Autodesk University 2008

Autodesk University was held last week at The Venetian in Las Vegas, and the attendance number this year was about 9,000, a little lower than the record-breaking number of 9,500 from last year. This is the first time that the upward trend in attendance has been broken, and it could, of course, be attributed to the current economic crisis. It could also be explained by the fact that Autodesk recently held local Autodesk University events in Japan and China for the first time, which probably drew in less attendance from those countries at the main event this year. Still, there were over 74 countries represented among the attendees, pointing to not just an increased global presence for Autodesk but also a growing internationalization of technology and technology events in the AEC industry. In addition to the general session and the different discipline-specific sessions, there were over 600 classes that were being offered at Autodesk University, allowing Autodesk users to be plunged into an intensive learning experience in the applications of their choice. The Exhibit Hall too featured a wide variety of Autodesk products and add-on applications from third-party vendors, allowing users to get an indepth overview of the technologies available in their individual fields. The AEC section of the Exhibit Hall, in particular, was teeming with third-party solutions working with Revit, many of which were new and exhibiting at Autodesk University for the first time. All in all, it made for a very vibrant, stimulating, and “happening” atmosphere.

The highlights of the general and building industry sessions of Autodesk University 2008 are captured in this issue of the AECbytes Newsletter. It will be followed by a dedicated article providing an overview of the AEC-related applications that were on display at the Exhibit Hall. To compare this year’s event with earlier years, please see my articles on previous Autodesk University events listed in the Newsletters Index page.

Opening General Session

The general session at Autodesk University typically features a keynote speaker, and this year, it was Tom Kelley, who is the founder and general manager of IDEO, one of the world’s leading product design firms. He has authored two books on innovation, including “The Ten Faces of Innovation” published in 2005, and he used this as the basis for his presentation at the general session. According to him, innovation is particularly critical in the face of the increasing global competition, with the only defense against it being to out-innovate the competition. While he didn’t go through all the “ten faces of innovation” that he presents in his book, he did talk about two, labeled “The Anthropologist” and “The Experience Architect.” The first relates to the critical importance of anthropologists in design firms as they are the ones who actually find the problems that need to be solved, and have proven to be the biggest source of innovation at IDEO. Discoveries are facilitated by seeing things with new eyes, a concept for which Kelley has cleverly coined the term “vujà dé” as the opposite of “déjà vu.” A good example of this was a project to design a kid’s toothbrush that Oral-B commissioned IDEO for, at a time when kids’ toothbrushes were simply being produced as smaller replicas of adults’ toothbrushes. The anthropological research at IDEO determined that kids don’t really hold toothbrushes the way adults do, leading to the design of a thicker, squishy toothbrush that became the best-selling kid’s toothbrush in the world for 18 months until other companies caught up with Oral-B. The other face of innovation that Kelley discussed from his book focuses on the design of great customer experiences from start to finish, rather than a design that is only focused on the end product. An example of this is Westin’s “Heavenly Bed” concept, which took an opportunity in plain sight and succeeded in creating a unique offering around it. Also related to this concept is the idea of making even the most technically sophisticated products very simple to use, a great example of which is a portable heart defibrillator IDEO designed for Heartstream—it can be used even by a 6 year old to save lives.

The keynote was followed by a brief presentation by Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, who focused on capturing and articulating the essential role of design software. Design is a cyclical process, which is repeated over and over again until a satisfactory solution is found to a problem. While design software does not provide the solutions in and off itself, it does enable designers to find the few good ideas from the many that they have, to ask the “what if” question over and over again. Creating digital prototypes of designs helps designers to understand them more completely, to experience them as if they are real, and to allow many more of them to be explored, unlike physical prototypes. Bass gave the example of sculptors such as Bruce Beasley who are now using software to design their sculptures and using rapid prototyping to test them out before physically building them—they are now even creating sculptures that would be impossible to imagine without a computer. In addition to validating the need for design software in general, Bass talked about two new trends in design that Autodesk is attempting to cater to. The first is bio-mimicry, where designers take inspiration from solutions provided by nature. A good example of this is the invention of Velcro by a Swiss engineer, George de Mestral, which was inspired by cockleburs. The second trend is algorithmic design, where the design of forms is driven by algorithms and results in the ability to explore a much large range of options than the traditional design process. The example Bass used to illustrate algorithmic design was the work by Neil Katz of SOM, which was described in his Viewpoint article, “Parametric Modeling in AutoCAD” published in AECbytes last year. Bass also showed a brief preview of a prototype algorithmic design application that is being developed by Dr. Robert Aish, who had earlier spearheaded the development of Bentley’s GenerativeComponents application but left to join Autodesk last year.

