#Key terminology

Across Beam we use some key terminology which is worth knowing before you get started

• Project

  A project represents an individual experience or game. Think of it as your top level grouping for each distinctive thing you build.

• Slot/Unit

  A project will have one or many slots and these represent a space for content to be placed. As we are currently moving to the new Slot terminology, the old Unit may still be found in the Unity plugin. They are the same thing.

• Instance

  An instance represents one copy of a slot. You might have multiple instances of a slot called 'Boardroom table chair' for example, which would ensure all of those slots were fulfilled by the same asset.

• Area/Scene

  An area is a way of grouping slots to make them easier to manage. A good example is using areas to represent different levels or environments within your experience.

• Asset

  An asset is a piece of content which can be a 3D object, an image, a video, an audio file or some JSON data (coming soon)

• Content Layer

  A content layer is a group of links of assets to slots and defines a set of content to be placed into a projects slots.

• Fulfillment

  A fulfillment is what occurs when a content layer matches a project and it's slots and a set of assets are delivered for your slots.

• Custom metadata

  Custom metadata is extra fields you can attach to your assets and then handle in your project. For example a URL could be attached to an Asset to handle a conversion when a user interacted with it.