#AU2016 Product Innovation Keynote

In past years, Autodesk University had just an opening keynote. In subsequent years, we added a closing keynote to being it all together. This year, in addition to those two, we have one in the middle. This keynote allowed attendees to learn about Autodesk’s product and platform innovation and our best new cloud technologies. Amar Hanspal, Senior Vice President, Products started Tuesday morning off and was joined by a group of passionate customers and product experts. This keynote showcased some of the noteworthy technology available to our customers today and coming in the near future.

Here are my takeaways from the product innovation keynote.

• Our relationship with our customers is changing and our offerings are evolving. The inherent promise of a subscription relationship is that customers make a commitment to us for a reasonable duration and our commitment back to them is to maximize the value they get over that period of time.

• To address the needs of distribution teams, the cloud lets us do more than extend our core products by creating a common data environment, single experience, and on-demand access, allowing our customers to capitalize on the promise of the future of making things.

• Fusion 360 is our product design/manufacturing solution where data at the center and modeling, analysis, simulation, and collaboration happen around the data.

• BIM 360 features an AEC-connected process where data is at the center. The data acts as a single source of truth in an ever-changing architecture/engineering/construction environment.

• In response to one of my tweets, a customer asked:

  

  The keynote had the answer (see design exploration below). We are building the "Fusion for AEC" that we have code named Project Quantum. The design of construction of buildings and cities used to be orchestrated by a single individual, the master builder. Given the complexity of buildings, that's no longer the case. It is the team, the hive that does that.

  Quantum includes:

  • Collaborative, connected workflows, showcasing most relevant, real-time contextual data while harnessing computation as an active contributor.
  • Design exploration, simulation, and analysis made throughout the lifecycle that provide feedback loops during design, construction, and use stages.
  • Generative design methods that are actively used by all members of a team, while sensors monitoring operational performance of assets in existing buildings help the team learn and recommend alternatives during the design and construction phases.

• We've built a platform called Autodesk Forge where we build our own products like Fusion 360, Shotgun, BIM 360 and are making pieces of the platform available, giving customers and developers access to read and write data (giving them an API so they don't need the product).

• Virtual reality is an artificial world consisting of images and sounds created by a computer that is affected by the actions of a person experiencing it. Augmented reality is an enhanced version of reality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on an image of something being viewed through a device such as a camera on a smartphone. What separates augmented reality from virtual reality is the inclusion of the real, physical world in the environment being experienced. Augmented reality is making its way to the construction process. We are piloting an integration with BIM 360 for offline 2D document hyperlinking and viewing. This functionality delivered through the Forge platform.

• We continue to make Revit, Inventor, Max, Maya, AutoCAD and AutoCAD Civil 3D better and more cloud connected every day. We are increasing the value of our customers' subscriptions by paying attention to installation, delivery, and management while accelerating the rate at which we improve our products.

• We are busy building the next generation of design and engineering software. This time around, we are collapsing our product experience into a set of connected, complete, and on-demand applications, one for each industry. Fusion 360 for product design/manufacturing, BIM 360 for AEC, and Shotgun for M&E.

  • Each is built on a common data environment and a set of lightweight applications and experiences that work across multiple platforms and personas.
  • Each is built on a common web platform and architecture called Forge, which we are making available to others to build their own connected applications.

• At Autodesk, we exist to make one thing real: The way you use Amazon to buy anything and Google to find anything, you will use Autodesk to Make Anything.

Now that's what I call innovation. Recall that innovation is the creation of some new or different that has significant impact in the world. Without impact, it's just an invention. We are doing all of this for the impact that it will bring to our customers to maximize the value that they get for their subscription dollars.

Product innovation is alive in the lab.