The general session concluded with a series of demos by Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski across the spectrum of industries and disciplines that Autodesk solutions cater to. These were intended to show some of the technological advances in Autodesk products and the future direction and mission of the company, which is to move from “what if” to “what else.” We saw the current status of the Digital Cities initiative that was the highlight of last year’s general session, projected in a 360 degrees view around the complete auditorium. While nothing as flashy was shown this year, we did see some digital models of actual cities such as Berlin, which is one of the 3 cities Autodesk has partnered with to create their models (see Figure 1). Autodesk is working on some innovative ways of visualizing these city models, such as superimposing the model of top of a 2D map, making it easier for users to retain the context of the city while navigating the 3D models. In contrast to city models of the kind you see in Google Earth, Autodesk’s digital cities are not geometric models but actual infrastructure models that can be used for design and analysis in city planning, urban design, and individual site design. Given that computing power grows exponentially every year, Autodesk is able to create dramatic updates to projects such as Digital Cities, making the technology available in a much shorter span of time than was previously considered possible.

Other technologies that Autodesk is exploring in the light of greatly increased computing power are focused on making the computer a much more proactive tool in the design process rather than simply a passive instrument that only does something when we tell it what to do. This would allow designers to focus on what they want to make rather than on the recipe for making it. It includes, for example, letting the software pre-compute all the possible options for a specific task, finding those that best match specified criteria, and presenting them to the designer for selection. While this idea of “generative design” has been around in the domain of architectural computing research for decades, it has yet to find its way in commercial applications in the AEC industry, with the exception of some tools like SITEOPS that I wrote about earlier this year. Autodesk is exploring these ideas in the field of building performance analysis to start with, which makes sense given its algorithmic nature. It was demonstrated by using some upcoming capabilities in Ecotect to find the best location, orientation, and form for a building on a site to optimize lighting, shading, and solar gain. The software provided a valid framework of options in the form of boundaries for the building envelope, within which a certain level of performance would be guaranteed.

Other examples of new ideas that were demonstrated for making the computer much more proactive include smarter inferencing in solid modeling tools, which makes them more fluid, intuitive, and faster to use; the use of cloud computing to generate visualizations in minutes rather than hours, allowing instant, realistic feedback that can actually be used for analysis and design rather than simply for validation as it is used now; automatic creation of the modeling surfaces in a sketching application by interpolation, allowing it to be used to generate the actual 3D forms that are being sketched; software that allows you to take photos of existing buildings and stitch them together into 3D models, making it easier to capture existing conditions for as-built projects; the ability to print full-scale 3D models more easily and cheaply; and new navigation and viewing technologies that allow the user to interact with the model as if it were outside the computer screen rather than inside. All in all, it was quite a fascinating display of the ideas that Autodesk is experimenting with, some of which may seem very futuristic at this point, but may also become reality sooner than we anticipate.

Building Industry Session

The building industry session at Autodesk University was led by its AEC executives including Jay Bhatt, Jim Lynch, and Phil Bernstein, and it focused on five key areas that Autodesk considers as strategic trends going forward: conceptual design, sustainable design, fabrication, the growing need for infrastructure, and IPD or integrated project delivery. Conceptual design is becoming the target of increasing software development at Autodesk, as it is seen as the defining moment for design; in addition to form-making capabilities, the focus is also on analysis tools that can be used at the early design stage to help make critical decisions about the project. Some of the enhancements Autodesk is planning for conceptual design include improved mesh modeling capabilities in AutoCAD and a new set of conceptual modeling tools in Revit that will allow more interesting and complex forms to be designed. The combination of increased design freedom along with the capability to analyze the resulting forms—as they are captured in a BIM format and are not just 3D geometry—enables designs to be developed that are both creative and credible. The planned enhancements are not just for architects; Autodesk is also developing extensions to Revit Structure that will allow structural engineers to add supports and loads and study the behavior of these conceptual forms, enabling their expertise to be applied to the design at an early stage. Autodesk also sees its Maya application (which falls under the Media and Entertainment division) being increasingly used by designers for conceptual design. Another upcoming tool from M&E that will be useful is Newport, which allows buildings to be visualized within the context of their sites, enabling designers to assess how their proposed designs would fit into surrounding neighborhoods.

