Autodesk University 2011: General Session and Innovation Forums

Autodesk University was held in Las Vegas last week, and this year, it was held at the Venetian, providing a welcome change in setting and ambience from earlier years. The event returns to the Mandalay Bay in 2012, where it was held last year. Even for those who don't care much for Las Vegas, it is undeniably a very convenient place to fly to from all parts of the US, and even from many parts of the world. In addition to Autodesk's leading position in the industry, the convenience of the location might help to explain why more and more people attend the conference every year. This year, despite the recession, Autodesk University drew 8,481 attendees, which was a16.5% increase over the 2010 event (which was covered in AECbytes Newsletter #49). There were also many more exhibitors in the Exhibit Hall than I have ever seen in the past, indicating that the universe of Autodesk solutions continues to grow exponentially. The dictum that “success breeds success” is certainly true, at least as far as Autodesk is concerned.

This year, Autodesk dispensed with the industry keynotes that it typically schedules following the main general session keynote, and instead had several cross-industry "innovation forums" which were intended to provide a broader view of emerging technologies and issues relevant to all disciplines. While I missed getting the in-depth dive into industry-specific solutions, the new forums were interesting to attend as well as different, making attendees aware of issues that they may not have thought of. This article captures the highlights of the general session keynote and the three innovation forums I was able to attend, along with any AEC industry technology news I was able to glean at the event. The highlights of the Exhibit Hall from an AEC perspective will be covered in a separate article later this week. We will also take a detailed look at the projects selected as the finalists for HOK's internal BIM Awards, the winners of which were announced in a special event at this year's Autodesk University.

General Session Keynote

Autodesk University typically opens with a general session keynote that also serves as a welcome address and sets the stage for the rest of the event for attendees. It is usually presented by Autodesk senior executives, and this year was no exception, with the bulk of the content coming from Autodesk CTO, Jeff Kowalski, and Autodesk CEO Carl Bass weighing in with some closing remarks. In addition, there were a large number of guest speakers from different industries who were introduced at different points of the keynote, making for a very dynamic and engaging presentation. The bulk of it was focused on capturing the rapidly changing nature of technology and the myriad possibilities that it can afford, such as the power of social networking; the course of innovation which is now flowing upstream instead of downstream and is coming from smaller rather than larger firms; the increasingly affordable power of digital fabrication, which makes it accessible to more innovators; the increasing amount of ambient intelligence in our products, such as shoe systems that can track steps or smart parking meters that allow analysis of traffic, density, and so on; infinite computing (a theme that was also discussed by Carl Bass in his keynote address at the Revit Technology Conference earlier this summer) that brings down the cost of computing, unlike other resources that only tend to get more expensive with time; the increase in mobile computing, which has made computing almost ubiquitous; and the coming together of the cloud and the crowd, with its millions of machines and millions of minds, making it extremely powerful and making us much more smarter with access to this power. While the past decade was about new social and innovation models on the web, the next decade would be about applying them to the real world. Our brains cannot grow bigger to have more capacity, but their capability can be enormously increased with access to technological aids.

As technology matures, it is pushed to do more and more, and as a result, we are all facing greater challenges with what we can accomplish using the tools. Some of the key features and capabilities that Autodesk is working on include applications that can better capture design ideas; the ability to automatically create 3D models from a series of photographs as an alternative to expensive laser scans; populating designs with people to better understand their impact; early stage design analysis; analysis that is always on so that designers can understand the impact of their design decisions right away; an eco-material advisor that can advise on the ecological impact of a selected material; and generative design, where the computer explores all possible solutions to a design problem and finds the one that best matches specified criteria. Our technology is slowly but surely moving away from a file-centric approach to a data-centric approach, where the focus is on managing design processes rather than managing design information. In this new paradigm, collaboration and lifecycle management are becoming increasingly important, which is why Autodesk is introducing a new solution called Autodesk 360 PLM. More details about this were provided subsequently in one of the innovation forums, which will be discussed next.

Cross-Platform Innovation Forums

Of the six innovation forums that followed the opening keynote at Autodesk University 2011, scheduled over two days, I was able to attend three. The first one, entitled "The Promise of the Cloud--The implications of Virtually Infinite Computing for Your Industry," expanded upon the theme of infinite computing and cloud computing that had been introduced in the opening keynote. James Staten of Forrester Research attempted to demystify some of the commonly held myths about cloud computing. For example, it is not always true that the cloud saves you money, as the costs can add up if the cloud service is "always on"; you have to ensure that you "leave" the cloud when you are no longer using it, so that the billing is stopped. Similarly, it is a myth that the cloud is not secure, as very often, clouds can be more secure than a company's servers. Not everything is on the cloud and nor should it be, as many applications work better as traditional desktop applications. We also heard more about Autodesk's own cloud which was unveiled a few months ago (see the feature article “iPad Apps for AEC: Design and Visualization”), and learnt about the three areas it was focused on: collaborating with large data sets; sharing, managing, and updating data; and leveraging computer-intensive capabilities such as rendering and visualization. As part of this innovation forum, Autodesk also had a customer panel comprising executives from HOK, Disney, and Sony Japan, who shared their respective company’s initiatives on the cloud. For HOK, it started with putting email on the cloud, followed by large data sets that could be accessed by any HOK employee from anywhere using any device; for Disney, it started with using AutoCAD WS to access drawings, collaborate in real-time, and add mark-ups for review that could be seen immediately by the whole team; while for Sony Japan, the cloud allowed easier access to analysis and simulation, enabling it to do what it was not able to do before. For HOK, the biggest challenge has been getting Revit—their BIM application of choice­­—to work in the Citrix environment that it deployed about six months ago. However, pushing more applications and functionality to the cloud is definitely helping them by freeing them up from traditional IT support and maintenance tasks.

