Autodesk University 2005

Autodesk's annual user conference was held last week in Orlando, and the attendee list crossed the 5,000 mark for the first time, continuing the dramatic upward trend that was also in evidence last year, when the attendance was over 4,400 in contrast to the 3,300 number from Autodesk University 2003. The increased attendance can be attributed in part to the fact that for the first time, users of Autodesk's entertainment and media products for imaging and gaming such as 3ds Max, Autodesk Toxik, the entire line of Discreet products, etc., were also attending the conference. But it was also a sign of the increasing importance of technology in all of the different industries Autodesk caters to, including AEC, manufacturing, and infrastructure. And a significant aspect of this increased criticality of technology is the move from 2D to 3D. In fact, if I had to pick the most significant highlight of this conference that made it different from prior Autodesk user conferences, it would have to be the de-emphasis of AutoCAD. A close second would be the significant shift in style, with more emphasis on products and technology and less of marketing hoopla. From that perspective, it was a welcome change from Autodesk University 2004 (covered in AECbytes Newsletter #16 ).

This issue of the AECbytes newsletter captures the conference highlights, product announcements related to the AEC industry, and my overall impressions of Autodesk University 2005. Other material including highlights from the Exhibit Floor will be covered in the "Building the Future" section later on this month.

Emphasis on 3D and Integration

The emphasis on moving to 3D at Autodesk University was best exemplified by its de-emphasis of AutoCAD, despite the fact that Carol Bartz, Chairman, President and CEO of Autodesk, specifically said in her presentation that the company was "not going to de-emphasize AutoCAD," which she referred to as the "greatest 2D product on the planet." But actions speak louder than words. At Autodesk University last year, a large part of the executive presentations at the general session was focused on demonstrating some new features of AutoCAD and drawing applause for them from the audience. That was totally missing this year. Instead, product demonstrations were focused on how data could flow between the different applications, starting from 2D and 3D geometric data in AutoCAD, to 3D intelligent data in discipline-specific applications like Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Inventor, and subsequently to civil engineering and GIS applications as well as high-end visualization applications like Autodesk VIZ and 3ds Max. Autodesk anticipates that the move from 2D to rich, intelligent 3D design will also bring with it the possibility of integrating processes and products across industries. So, for example, in the design of a manufacturing facility, the machinery could be designed with Inventor, which could be brought into the context of the building design in Revit, all of which could then be taken into Autodesk Civil 3D to design the site within the manufacturing facility will be located. Autodesk is therefore focusing on improving the integration and interoperability of applications not only within individual disciplines but also across product lines. A pretty convincing demo of this integration was demonstrated in the general session, and the theme of the conference too was aptly named as "Connecting the Dots."

Another telling sign of the de-emphasis of AutoCAD was in the media briefing Autodesk University traditionally hosts for writers, editors, and analysts. Normally, these briefings start with AutoCAD-related product announcements and demonstrations, and are then followed by industry-specific sessions. This time, however, the AutoCAD component of this briefing was at the end rather than at the beginning. Also, very little was said about AutoCAD per se at this session. Instead, most of the 2D-related discussion was focused on a possible new application, code-named Vespa, that we got a sneak peek of. More details on this and other product announcements appear in the following section.

What's New and What's Coming

Another change at this year's event, in contrast to conferences from the previous years, was that no product details were revealed. Some sneak peeks of improvements to existing products and of some new products were shown, but Autodesk also cautioned—presumably for legal reasons—that what was being shown was not guaranteed to be made available in the future for commercial use. Ignoring the legalese, what was shown looked very promising.

Let's start with AutoCAD. It seems like Autodesk has finally decided to overhaul the sub-standard 3D modeling and rendering capabilities of AutoCAD, which have remained untouched in several releases, and which I have repeatedly criticized in my reviews (see my reviews of AutoCAD 2006 , AutoCAD 2005 , and AutoCAD 2004 ). So far, AutoCAD has had one of the most non-intuitive interfaces I've seen for 3D, with very poor rubber-banding that makes it difficult to see what you are modeling until you finish the operation, and the inability to interactively indicate the heights of 3D objects in the vertical direction—they have to be typed in or graphically indicated by drawing a line on the base plane. The sneak peek at Autodesk University showed that many of these issues had been addressed, and if the next release of AutoCAD actually incorporates these, it should be a compelling 3D conceptual design option for those who already have a copy of AutoCAD and are comfortable with it. How close it can come to matching the capabilities of applications such as SketchUp and form · Z can only be judged once it is made available.