For sustainable design, Autodesk now has both Green Building Studio (GBS) and Ecotect as part of its portfolio, and one of its upcoming initiatives is to publish a guide to sustainable design at different stages of a design project using its products. It starts at the site level, where tools in Autodesk Civil 3D can be used to perform various kinds of site analysis including soil, water run-off, and flooding. Moving on to the building design, a GBS plug-in to Revit allows analysis of energy, water, and carbon emission for the proposed building, allowing multiple design alternatives to be explored and compared to select the most efficient one (see Figure 2). As the next step, Ecotect can be used to site the model for optimal performance, and design openings and shading devices using analysis of solar radiation, airflow, shading and daylighting (see Figure 3). The design of the MEP system is also critical to sustainable design, and once the design has progressed to a more detailed stage, tools in Revit MEP can be used for heating and cooling load analysis and equipment sizing and placement, based on the usage patterns set for the building model. And finally, Autodesk also sees 3ds MAX Design as part of its sustainability portfolio, as it can be used to perform accurate lighting analysis of internal spaces and fine-tune the design accordingly. Interestingly, there was no mention of IES (a high-end building performance solution that integrates with Revit) this year, in contrast to the heavy dependence on it for making Autodesk’s sustainable design case in both Autodesk University 2007 and 2006. It seems that once Autodesk makes acquisitions in certain areas, other third-party solutions in that space fall off the importance scale considerably, even if they have capabilities that in-house solutions lack.

Next were construction and fabrication, for which Autodesk showcased the use of Inventor for the detailed design of specialized components such as shading devices, panels, canopies, and so on. The advantage of using Inventor is that the model can be used directly for fabrication. The use of NavisWorks was also demonstrated for visualization and interference management. It was interesting to see that NavisWorks can be used not just for detecting physical conflicts but also for “soft clashes,” where the proximity between objects falls below a specified tolerance level. The same model can be taken to the new Quantity Takeoff tool for extraction of quantities for cost estimating and analysis (see Figure 4). The use of Constructware for bidding and budgeting, and Buzzsaw for sharing drawings and 3D visualizations were briefly demonstrated; however, these did not seem very convincing and left me with the impression that Autodesk was trying very hard to justify the use of these products for construction and fabrication, even though the benefits were not sufficiently compelling.

On the infrastructure front, Autodesk focused on transportation and on how the principles of BIM also apply to this field. It starts with the collection of existing data related to the new road, highway, bridge, and so on that has to be designed. Laser scans are an efficient way to capture this data, and Autodesk is working on technology that allows point cloud data sets from laser scans to be processed and converted into intelligent 3D models that can capture the context within which the new infrastructure project has to be designed. The actual design can be done using Civil 3D and Revit Structure. Civil 3D allows geospatial analysis as well as cut-and-fill analysis of the site, allowing multiple options to be quickly explored to determine the most efficient one. All the terrain information, including roads, can then be passed from Civil 3D using the LandXML format to Revit Structure, where the bridge or highway interchange can be designed (see Figure 5). For visualization, 3ds Max Design can be used, as well as more specialized tools for civil engineering such as the Rapid Road Safety Analyzer from RDV Systems and Dynamite VSP from 3AM Solutions.

