Autodesk University 2004

The annual Autodesk user conference, Autodesk University, was held in Las Vegas last week. This year's event, which also happened to be its 20th anniversary, drew a record attendance of 4,400, up 30% from last year's attendance. Flushed with its recent financial success—the company announced a 28% increase in third quarter revenues for 2004 and a 2-for-1 stock split—the overall mood at the conference was very ebullient. Writers, editors, and analysts were treated to a detailed preview of the next release of AutoCAD and other discipline-specific applications under non-disclosure, and this information is under embargo until mid-March. However, some of this information did find its way into the general sessions, thereby giving us license to write about it. This issue of the AECbytes newsletter is devoted to capturing the conference highlights, product announcements related to the AEC industry, and my overall impressions of Autodesk University 2004.

What's New and What's Coming

Three dominants trends were emphasized by Autodesk at this year's conference: one, the resurgence of productivity software like AutoCAD, which seems to be getting a new lease of life; two, the growing adoption of model-based 3D design software such as Revit, ADT (Autodesk Architectural Desktop), and ABS (Autodesk Building Systems) by AEC professionals; and three, the increasing focus on building lifecycle management that will provide value to new kinds of customers such as building owners and operators.

With regard to AutoCAD, some possible new functionality was announced in the general session amidst considerable marketing hoopla. My personal favorite is dynamic input, a new way to interact with the application that (finally!) makes the command line optional rather than mandatory. Long time readers will recall my review of AutoCAD 2002 in the Dec 2001 issue of Cadence magazine in which I criticized AutoCAD's continued reliance on the command-line interface, calling it a hangover of the MS-DOS operating system days and an aspect that could be very daunting to novice users. My suggestion that AutoCAD eventually get rid of the command line sparked a deluge of reader responses and the ensuing debate was captured in Cadence AEC Tech News #63 and #64. Thus, the new graphical input interface that diminishes the reliance on the command line is particularly heartening to me and vindicates my original criticism. Other potential new features that were shared with the general audience were dynamic blocks, which will reduce the necessity of create separate multiple blocks of the same type, and automatic attribute extraction, which can automatically extract attribute data into tables in which simple math can also be done.

On the model-based 3D design front, Autodesk formally launched the next version of Revit at Autodesk University. There was, however, only a brief mention of the new release, Autodesk Revit 7 (which will be reviewed in AECbytes next week). Instead, most of the attention was focused on the upcoming release of Revit Structure, the application for structural engineering built on the Revit platform. This will allow structural engineers to create an integrated physical and analytical model of a structure in Revit and have a bi-directional link with external structural applications from vendors such as CSI and RISA for detailed analysis and optimization. Also in the works is Revit Systems, an application for MEP engineering. Thus, Autodesk is expanding the scope of Revit from architectural design alone to a platform that can support collaborative multi-disciplinary building design, thereby addressing what has been one of the biggest limitations of Revit so far (see my review of Autodesk Revit 6 in AECbytes). It is also making some effort to address the other main limitation of Revit: poor interoperability. Revit Structure demonstrates the start of an API (Application Programming Interface), which may eventually be expanded to the entire Revit platform. According to Autodesk executives, IFC support is forthcoming as well. Also, with the new release, ACIS information can be read into Revit, allowing forms modeled in other design applications such as form·Z to be brought into Revit.

Not much was said about the next releases of Autodesk's AutoCAD-based building design applications, ADT and ABS, except that they would build upon the new features of the next version of AutoCAD. Also, interoperability between the two would continue to be improved. There is no plan to develop a structural application on the AutoCAD-ADT platform. Instead, Autodesk is concentrating on interoperability between ADT and Revit Structure, so that a structural engineer can work in Revit with an architectural model created in ADT. It was not clear whether the interoperability with ADT is limited to Revit Structure alone or extends to the whole of the Revit platform.

While building lifecycle management was frequently referred to in the conference, Autodesk does not currently have much to show for this concept. Although Revit does have features that lend themselves to quantity take-off, scheduling and phasing, and facilities planning, Autodesk doesn't have a dedicated construction or facilities management solution yet. So the building industry lineup was rounded off by highlighting the improvements in DWF, Autodesk's solution for electronic distribution and viewing of design files, and Buzzsaw, Autodesk's online project collaboration solution. Unlike last year's user conference where DWF was being very aggressively promoted (see the newsletter on Autodesk University 2003), the DWF campaign was surprisingly mellow in contrast this year. The big news on the DWF front is the ability to publish 3D DWF files from ADT and Autodesk VIZ, which can then be not only viewed, navigated and queried in the DWF viewer, but can also be embedded within Microsoft applications like Word and Powerpoint for enhancing client presentations. Not much was said about Buzzsaw except that it has DWF Viewer embedded, so it also works with 3D DWF. It is not clear if Buzzsaw has gone through any other innovations and developments, particularly given the changing paradigm of building information modeling (BIM) and the new collaboration processes that would involve. Very little was also said about Autodesk VIZ, except that its development would be back on track.

The Stars of the Show: The Freedom Tower and Dean Kamen

Amidst all the presentations that were made in the opening general session and in the building industry session at Autodesk University, there were, in my opinion, two main stars of the show. The first was the Freedom Tower project being designed on the site of the World Trade Center by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), for which Revit is being used to implement the BIM approach. References to this were constantly cited throughout the presentations to drive home the point that BIM has arrived and is being used by one of the biggest and most prestigious firms on a big and complex project. The underlying message was that if Revit can be successfully used in the Freedom Tower project, it can be used for pretty much any kind of project. Both SOM and the Freedom Tower project seem to have become "poster boys" for Autodesk Revit and BIM.