Another potential new application we got to see a little of is a 2D illustration tool, code-named Vespa, which you can use to apply artistic effects to a 2D drawing generated from AutoCAD, Revit, Autodesk Architectural Desktop (ADT), etc. Now this is hardly a new concept. We have had filters in Adobe Photoshop for applying various artistic effects to an image for a long time. Even in the CAD and modeling realm, several applications incorporate this capability. SketchUp, for example, was designed to be sketch-like from the start, and its upcoming 2D counterpart, code-named Grizzly, that I described in my recent article on SketchUp University , allows a variety of presentation styles, including artistic ones, to be applied to the 2D images of a SketchUp model. Another example of an application which has this capability, and which has pretty much perfected it, is Piranesi, an image-editing application specifically designed for architectural sketch rendering that understands depth and perspective. It allows you to take a plain, computer-generated 3D scene or 2D drawing and transform it into a sophisticated rendering in varied styles reflecting different moods (see my review of Piranesi 4.0 ). Even form · Z incorporated a Doodle rendering capability in version 5.0 which I described in my review . Thus, while AutoCAD doesn't score many points for originality with Vespa, it will certainly be a very useful application for those who want to generate artistic renderings from their AutoCAD drawings. The Vespa rendering will remain linked to the AutoCAD drawing, and will be automatically updated if the AutoCAD drawing is changed, while still preserving the presentation style that is used.

Two other new products specific to the building industry that were briefly demonstrated were a quantity take-off application and an asset management application. Both of these are built on the DWF platform, which means that they can work with any application that generates DWF files and are not limited to one specific application. The quantity take-off application, code-named Autodesk Take-off, represents Autodesk's first foray into developing applications for construction. It can work with a 2D or 3D DWF file generated from AutoCAD, Revit, or ADT (the ability to publish 3D DWF files has been available for close to a year now) and automatically measures and counts the different types of objects contained in the model or drawing. These are presented in an Excel-like spreadsheet, and can be validated by color coding. Cost estimating applications can now work with this data to provide a detailed cost estimate of a proposed design. The new asset management application, code-named Spyder, is targeted for facilities management (FM), and is being specifically developed to be simple, as opposed to the complexity of currently available FM applications. It works with 2D floor plans exported in DWF format from any of the design applications, and allows the plans to be color-coded in different ways. Assets and attributes can be assigned to the different spaces, and reports can be run to generate different kinds of information about the facility being managed.

DWF seems to be certainly gaining in momentum, and it is intriguing to see it move beyond electronic publishing and markup capability to serve as the platform on top of which downstream tools that work intelligently with BIM data can be built. In choosing to build these tools on top of DWF rather than on the Revit platform, Autodesk is broadening their scope to users of AutoCAD and ADT as well rather than limiting them to Revit users. This poses an interesting question: does the DWF file have all the building information that is contained in the Revit file, and if not, then are these downstream applications not sacrificing some of their potential capability by being built on top of DWF rather than on Revit? We will return to this question when evaluating these applications after they are released.

Getting back to DWF, it was a strong focal point for Autodesk at this year's event, and was being heavily promoted. Autodesk announced that a growing number of companies and third-party software vendors were taking advantage of the DWF development platform to extend the distribution and management of design information to extended project teams. Several thousand third-party application developers had already downloaded the free Autodesk DWF Toolkit this year and hundreds of these were attending the first-ever DWF Developer Conference at this year's Autodesk University. Apparently, there are now more than 150 third-party DWF applications on the market, in all the different disciplines Autodesk caters to. We will see if any of them relevant to the building industry made it to the Exhibit Floor in a follow-up article to be published later this month.

With regard to existing BIM applications, not much was said except for the fact that new versions of all of them would be released in the spring, including the first release of the Revit-based MEP engineering tool. The focus, instead, was on sharing some customer success stories: Kaisen Architecture and Planning, which realized 20% increase in productivity and 4 months reduction in schedule through the use of ADT on a project; HIP Architects, which is using Revit Building successfully for green design; and Lizardos Engineering Associates, which is seeing a 15% increase in productivity with its use of Autodesk Building Systems (ABS). With the release of Revit Structure in the summer (see its AECbytes review ), examples of successful multi-disciplinary BIM are also emerging: Martinez and Cutri Architects working with Glotman Simpson engineers, who are using Revit Building and Revit Structure to create a shared Revit model; and SOM, which is doing the same with the engineering firm, WSP Cantor Seinuk, on the redesign of the Freedom Tower project. Last but not the least, we heard about BIM in education. Over 70 schools are now providing Revit training, which should help alleviate one of the main implementation challenges of BIM: the limited pool of personnel skilled in BIM.