The final section on integrated project delivery (IPD) showcased Autodesk’s own project, its new AEC headquarters in Waltham, MA, remodeled from an existing building. The 65,000 sq. ft. interior was designed by architecture firm KlingStubbins and built by general contracting firm Tocci Building Companies, using Autodesk's portfolio of BIM and related applications. It is the first project in New England to use the IPD model. The owner (Autodesk), architect, and contractor signed a single contract rather than separate agreements. Many objectives were identified including quality, sustainability, schedule, budget, and so on, and the profits of the participating firms were tied to how well these goals would be met. This was a fast-track project, with 10 weeks for design and 14 to 16 weeks for the construction, and it was accomplished by co-locating all the disciplines and using a single model. All of the key decisions were made together by the owner, architect, and contractor. The team did initially encounter the usual collaboration issues such as the architect’s model being unusable by the contractor, but it was resolved by the architect agreeing to model according to how the contractor needed the objects. The main BIM applications used were Revit Architecture and Revit MEP, along with the Quantity Takeoff for quantity extraction and NavisWorks for coordination and collaboration. On some parts of the project, such as an intricately-detailed wood ceiling assembly in the gallery area (shown in Figure 6), Autodesk Inventor was used to design the model and send it directly to a wood-cutting application for fabrication. The model-based approach facilitated energy analysis, allowing performance goals to be accomplished, and also allowed for more efficient construction with less waste. This, along with the inclusion of many sustainable features in the design, is allowing Autodesk to seek LEED certification for the project.

Analysis and Conclusions

It is always helpful to get an idea of some of the future developments that the industry leader is planning on and the direction it is taking, which is what makes Autodesk University such a key event. From an AEC perspective, one of the most promising developments seems to be the new algorithmic design application being developed by Robert Aish. It will be interesting to see how it differs from the GenerativeComponents application he engineered at Bentley, and whether it can be much more of a mass-market application in contrast to the primarily high-end use of GenerativeComponents by large and technically sophisticated firms. I was also intrigued by the promise of applications that can pre-compute and present the best possible options for a specific task that was presented in the general session, but it was disappointing to find no follow-up mention about this in the building industry session, which points to the likelihood that the ideas may still be quite far out. All Revit users must be eagerly awaiting its upcoming conceptual design capabilities, and given that Autodesk gave some demonstrations about this at last year’s event as well, I do hope that they are finally ready to be rolled out in the upcoming release.

While there is certainly much to look forward to from Autodesk, as evidenced by its presentations, I was very disappointed to find that the company is not doing much to solve the large file size problem in Revit, or even acknowledge that this is a problem for which a solution needs to be urgently found. Recall from my case study of technology implementation at HOK published a couple of weeks ago that their main challenge with BIM implementation is the sharing of Revit models across the WAN due to their large file sizes. And from talking with many other firms at Autodesk University, this seems to be the critical problem for anyone using Revit. Given the pervasiveness of the problem, I wish Autodesk would use some of its R&D resources to find a better data structure for Revit that can optimize and minimize its file size. There seems to be little point continuing to innovate and build on a platform without tackling one of its most fundamental problems first. Simply throwing more computing power at the problem, such as a 64-bit version of Revit, is not going to solve it (see the concluding section of John Tobin’s recent article, “atomicBIM: Splitting Data to Unleash BIM’s Power”).

Another aspect that I would like to see Autodesk talk about and address in their products is that of reducing complexity. It was their keynote speaker from this year’s event, Tom Kelley from IDEO, who emphasized the need to make even the most technically sophisticated products very simple to use, but I did not see this sentiment being reinforced in any of the subsequent presentations by the Autodesk executives. Granted that of all the leading BIM applications, Revit is still the easiest to learn and use, but it is getting more complex with the addition of more features and enhancements in every subsequent release. It would help if Autodesk could come up with ideas on how to simplify products while still adding to their capabilities.

In conclusion, this year’s Autodesk University lacked the kind of “Wow” presentation like the Digital Cities one that made such an impact last year, and it was a little disappointing to see some of the key technology challenges not acknowledged by Autodesk. But as the saying goes, nothing succeeds like success, and the success of Revit in the AEC industry was clearly demonstrated by its growing ecosystem of Autodesk and third-party applications on display in the Exhibit Hall. It gives Autodesk the opportunity to come up with many innovations that can positively impact the AEC industry much further, not just forward-looking innovations of the kind that were demonstrated, but also innovations that can make existing technologies more efficient and user-friendly. Let’s hope Autodesk is able to focus on both, as they are equally important.

Stay tuned for the follow-article on the third-party applications being displayed at the Exhibit Hall, to be published later this week.

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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