#AU2012 General Session: Carl Bass Answers 16 Questions

Today at the AU general session, Autodesk CEO, Carl Bass, posed a series of "what if" questions and supplied the answers.

1. What if there was a better way to capture your good ideas the moment they hit? What if you didn't need to sketch on napkins anymore?

   SketchBook lets you quickly capture your ideas on your iPad, Android tablet, or phone.

2. What if you could sketch more than just form? What if you could actually sketch function, so that you could quickly understand the forces involved in your design?

   There are two applications that allow you to do this.

   • Autodesk ForceEffect Motion lets you do just that for mechanical designs.

   • With regard to buildings, with Autodesk FormIt you can quickly block out a structure in place, right where it's going to be built. This gives you a sense of sight lines, and access, and how your design will relate to the environment and the adjacent buildings. As you try out different forms, it tracks square footage in real time. FormIt lets you quickly try many different options, and see how they relate to the project's requirements.

3. What if you could actually model your design in the context of the real world? What if you could access all of the information about the terrain where the highway will be built? What if you could think about designing miles of highway, and not just small sections?

   With Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler, you can bring together different kinds of data from different sources, like 2D CAD, GIS, raster, and 3D models, and you can even virtually drive on the road before it's built, allowing you to experience it before it's real, and improve it based on that experience. The result of building in context this way is a road that is safer and more efficient, and a project that is better planned and executed.

4. What if simulation didn't require a huge up-front investment? What if it was so easy to use that anyone on your team could be running useful simulations in minutes? What if you could actually run your largest data sets - larger than what your own workstations can handle right now? And what if you could run those simulations from anywhere? On any device?

   One of our most exciting new offerings is Autodesk Simulation 360. It's easy to set up and easy to use. We think simulation should be a part of the design process, not the end of it. Simulation 360, which launched in September, has had more than 17,000 jobs run in the cloud.

5. What if you had all the computing power in the world, and it was basically free? How would you design differently? What if, instead of doing one simulation, you could do many simulations concurrently? Dozens or even hundreds of them?

   Using Autodesk Simulation 360, you can explore many options much more quickly so that you can find not just the first design that works, but the design that works best.

6. What if you could simulate to save lives? Did you know that in the United States, 1.7 million people get hospital-acquired infections every year? So knowing that, if you were designing a new operating room, wouldn't it be amazing if you could simulate and visualize airflow, and get rid of that dirty, germ-laden air as effectively as possible?

   With Autodesk Simulation CFD you can. It's easy to use, and it gives you visually compelling results that clearly show what's going on. This makes it easier to make good design decisions, which, in this case, saves lives.

7. What if you could simulate how well your hospital design would handle crowded hallways and intersections during periods of high traffic?

   Project Geppetto, available on Autodesk Labs, lets you put virtual people into your designs, so you can watch them respond to the digital environment, and to each other.

8. What if you didn't have to treat the resources needed for high-quality rendering as scarce? What if you could present all of your ideas to your customers with stunning realism?

   Of course, photo-realistic rendering isn't new but, with our new Autodesk 360 Rendering service, we're making it easier and more affordable. The service handles all of the materials and lighting for you. You don't need all the rendering hardware, because instead of having to buy and maintain it, we give you access to all the computing power you need, and it's accessible from right inside the tools you already know.

9. What if you could open a Pro/E file? A Solidworks file, or a Rhino file? No exporting, importing, and ending up with a tessellated mess. And what if you could not only open all those files, but you also had access to the real geometry? And what if all of the translation happened automatically, and everything just worked? What if we could use the best tool for the job when we needed it? What if we could move as fluidly between digital tools as we do between shop tools? What if you could do surface modeling and solid modeling at the same time? What if you could model parametrically and use direct manipulation in the same application? And what if you could just model in whatever way was appropriate, whether you're doing industrial design or mechanical design?

   I'm happy to announce for the very first time, right here at AU, Autodesk Fusion 360. Autodesk Fusion 360 is the world's only complete 3D CAD solution that lets you work the way you want to. It allows you to read data from multiple sources transparently, and it helps you manage your data seamlessly, instead of creating a data management problem. You can use it as much or as little as you want and only pay for what you use.

10. What if you weren't limited by your own expertise? What if you could leverage the ideas of all the smart people in your network, and other subject matter experts, to help you solve your design problems every day?

    With Autodesk Fusion 360 you can invite your community into your projects using Project Grapevine to inspect your designs and suggest solutions to your problems.

11. What if Digital Fabrication was simpler? What if CAD and CAM were finally connected in a useful and practical way? And what if you could just hit “print” for a 3D object the way you can for a Word document, whether you're using a water jet, CNC machine, or laser cutter?

    Today we're developing tools that streamline the steps to get from your digital model to a tool cutting through material -- making digital fabrication more practical than ever. Our acquisition of HSMWorks is part of that effort.

12. What if you could see, early on in the process, all of the problems that were likely to crop up? For example, what if Clash Detection was easy? Clash Detection is useful, but what if we had Clash Resolution?

    With BIM 360 Glue, you can send them the actual clash, with all of the context and components involved. That way, the person that needs to fix the problem has all of the information they need to resolve it, without any back-and-forth.

13. What if you could give everyone who needed it access to the data that matters - anytime, anywhere, and on any device?

    One of the great things about BIM is that it provides you with complete lists of all of the components used in your design. Check out BIM 360.

14. But wouldn't it be great if all this information was available at the jobsite? Has it been ordered? Did it arrive? Was it inspected? And what if you could make easy updates to all of this?

    BIM 360 Field lets you find and track all of this stuff, to make sure everything is “right.” It brings the power of BIM to the construction site, so now we have BIM in the field. Our BIM 360 platform now has 40,000 users.

15. What if you could be up and running with PLM in a matter of days, instead of years? What if there was a PLM system that adapted to the way you work, instead of you having to adapt to the way the system is designed? And what if you could adopt PLM in your company one process at a time, one project at a time, at your own pace?

    Autodesk is bringing you PLM you can actually use. In fact, it's the fastest-growing PLM solution ever released. It's easy to deploy, and has a low cost of ownership. You can use what you need and adopt one process at a time. PLM 360 is now being used by more than 350 companies around the world.

16. What if there was one place where you could go to do all of this stuff - everything I just showed you? A single point of connection, that you could log into from any of your devices, and which would give you a single source of truth, and all the updated information you needed?

    That place is Autodesk 360. It's the connective tissue that binds all of this together. It's the hub. Autodesk 360 gives you the ability to search, translate, and view your projects. It allows you to communicate with other people and see what they're doing. It lets you store all the data related to your project in a single place that's accessible to you whenever you need it, and from wherever you need it. It all adds up to a coherent, connected experience built on a shared backbone of data and services.

The cloud is alive in the lab.

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Thanks to the Office of the CTO team for the script upon which this blog article is based.