The second highlight of the show was the keynote presentation by Dean Kamen, the well-known inventor and entrepreneur who literally rode to the stage on one of his more famous inventions, the Segwey, and delivered his entire presentation while standing on it. He spoke on the subject of innovation, and his simple and frank yet very engaging presentation was quite a contrast to the usual business and product oriented presentations by Autodesk executives. I came away with several inspiring quotes and thoughts from Kamen's presentation, a few of which are reproduced here:

• Great technology alone rarely constitutes innovation.
• Risk, failure, and unpredictability are unavoidable.
• Invent as a last resort. Find out if there is a solution to your problem, if not within the industry, then outside it. Great innovations can be realized without having to reinvent the wheel.
• It's not what we don't know that inhibits innovation; it's what we do know that just ain't so. In other words, we need to come down the unlearning curve to innovate.
• Projects require management, but innovation requires leadership. The two are diametrically opposite. Management is concerned with doing things right, while leadership is doing the right thing.
• People avoid change, which stifles innovation.
• Innovations, properly developed, can create entire industries.
• Do not define success as a lack of failure.

Kamen ended his presentation with a final quote by Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. And indeed, it is the only thing that does." Going by this, it would seem that large companies are not the best equipped to be innovative, and it was quite a paradox to hear this at the keynote session of the user conference of an industry giant like Autodesk. Kamen did admit that he had agreed to speak at this event primarily for the opportunity to promote and attract volunteers for his non-profit organization, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), that aspires to make science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today. Also, Autodesk happens to be one of the largest financial supporters of FIRST.

Highlights from the Exhibit Floor

Here is a quick round up of highlights from the Exhibit Hall at Autodesk University, showcasing other vendors' products that work with Autodesk solutions. HP was a big presence, and in addition to demonstrating its latest workstations and printers, it was showcasing its new software solution for design collaboration between a distributed team, HP Remote Graphics Software. This is an advanced utility that allows you to remotely share your graphics workstation desktop with team members on the same network, giving the entire team the ability to control the application and manipulate the design. This is one collaboration solution we haven't seen yet, and it will be interesting to see how it shapes up.

Many of the vendors that I saw at the last Autodesk University (see AECbytes Newsletter #3) were back with new versions of their products. 3D Metrix, a solution that provides an easier way to do 3D modeling within AutoCAD without leaving the comfort zone of the 2D AutoCAD drawing environment, is now in version 2 that has several new features: faster and easier drafting of 2D outlines for details such as walls, windows and doors; a new Sweep tool lets you draw a simple profile in one view of a 2D drawing and extrude that profile along a path in a second view; enhanced 3D display options that allow more control over individual feature colors; and a direct link to Penguin3D, an easy to use sketch renderer. The 3D design publishing and review solution, NavisWorks, previewed its fourth major release called NavisWorks JetStream, which has many improvements such as collision detection, gravity, 3rd person views, easier positioning of lights, the ability to work with models of any size, an expanded set of import and export options, and a streaming capability which makes for faster navigation of large NavisWorks files distributed over the Internet. CADzation was back with a focus on AcroPlot Matrix, which allows viewing, printing, markup, and editing (page insertion, deletion, reordering, etc.) of PDF and DWF files and now features the ability to resize pages, scale line weights, and switch the mode from color to grayscale or black and white, all without recreating the PDF or DWF.

Other show highlights include Archvision's new platform for the management and distribution of digital content, ArchVision Content Manager, which is envisaged as a "digital librarian" that locates, retrieves, organizes and purges a continual flow of 2D and 3D content on the designer's desktop. Then there was VisionREZ, a BIM application customized for residential design that is available as a plug-in for ADT or as a stand alone product. On display for the first time was CodeBook, a project manager's tool that organizes the entire project program in an Access database, links it directly with the project CAD drawings, and then compares and validates the textual, programmatic database with the CAD files.

Overall Impressions

This was my second visit to Autodesk University, and having attended Bentley's user conference, BE, in the summer before this event (captured in AECbytes Newsletter #9), it gave me a new perspective on this conference. It also made comparisons hard to avoid. At Bentley's BE conference, there were constant references to the bigger competitor, Autodesk, and its products and philosophies. In contrast, I didn't hear Bentley mentioned even once in any of the executive presentations at Autodesk University. The only mention of a competitor was that of Graphisoft, in a brief reference to its recently introduced Virtual Construction solutions (which I wrote about in AECbytes Newsletter #15).

If I had to distill the main difference between the user conferences of these two leading AEC vendors in only two words, I would associate Autodesk's event with "marketing" and Bentley's event with "technical." Most of the sessions at BE, including all the keynotes, had intensive discussions of the technological underpinnings of Bentley's platform products and vertical solutions. In contrast, Autodesk's presentations were relatively non-technical and had more of marketing content, making them seem like the kind that would be better made before investors and shareholders. I think Autodesk underestimates the intelligence of its user base. The building industry session had a lengthy Q&A session in which questions from the audience were invited, and most of these were quite hard-hitting and insightful, indicating the sophistication and critical thinking of the users. I hope to see Autodesk take its audience a lot more seriously in future events and tailor its presentations accordingly. More straight-talk and less of marketing lingo would be welcome, as would the frank discussion of some less than hunky-dory aspects such as the decision to discontinue Autodesk Architectural Studio, which was clearly an issue of concern to many users.

Overall however, the energy level of the users was high, and the atmosphere was visibly charged. For users from the building industry, the stabilization and growing maturity of Revit as an application, its expansion as a platform, the preview of Revit Structural, and the promise of Revit Systems were all exciting developments. The Revit sessions were not only packed to capacity but also overflowing in many instances, indicating a high level of interest among users. From that perspective, BIM has certainly arrived, if not in the industry as a whole, then at least in full force at Autodesk University.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

Newsletters > Issue #16 > Printer-friendly format