The second innovation forum I was able to attend was entitled "Everything Changes—The Future of Managing Innovation," and it was primarily focused on how new trends such as social networking could be used to improve business processes. One of the main draws of this event, from my perspective, was that it included a presentation by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of legendary Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who also served as Facebook's director of marketing for six years prior to leaving the company earlier this year. Who better to educate us on the benefits of social networking than a top representative of the company that epitomizes the concept? I found Randi Zuckerberg an excellent presenter, who used many examples of the use of tools such as Twitter and Facebook to highlight what she saw as the "top ten trends" (Letterman style) in social networking. The rationale for companies to adopt social networking is that the new generation of professionals and users expect information to be available immediately, and that any news—positive or negative—travels very fast today. Of the many examples she shared in her presentations, one that stood out was the use of Twitter by KLM airlines while operating flights during the volcanic ash eruption over Europe last year; KLM tweeted regular updates showing the status of flights which were greatly appreciated by those with family and friends on those flights. The message from her presentation to those in industries like AEC was to embrace social media, as tools such as Facebook and Twitter are here to stay and will increasingly be widely adopted for business use in addition to personal use; so firms should figure out the best way to integrate them into their practices. In addition to Randi Zuckerberg, the innovation forum also featured Monica Schnitger, founder of a market analysis firm, who stressed the importance of modeling all the relevant information in a project to communicate ideas and figure out what was important; and Oleg Shilovitsky, a PLM expert who provided some more information about the new PLM tool Autodesk was introducing. It is a platform called Autodesk 360 and it includes three products: Vault for data management, Buzzsaw for collaboration, and a new product called Nexus, which is cloud-based PLM application built from the ground up. Nexus provides full lifecycle management, will be accessible from anywhere at any time, and will be available early next year.

And finally, I attended the innovation forum entitled "Designing a Better World," the highlight of which was a talk by Ed Mazria who painted a picture of the world in 2030. Best known as the person who spearheaded the 2030 movement—which asks architects to pledge to design net zero buildings by 2030—Mazria gave us a fascinating look at the history of the world, especially the built environment, and what would happen if our buildings consumed energy at the current rate.  We saw the contrast between pre-industrial buildings, which had high floor to ceiling spaces that promoted natural air flow, and "modern" architecture, which came after the advent of heating and air-conditioning. While masters of modern architecture such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier saw this as very liberating and reveled in the freedom to create iconic buildings such as the Bauhaus and Villa Savoye, the truth was that such buildings, with their small floor to ceiling heights and vast expanses of glass, paid a heavy price in the amount of energy they consumed. Modern architecture is made possible by oil, coal, and natural gas reserves, of which we are now running out—it is simply not sustainable. The evidence of climate change caused by burning all these fossil fuels cannot be denied; over the past few decades, the number of natural disasters in the world has increased, such as hurricanes, floods, forest fires, the shrinking of the Arctic ice, and so on. In fact, the Arctic ice has shrunk so much that Exxon has signed a deal with Russia to drill for oil and gas there. The silver lining on this bullet is that buildings account for 77% of all the electricity that is consumed, so a positive change in our industry can make a definite impact in averting the impending disaster. The good news is that the top 30 A/E firms have signed up to meet the 2030 challenge. The question is whether we can transform the built environment fast enough to avert the disaster.

Other highlights of this innovation forum were a glimpse of more sustainable products from different industries, including a three-wheeled vehicle from Green Lite motors; a new water treatment system developed by APTwater; the use of smart tags and a GIS system for data collection and management of utilities by the Las Vegas Valley Water District; and the use of sustainable practices within the M&E firm, Flack and Kurtz, in addition to sustainability being a core strategy in their design work. The road to sustainability can be one of incremental transformation or dramatic innovation—what is important is to take the first step.

AEC Industry Technology Highlights    

Some of the technology news relevant to the AEC industry that I was able to glean at Autodesk University this year was the availability of several new technology previews on Autodesk Labs, including Project Spark, which is a low-cost BIM application, and Project Storm, which enables structural analysis on mobile devices such as the iPad. I also saw an infrastructure model on the iPad using Project Galileo, and the popular Navisworks application will also soon be available on the iPad. (It seems as though I will have to update my series of iPad articles on Design and Visualization apps and Project Management and Construction apps sooner than I thought!) Thus, a lot of development at Autodesk is being focused on tablet applications. At the moment, Autodesk is focusing primarily on Apple’s iOS platform, but it does recognize the need to develop applications for the Android and other tablet platforms as well.

The AEC industry at Autodesk is also focused on expanding BIM into the building lifecycle and including tools for fabrication. The company is seeing a lot of interest in BIM from contractors and builders, and they are especially interested in the “I” in BIM, motivating Autodesk to focus on ways to get information from the model. This also includes taking information from the model and making it useful in the field, so that the project can be built faster, in addition to cheaper and better. There is a growing move in the AEC industry from the traditional design-bid-build process to a design-fabricate-construct model, hence the focus on fabrication. For facilities management, Autodesk will continue to rely on third-party integrated solution providers such as FM:Systems, which is a relationship that Autodesk has invested in heavily (see the article, BIM for Facilities Management). Internally, it is focusing more on asset management and on lifecycle management, which was the main incentive behind the development of the Autodesk 360 PLM platform.

Stay tuned for more AEC industry technology highlights, including the third-party applications that were displayed at the Exhibit Hall at Autodesk University this year, in a follow-up article that will 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.