Other Conference Highlights

Recall from my report on Autodesk University 2004 that the Freedom Tower project being designed by SOM using Revit was cited so frequently that I called it one of the "main stars" of that show. At this year's event too, the Freedom Tower was again, in its redesigned form , literally all over the place—in the opening movie clip before the general session, in numerous references by Autodesk executives within their individual presentations, and in strategically located posters in the conference venue. There was also a special presentation by James Vandezande of SOM, who is leading the Revit implementation on the Freedom Tower project, during the media briefing for writers, editors, and analysts. (See AECbytes Viewpoint #7 contributed by Vandezande.) Thus, the Freedom Tower project continues to remain the "poster boy" for Autodesk Revit and BIM, and is also becoming one for Autodesk Buzzsaw, which is being deployed for the project to provide a centralized location for storing and sharing design data.

Another highlight of the conference was the keynote address, which was presented this year by Tom McCann, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), that arm of Disney which is responsible for designing and creating the thrills and rides in the 11 Disney theme parks across the world. The presentation was particularly interesting, given that the conference itself was located in the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin Hotel within the DisneyWorld property in Orlando, and all attendees were treated to a 3 hour tour of one of the theme parks during the conference. McCann described the process used to design the attractions, which starts with creative brainstorming and story-telling, then moves to concept development where lots of physical models are built, followed by feasibility studies and the design of the building that will house the attraction. The final steps in the process are the production, usually by outside vendors, and the installation. The process has some close parallels with the design and construction of a building, and it was not surprising to find that WDI has an architectural and engineering team which uses Autodesk products for design and visualization. McCann demonstrated the use of 3D tools in conceptual design and production for projects such as the Tower of Terror, Animal Kingdom, and the new Everest attractions. All rides are fully simulated on the computer before being built, and various what-if scenarios are analyzed. 3D is invaluable in rebuilding an existing structure to accommodate a new attraction, in identifying what parts go together and in what sequence, and in showing vendors and contractors how to built a new attraction with minimum disruption to existing attractions. What wasn't clear from the presentation, however, was which specific Autodesk products were used by the WDI team, and how intelligent the 3D models were in capturing the attributes of the different components of an attraction, which would be very different from that of a building. Has technology evolved to a point where there are dedicated "attraction information modeling" tools for theme parks similar to the "building information modeling" tools we have for AEC? It didn't seem like this was true yet.

In addition to the general sessions and the keynote presentation, there was a lot to see in the Exhibit Hall as well as a lot to learn in the 400 or so multi-level classes and hands-on labs in industry specific sessions. Highlights from these will be covered in a follow-up article later this month.

Overall Impressions

The general sessions at this year's Autodesk University were a welcome change from previous years, with more emphasis on substance rather than style. It was good to see Autodesk taking its audience more seriously and not resorting to marketing gimmicks. There was a lot more focus on the products themselves, and with demonstrating some of their key features as well as how they work with each other. What was also critical was the exhortation, in all the executive presentations, to move to rich, intelligent 3D design. Seeing less, rather than more, of AutoCAD also helped. BIM is already gaining rapidly in momentum in the AEC industry, and this point couldn't have been better reinforced for AEC professionals attending this year's Autodesk University.

With regard to the technology for BIM, there seems to be a lot of energy and momentum. The new products for quantity takeoff and asset management look very promising and represent a good start towards having a vast toolset of applications that will attempt to deliver on the promise and potential of BIM, developed both by Autodesk as well as outside vendors using APIs for Revit and ADT as well as the DWF Toolkit. The quantity takeoff tool, in particular, is an important start for Autodesk towards BIM for construction, considering that Graphisoft already has a head start in this arena with its construction modeling and cost estimating solutions (see AECbytes Newsletter #15 ).

Stay tuned for more Autodesk University coverage in the next "Building the Future" article later on this month.

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.

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