centers, and research institutes. This highly collaborative ecosystem enables Penn Medicine to translate research into practice rapidly, strengthening its position as a global leader in innovative, compassionate healthcare. Its continued commitment to discovery, multidisciplinary excellence, and community impact ensures that Penn Medicine remains at the forefront of shaping the future of medicine.
Client Challenges
UPHS faced a complex and high‑risk migration from Autodesk BIM 360 to Autodesk Construction Cloud (Now part of Autodesk Forma), involving a large volume of active and archived project data that needed to be moved while preserving folder structures, naming conventions, and limited version history. The migration was further complicated by Revit version compatibility issues, including upgrading older models such as HUP East from Revit 2018 to 2025, as well as the need to re-path AutoCAD and Revit linked files, with no ability to repair broken links in source data.
Ongoing construction and design activity added operational pressure, requiring careful scheduling to avoid disrupting active projects and relying heavily on timely stakeholder engagement, approvals, and decision‑making. Additional risks included incomplete or poor-quality data, system performance issues such as cloud latency or downtime, and dependencies on client-provided resources, including licenses, access permissions, user lists, and priority schedules.
Complexities around permissions management and third‑party access, along with numerous migration exclusions (RFIs, issues, markups, model coordination data, archived projects, non-Revit-linked files, collaboration packages), increased the need for precise scope control. Compliance obligations, internal governance requirements, and the risk of scope creep, delays, or added costs further underscore the importance of strict coordination, timely reviews, and disciplined project governance.
Client Goals
UPHS’s goals for the migration were centered on ensuring a seamless, accurate transition of all required project data from BIM 360 to Autodesk Forma while minimizing disruption to ongoing work. They sought to preserve existing folder structures, file naming conventions, permissions, and limited version history to maintain full data integrity. The organization aimed to upgrade necessary Revit models and reestablish linked file paths so projects would remain functional and accessible post‑migration. To keep active design projects on schedule, UPHS prioritized careful sequencing of migrations and timely stakeholder engagement for reviews and approvals. Additional objectives included reestablishing appropriate user permissions, managing third‑party access, and validating the completeness and accuracy of the migrated data through structured review cycles. UPHS also emphasized maintaining compliance with internal governance requirements, controlling scope boundaries, and mitigating risks such as incomplete data, cloud performance issues, or delays caused by limited resource availability. Ensuring that all required licenses, credentials, and decision‑making channels were in place was essential to supporting a well‑coordinated, efficient migration process.
Symetri USA Prescribed Solution
Symetri USA delivered a structured and carefully governed migration approach to transition UPHS’s BIM 360 data into Autodesk Forma with accuracy and minimal disruption. The solution began with a comprehensive discovery and mapping phase, ensuring that folder structures, naming conventions, permissions, and all data‑placement pathways were fully understood and approved prior to execution. Symetri also performed Revit model upgrades and reinitialization, including converting legacy models such as HUP East from Revit 2018 to Revit 2025, and repathed both Revit and AutoCAD linked files to preserve model functionality in Autodesk Forma. To support continuity of active projects, the team followed a priority‑based migration schedule, deferring projects with ongoing design work as needed.
During execution, Symetri conducted a precise transfer of all applicable files, maintaining folder integrity and retaining limited version history where supported. UPHS was given a formal validation process with up to two revision cycles to ensure the migrated data met accuracy, completeness, and usability requirements. The solution also included reestablishing user permissions and access controls, assigning admin rights to designated individuals and coordinating the re‑invitation of external collaborators while excluding inactive accounts for a clean user environment. Throughout the project, Symetri provided comprehensive project management, including communication planning, risk mitigation, stakeholder alignment, governance oversight, and adherence to defined scope boundaries.
The project concluded with the delivery of a Final Migration Report, documenting all transferred data, migration considerations, and remaining action items. Overall, this prescribed solution provided UPHS with a centralized, secure, and scalable ACC environment, ensuring improved collaboration, operational continuity, and a strong foundation for long‑term digital asset management.
Corporate Business Outcomes
Symetri’s structured migration approach enabled UPHS to overcome its complex data, versioning, and workflow challenges by delivering a seamless transition from BIM 360 to Autodesk Forma. By preserving data integrity, upgrading and reinitializing critical Revit models, reestablishing permissions, and aligning the migration schedule with active project needs, Symetri helped UPHS achieve its goals of minimizing disruption, ensuring accuracy, and maintaining governance throughout the process. As a result, UPHS now operates within a centralized, secure, and scalable Autodesk Forma environment that enhances project coordination, improves data quality, streamlines collaboration among internal teams and external partners, and strengthens long‑term digital asset management—ultimately supporting more efficient operations and future‑ready project delivery.
Conclusion
UPHS’s migration from BIM 360 to Autodesk Forma presented a complex set of challenges—including the need to preserve large volumes of data, upgrade legacy Revit models, manage stakeholder coordination, and maintain continuity for active projects. In response, the organization defined clear goals focused on maintaining data integrity, minimizing disruption, ensuring compliance, and building a secure, scalable digital environment to support future project demands.
