Autodesk keynotes – AutoCAD 2013 product launch

The Autodesk Media Summit held in San Francisco last week sports news of the latest Autodesk 2013 product suites and products launch. CEO Carl Bass opened the Autodesk Media Summit with some business results, big trends, followed by specific product information by Amar Hanspal.Check out the video here:

Last year Autodesk finished 2011 with revenue of about $2.2 billion. Bass said that in forecasting the economy he had predicted they would grow by about 10 percent last year, “I got a lot of grief from financial community because they didn’t think we could grow by 10 percent,” he said. “People were still worried about what going on with financial matters in the U.S. as well as in Europe. There was a sense the financial world was coming to the end – as it turns out we finished the year with 14 percent. Business was robust around the world, particularly a resurgence of economy in the U.S.”

Given Autodesk’s diversification across geographies, and industries, they represent where the world economy is going, according to Bass. “75 percent of our business is outside the U.S., with representation in media, manufacturing, architecture and construction. We are a proxy for overall GDP.”

“About two years we started talking publicly about what we thought was a big change in computing platform,” said Bass. “What we outlined, is a computing platform that became one of mobile, social and cloud. A lot of people didn’t know what we’re saying, or they said, ‘everybody’s doing that,’ but we were talking about a fundamental shift in the way people do their work. From the very beginning we thought this was the most important shift we’ve seen since the world moved from mainframes to PCs. The entire computing landscape is being redefined.”

He noted that people used to go to work and sit at a PC or Mac, and if they were out of the office, they would say they would email something when they returned to the office.  Now they don’t need to do that.

There are over 2 million visitors to Autodesk 360, Autodesk’s cloud offering available via subscription. This year is Autodesk’s 30^th anniversary and they have about 12 billion legal users of our software. It took 28 years to get to that first 10 -12 million users.

AutoCAD WS, Autodesk’s mobile offering, was launched less than 2 years ago, and there are now 7 million users accessing it completely differently, on Android, iOS devices and the Web.

“What’s interesting to me about it, is the usage. Now the run rate is 300,000 files are being uploaded to WS every week, 1800 every hour, 30 files every minute,” Bass said. “This proves the point of how people are changing the way they work.”

Further it is extending to new customers Autodesk didn’t know were interested in this type of tool. Sketchbook, for example, runs on PC and MAC, web, Android, iOS, and they have had 10 million downloads to date in two years. Contrast this with all their professional products over 20 years.

“We’re averaging 150,000 downloads a week,” said Bass. “The thing that most impresses me is the wide variety of art that’s possible on this device. One might think the device might influence the kind of art. The non-artists all come through.

The change in people’s involvement with their communities is huge. “Our biggest community is Instructables. Do it yourself and makers,” said Bass. The number of unique visitors on Instructables last month was 13 million.

This interest is larger than the number of visitors on Pinterest, and on Instagram and Foursquare put together.

Pixler had 21 million unique monthly visitors.

Pixlr o matic had 1 million downloads in the first 10 days, a group of users interested in creating things.

Bass assured everyone that their marketing efforts are not only geared toward new “consumer” customers. Often new computing platforms are thought of as toys until they take the world by storm.

We are now able to do in 15 minutes what it once took hours to do with the help of the cloud. What would you do differently if you could get answers a lot faster?

Computing is now centered around where you are, with the combination of mobile, cloud and social all in one place. This will open up entirely new ways of working.

Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Information Modeling and Platform Products Group talked about the Autodesk 2013 Product Suites.

There are 60 million users of Autodesk software and more customers than ever before. Autodesk thinks about what customers do with their products. According to Hanspal, the way buildings are being designed is changing dramatically. Today buildings need to perform for an energy footprint. The building industry is borrowing from the manufacturing industry. Analysis is now part of the design process. Architects, planners, and engineers have to compete for attention so they need to showcase products much like the entertainment industry.

Autodesk products are now offered in “suites” rather than as individual products. The workflows between the suites are easy to use, and are cloud centric without the customer having to do something.

A brief look at each suite:

Entertainment Creation Suite –takes the concept of the one click workflow to the next level. You can see the effects of Maya and Motion Builder in one another.

“This came into being with the Avatar movie, now every user of this suite can use this,” said Hanspal. “We take what we learn with the cutting edge customer and give it to everybody.”

Product Design Suite – The initial sketches all the way to rendered presentation are linked within the suite. Launchpad lets you switch between applications. There is new interoperability between Inventor and AutoCAD that takes view creation from Inventor and links it with the documentation tools of AutoCAD.

Building Design Suite – The architectural, structural and system tools are integrated into one suite. There is only one Revit now, and the customers can switch between the discipline they want to work in. “In a multidisciplinary firm they only have to be concerned with one deployment, the engineering design problem they’re solving, rather than having to manipulate a lot of different software packages,” said Hanspal. There is now synchronization between the Building Design Suite, