Autodesk AEC Media Day 2011 – Day Two

At Autodesk’s AEC Media Day 2011 held in Waltham, Mass. the past two days, the opening discussion revolved around the various Design Suites which now encompass Autodesk products. According to Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, AEC Solutions, suites are a simplified way for customers to absorb their technologies. What the Suites are now: plant, building and infrastructure, and are sold in standard, premium and ultimate packages. Suites promise customers:

• Reduced cost
• Improving compatibility
• Ability to update (e.g patches and service packs) apps all at once
• Streamlines license management

What customers are asking for:

• Flexibility to innovate
• Economical and convenient
• Comprehensive and sophisticated

All the Revit products – Revit Architecture, Revit MEP, and Revit Structure are being sold in the same suite now. The reason is that there may be a need to explore some of the other Revit tools even if you mainly are an architect, MEP, or structural engineer.  According to Autodesk, Revit is being used for concept design now.

BIM is expanding into water and wastewater and storm systems, management and routing, and analysis tools are built into that portfolio.

There were lots of figures tossed out at the event, mainly to illustrate the dire need for spending on infrastructure.

This AEC day really felt like there was so much information, it kept whizzing by as executives worked hard to get their message across. There was the feeling that they had lived with the reality of some of these thoughts and technologies for some time. It was unclear at many points in the presentations whether products discussed were currently available, available only on Autodesk Labs or were in the “technology” category which means they haven’t become a product yet. Upon further investigation, Project Neon is a cloud technology on Labs, some new structural technology shown is in the “technology” phase, and Dasher is in the pilot phase and not on Labs.

Topics included the need to get concept energy and analysis data into existing building, and doing 3D laser scans of buildings to get accurate data of  existing conditions.

I thought it was curious to have Inventor inside the the Building Suite, aimed at construction professionals, when Inventor is what we all know of as an MCAD product. The reasoning is that contractors want to do their own prefabrication of bolts and small parts – not necessarily fabricating entire sections of wall or things of that nature.

BIM 360 is a new tool (not sure if it’s available yet) “to provide AEC project teams with a view of their project whereever they are.” The entire AEC collaboration data solution includes BIM 360, Vault, and Buzzsaw.

Navisworks is where the BIM model comes together, and enables people to look at the whole project – create walkthroughs, analysis,  construction, simulation model viewing, clash detection and 4D scheduling.

Tags: AEC Media Day 2011, Autodesk, BIM

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