It was an Autodesk Gallery Extravaganza at #AU2017

Autodesk has a gallery on the second floor of our One Market office. The gallery includes about 60 exhibits that showcase the work of our customers who make places, things, and media (movies, games, TV shows). In addition to One Market, we have had some exhibits at our Lake Oswego office. Occasionally, we have pop-up galleries in places like Tokyo or London.

For years now, we've had a handful of exhibits that we bring with us to Autodesk University (AU) in Las Vegas. For #AU2017, we outdid ourselves. We had 36 exhibits that featured customers from the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and Product Design and Manufacturing industries. As a One Market Gallery ambassador, I volunteered to conduct some AEC-oriented tours that covered 19 of the 36.

Here are the exhibits that AU attendees visited in the AU Exhibit Hall.

Customer Name	Exhibit Name	Unique Aspect	Autodesk Involvement
Congan & Gensler	Los Angeles International Airport Expansion	The Los Angeles International Airport expansion is a 1.2M ft2 project that includes a new concourse, passenger tunnel, and gateway building.	Using virtual design collaboration tools like BIM 360 Team and Collaboration for Revit, multiple firms (Congan and Gensler) combined to efficiently deliver the project sharing and reviewing Revit models with all stakeholders, regardless of location.
SSEC	Guilin Liangjiang International Airport	Featuring one of the most dramatic landscapes in the world, the Guilin-Liangjing International Airport features a double-arched roof design with peaks inspired by nearby karts limestone hills.	The team used computational design for the non-traditional arches for the roof, turned models into 3D visualizations (providing the ideal sequence to construct the arches), and created a 4D construction path (4th dimension is time) so steel installers could visualize what they needed to do — in the exact order that they needed to do it.
Fosters + Partners	Mexico City International Airport	When completed, the New International Airport of Mexico City will be the world's largest airport and have a net-zero carbon rating completely powered by renewable energy.	The complex form of the structure and geometry required computational design and using Autodesk Revit ensured smooth transitions from concept to design phases and enabled efficient communication and collaboration.
BIAD UFo	Phoenix International Media Center	The shape of the Phoenix International Media Center (a mixed-use building in Beijing) is patterned after a Möbius strip.	BIM tools provide valuable insight to inform the shape, performance, and construction of the building (such as how to bend the steel for easier fabrication) whereas simulation tools such as CFD analyzed wind-pressure distribution to avoid interrupting air flow in all areas.
Bank of England	Project Soane	Sir John Soane's Bank of England, a London landmark, was destroyed in a fire a century ago but is now being restored via crowdsourcing.	An online community of thousands of designers and architects from around the world, collaborated in a BIM 360 Team hub, where they share existing information, such as historical photographs, original architectural drawings, and in-progress 3D model sections of the site.
Nihon Sekkei	Joetsu Aquarium Museum	The Joetsu Aquarium features a giant tank with interior walls that replicate sections of the Sea of Japan's underwater topography, so visitors can experience the hidden beauty (800 species of aquatic plants) and rich aquatic life (3,500 animal species) that is normally only seen from the surface.	Architectural design firm, Nihon Sekkei, used Autodesk CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software to analyze water flow to model water movement and temperature to create a healthy environment for the flora and fauna as well as position the fish for optimal viewing.
Warka Water	Warka Tower	The Warka Tower is an alternative water source solution for rural populations that uses mesh nets to collect water from dew, fog, or rain and stores in it a tower.	The Autodesk Foundation supports non-profit and entrepreneurs creating solutions that address social and environmental changes.
KPF	China Zun Tower	Once completed, the 108-story China Zun Tower will be the tallest skyscraper in Beijing and will be able to withstand category 8 earthquakes due to its megasteel frame and reinforced concrete core.	Leveraging Autodesk's collaboration-focused, cloud-enabled suite of tools, construction of a single structural floor can be completed in 3 days.