Symetri’s prescribed solution directly addressed these goals through a structured, priority‑based migration approach that emphasized detailed discovery and mapping, rigorous data validation, and careful scheduling around ongoing project activities. The solution also ensured accurate data transfer, upgrade and reinitialization of Revit models, and the re-establishment of secure permissions and linked file dependencies, all guided by a strong governance and communication framework.
As a result, UPHS achieved a centralized, reliable, and future‑ready Autodesk Forma environment that improves project coordination, enhances data quality, and supports long‑term digital asset management. The successful migration not only resolved immediate operational challenges but also established a foundation for greater efficiency, improved project delivery, and scalable growth. Through Symetri’s expertise and UPHS’s alignment on goals, the organization is now better equipped to manage its expanding project portfolio with confidence and continuity.
Company Overview
Mint Innovation is a clean technology company founded in New Zealand in 2016. It specializes in recovering critical and valuable metals from electronic waste (e-waste) using a proprietary biosorption and smart chemistry process. The technology extracts metals such as gold, copper and silver, reintegrating them into domestic supply chains as a sustainable alternative to traditional mining and smelting.
Mint Innovation is expanding into the United States with a commercial scale facility in Longview, Texas. This facility supports the national strategy for securing critical minerals and advancing a circular economy. The facility will have the capacity to process over 4000 tons of printed circuit board waste annually, returning pure copper sheets and high purity gold into local industries. The project will create high-quality jobs and has received support from LEDCO and various government departments.
The company’s process also ensures NSA-standard destruction of obsolete electronics, addressing data security concerns associated with e-waste exports. Mint’s vision is to construct a network of facilities in the U.S and across the globe to address the growing e-waste challenge and return recycled metals to domestic supply chains, reducing reliance on environmentally harmful practices.
Project Challenge
To support its U.S. expansion, Mint Innovation needed to customize AutoCAD Plant 3D content and templates for a new processing facility in the U.S.—the first of several planned U.S. sites. This included:
Developing tailored pipe specifications.
Implementing custom reporting features.
Streamlining workflows for existing software tools.
Enhancing access to metadata within AutoCAD Plant 3D files.
Configuring intelligent Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID) to replace static documentation.
The challenge required converting legacy plant designs into a smart, scalable system aligned with the new facility setup.
Project Goals
Mint Innovation set out to achieve the following:
Customize AutoCAD Plant 3D content and templates to streamline workflows and improve metadata access.
Transform existing P&IDs into intelligent diagrams for efficient design and documentation.
Develop four pipe specifications, prioritizing PVC and stainless steel in the initial phase.
Create reusable configuration packages for future sites, including templates for P&ID, Isometric, and Ortho drawings.
Generate reports from 3D models and P&IDs in Excel and PDF formats.
Save each P&ID sheet as an individual drawing file for clarity and organization.
These goals supported the creation of a scalable design framework replicable across global sites, aligning with Mint’s mission to recover circular supplies of critical metals to power advancing industries and economies, globally.
Solution Implementation
Symetri proposed a tailored customization of AutoCAD Plant 3D to meet Mint Innovation’s operational and environmental objectives. The solution included:
Configuring AutoCAD Plant 3D, and its consumed content, to meet project-specific requirements.
Enhancing the intelligence and structure of design documentation.
Establishing a repeatable design framework for deployment across multiple sites.
This approach supported Mint’s long-term goals of global scalability, operational efficiency, and sustainable innovation.
Business Outcomes
Accelerated Market Readiness: Mint rapidly prepared for its U.S. rollout with design tools aligned to project needs.
Improved Operational Efficiency: Standardized templates and specifications streamlined workflows and reduced manual effort.
Enhanced Design Intelligence: Intelligent P&IDs improved data integration and reduced documentation errors.
Consistent Documentation: Custom reporting templates ensured professional-grade outputs across project phases.
Scalable Global Framework: A repeatable design model reduced onboarding time and ensured uniform practices.
Conclusion
As a precursor to the construction and anticipated opening of Mint Innovation’s first U.S facility in Longview, Texas, Symetri’s two-phase customization project has laid a strong foundation for a significantly enhanced data management system. This initiative elevated Mint’s historic use of Autodesk software tools to a more advanced level of functionality and efficiency, aligning with the company’s strategic goals for operational excellence and sustainability. By streamlining workflows, improving metadata accessibility, and introducing intelligent design documentation, the project has positioned Mint to execute its U.S. projects with greater speed, accuracy, and consistency. The scalable design framework developed through this collaboration supports global replication, ensuring uniform standards across future sites.
Importantly, this solution also reinforces Mint’s broader mission of recovering critical and valuable metals from waste streams using low-carbon technologies, offering an alternative to traditional, unsustainable practices. As Mint gains deeper insight into its processes over time, there will be opportunities to further enhance the performance of its facility, data systems, and engineering workflows. These advancements may include the implementation and expansion of additional features within their Autodesk software environment, driving continuous improvement and innovation.
