Building Agentic Workflows and Apps on Autodesk

by VIKTOR

We had a great webinar with Wouter, co-founder of VIKTOR, and Anthony, Technical Lead from Autodesk. They walked through the current challenges in the engineering industry, the Autodesk ecosystem, and how VIKTOR helps you build, connect, and share apps on top of that ecosystem. They also showcased two demos on how to create agentic apps that integrate with Autodesk and how you can turn those apps and integrations into an agentic workflow. In this blog, we will revisit the key moments from the webinar and show how you can start creating agentic apps with just prompts.

If you missed the session or want to revisit any part of it, the full webinar recording is available on demand here.

In this blog, you will:

Run a prompt to create your first agentic application
Create an agentic application that integrates with the Autodesk ecosystem
Have a closer look at the Workflow Builder and the idea of an agentic workflow

Your first agentic application

Wouter started the presentation by walking through the challenges our industry is facing and why AEC is still behind other industries in adopting AI. He positioned AI as a catalyst to unlock value and as a practical way to help teams overcome these pressures.

As a practical example of how AI can help you build applications in minutes and unlock value for you and your team, you will create a complete app that integrates an AI agent to analyze a BIM model.

The application will include a BIM model viewer that loads a model automatically and a chat field where you can talk with an AI agent. In the next steps, you will see how this agent can help you get quantities from the model.

So click the blue arrow of the prompt box and run the following prompt:

Build this app now

Create and visualize a BIM model

Create a VIKTOR app that allows me to visualize and analyze a BIM model. The app should have the following specs:

- A FileField so users can upload a .ifc file. 
- Load and display this default model via vkt.File.from_url(https://github.com/viktor-platform/ifc-sample-models/raw/862a7fff992b5eb9ca607304bec1f60ce798d5b7/sample-models/SampleBimModelWebinar.ifc). 
- Show the selected model in a 3D IFC view. 
- Use VIKTOR’s built-in LLM chat for natural language questions about the model. 
- Implement custom LLM tools the LLM can call. 
- Pass the selected IFC model context to each tool so it queries the active model.

Include at least: 
- get material quantities tool: return distinct IfcMaterial values and total volume 
- get elements by type tool: return distinct element names and counts for a given IFC type 
- In a PlotlyView, create a bar chart with IfcMaterial on the X axis and volume on the Y axis. Resolve IfcMaterial even when nested in IfcSlabType, IfcMaterialLayerSet, or IfcMaterialConstituentSet.

Notes: 
- When reading the IFC file, load it in binary and decode it to text. 
- Let the LLM decide when to call these tools. 
- In the LLM system prompt, make the LLM avoid markdown tables.

After running the prompt you should now have a useful application that lets you talk to an LLM and get information from the model. You can try prompts like these:

What materials are in the model and their total volumes?
How many IFCColumns and IFCBeams?

If this is your first time using App Builder, this is a good moment to read a bit more about how it works, the available features, and how to extend or troubleshoot your app.

Create an agentic application that integrates with the Autodesk ecosystem

After Wouter's introduction, Anthony talked about the Autodesk ecosystem and Autodesk Platform Services (APS), the set of APIs that power it. The key point was simple: these APIs help you connect data, automate actions, and build workflows around real projects.

Anthony also showed where VIKTOR fits in this ecosystem. With VIKTOR, you can:

Build apps with AI on top of Autodesk data
Create custom engineering calculations
Create value for more users by making apps accessible

The first thing Anthony did was create an agentic application in App Builder, and you will be able to do it as well.

If this is your first time working with APS and VIKTOR, start with this guide first: Create BIM applications in minutes with AI and Autodesk Platform Services. In that blog, we show how to set up the integration and create your first Autodesk connected app by prompting.

After setting up the integration you can download the following model, upload it to your ACC and run the prompt below in App Builder.

Build this app now

Visualize a Revit model from ACC

Create a VIKTOR app to visualize a Revit model from Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) using "aps-integration-viktor".

Requirements: 
- Show the selected model in an AutodeskView. 
- Use VIKTOR’s built-in LLM chat to answer questions about the model. 
- Implement custom LLM tools the LLM can call. 
- Pass the selected ACC model context to each tool so it queries the active model. 
- Get distinct "Element Name" values and counts for Walls and Structural Framing.

Include at least: 
    - get walls elements: return distinct "Element Name" values and counts for Walls. 
    - get structural framing elements: return distinct "Element Name" values and counts for Structural Framing. 
- Let the LLM decide when to call these tools based on the user’s question. 
- In the LLM system prompt make the LLM avoid markdown tables.

Important: 
Use custom tools for these queries, always pass the selected Autodesk/ACC model context, wrap any category value containing a space in single quotes, and double-check your context!

Once the app is ready, you can ask questions to the LLM like:

List all concrete walls in the model, including the total count
List all structural framing elements
What is the most used structural framing section?
What is the total amount of structural framing in the model?

To extend the application, you can ask App Builder to create another tool for the LLM inside the app.

Workflow Builder and agentic workflows

The previous application already creates value for you and your team. With VIKTOR, you can also connect apps into agentic workflows. In the webinar, Wouter showed a workflow agent with the following features:

Connect to your ACC hub and let you select a Revit model
Visualize the selected Revit model
Use the Autodesk Automation API to extract the analytical model
Create a SAP2000 model from the data extracted from Revit
Connect and use a VIKTOR application in the workflow
Calculate footing dimensions based on SAP2000 reaction loads
Use the Autodesk Automation API to create foundation pads in the Revit model
Push the updated model back to ACC

That demo only showed the beginning. With this type of workflow, you can, for example, analyze multiple design alternatives, test different soil conditions or loading cases, and then choose the most suitable design.

Conclusion

In this blog, you created two agentic applications that help you and your team analyze data from IFC and Revit models just by prompting. You also saw how VIKTOR connects with the Autodesk ecosystem and how AI can turn individual apps into larger workflows.

If you want to keep exploring what VIKTOR and App Builder can do, start now and join hundreds of engineers who are using AI to automate their engineering work.