University of Pennsylvania	Baroque Topologies	University of Pennsylvania School for Design Professor, Andrew Saunders, found that teaching students about Baroque architecture on paper was insufficient when he could use 3D visualizations and models instead.	Saunders used high-resolution scanners to capture the interiors of Italian churches and created 3D digital models (using Autodesk Reality Capture software) and 3D printed them.
BuroHappold Engineering and Kila Design Architects	Museum of the Future	Set to open in the Spring of 2019, with its stunning stainless steel facade decorated with glazed Arabic calligraphy, Dubai's Museum of the Future will act and an incubator for inventors and entrepreneurs to share their most innovative designs and prototypes.	Using Autodesk BIM solutions, generative design tools, and virtual reality technology, the teams achieved optimized results in all areas of the project, from full design for manufacture and complete virtual construction rehearsals to complex geometry design and rapid iteration.
Elkus Manfredi Architects	Emerson College Renovation	Elkus Manfredi Architects and Suffolk Construction are using scans of an entire building to repair the 100-year-old Emerson College Little Building located along the Boston Commons.	The team is working with Autodesk at the Autodesk BUILD Space in Boston to restore the building as closely as possible to its original composition.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation	Glen Canyon Dam	The 60-year-old Arizona Glen Canyon Dam is one of the largest concrete dams in the world.	With its construction predating CAD, as a case study, Autodesk worked in partnership with the Bureau of Reclamation using drone and helicopter photography with ReCap to create a 3D model so that the dam's caretakers now have a more complete understanding of its design and vulnerabilities.
3DR	Drones in AEC	Site Scan is a complete drone-to-data platform (self-flying drone, mobile app for flight control, cloud-based web app) built for AEC professionals.	3DR used the Autodesk Forge platform to build Site Scan and ensure that it works seamlessly with Autodesk tools.
Schneider Electric	GreenOValley	The GreenOValley project in Grenoble, France covers 38,000 m2 yet will only consume 45 kWh per year per m2 (typical is 150 to 200 kWh per year per m2).	3DS Max and Project Dasher technology are behind this futuristic visualization hub that aggregates building data into an intuitive and immersive interface.
Toyo Ito & Associates	Taichung Theater	World-renowned architect, Toyo Ito, designed the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House as a sound cave featuring huge cavernous spaces consisting of curved walls without any supporting columns.	AutoCAD and Maya were used with The Emerging Grid — an optimization algorithm that converted rigid, inorganic spaces to soft, organic shapes — resulting in curved walls created using sprayed concrete (typically only done for tunnels) and inlaid floors.
University of Stuttgart	Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall	The Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall is the first building to have its primary structure made entirely of robotically fabricated wooden plates that are interlocked together.	Inspired by the microscopic connections found in the skeletal systems of sea urchins and sand dollars, the exhibition hall's complex design was made possible by computational design and Revit.
LiRo Group	Virtual Tools in Infrastructure	The LiRo Group is using BIM and VR to modernize New York's vast web of infrastructure that was built in the 1930s.	Using a combination of Autodesk software tools, this ambitious undertaking will ensure that it won't be just the facilities that are modernized but also the ways in which they will be updated and maintained.
Norconsult	Vamma 12	In Norway, the Vamma Hydropower Plant remains the country's largest river hydropower plant — even 100 years after its construction — producing 14% of Oslo's electricity.	Norconsult is using the newest technology (computational design, Building Information Modeling, electronic review/approval) in an entirely paperless process.
Société du Grand Paris	Grand Paris	Set to be complete in 2030, the Paris metro system will be doubled, adding 120 miles of new track and 68 new stations that serve 2M passengers per day with trains that are fully automatic.	With 37 architecture firms and 10 major design engineering firms collaborating from around the world, the Grand Paris Express is one of the first large-scale infrastructure projects using BIM from start to finish.

Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). The things we exhibited at AU show how our customers have used our software to do just that.

A touring test is alive in the lab.