In a webcast today, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass introduced the Autodesk 2011 product suite, handing over the discussion to Autodesk senior vice president, Platform Solutions and Emerging Business, Amar Hanspal.

The webcast began with a description of new functionality in AutoCAD, described as the “heart of the product portfolio,”  with features such as associative surfaces, ability to control vertices, advanced surfacing functionality. With the new AutoCAD, users can create surfaces, modify original geometry, and those surfaces automatically update. Surfaces can be associated with other geometry and surfaces.

Users can move models over into Revit and include real world objects by adding point clouds from 3D laser scanning devices into their drawings.

Point clouds of up to 2 billion points can be added.

An enhanced materials library has over 1,000 materials that can be dragged and dropped onto a model. Those materials maintain as they are imported to other models.

Many customers are interested in 2D capabilities, said Hanspal. 2D and 3D have direct manipulation now in many areas.

A new feature in Revit called Sunpath will allow users to input a zipcode and have the sun automatically appear in the right place in the model according to geographic location. It would allow designers to see how shadows fall and to control interior light. There are also enhancements to address large team workflows, and conceptual modeling tools added to be able to execute organic freeform shapes.

“BIM is not just about buildings, it’s about infrastructure,” said Hanspal. More complexity can be achieved in BIM now with the addition of the 64-bit version. There is also greater interoperability between Autodesk products with this new update.