Launching Forge

Start Menu

The easiest way to launch Forge is via the start menu shortcut that the ClickOnce installer creates during the installation. Alternatively, open the start menu and search for “Forge”. Windows should locate and display the shortcut to the application. You can manually pin the shortcut to the start menu or the taskbar for your convenience.

Command line

You can also start Forge from the command line. This allows you to launch Forge programmatically, from other applications. You can start the application from code in different ways:

  1. Directly, via the main executable

    First, you need to determine the installation folder that contains the application.

    STU3: Forge.UI-R3.dll
    R4  : Forge.UI-R4.dll
    R4B : Forge.UI-R4B.dll
    R5  : Forge.UI-R5.dll
    

    Unfortunately, the ClickOnce installer deploys the application to a personalized AppData subfolder that is hard to find. The Forge Options menu provides a command Open application folder that helps you find the location of the ClickOnce installation folder that contains the main executable. The command line to start Forge for STU3 from the application folder is as follows:

    "C:\Program Files\dotnet\dotnet.exe" Forge.UI-R3.dll
    
  2. Indirectly, via the start menu shortcut (the example is for STU3)

    You can also launch the start menu .appref-ms shortcut created by the ClickOnce installer from code. The start menu shortcut is always created in a fixed location with the following path:

    %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Firely\Firely FHIR Tools\Forge for HL7 FHIR STU3.appref-ms
    

    Alternatively, you can create or generate an .appref-ms shortcut in a well-known location. The shortcut is a single-line text file with the following contents:

    http://downloads.simplifier.net/forge/stu3/Forge-R3.application#Forge-R3.application, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=ac5f0d017c71eb2e, processorArchitecture=msil
    

Command line arguments

Forge accepts command line arguments. You can specify one or more documents to open:

"C:\Program Files\dotnet\dotnet.exe" Forge.UI-R3.dll [filePath] [filePath] [...]

The specified arguments must be fully qualified absolute file paths. After startup, Forge will try to load all the specified files, if they exist.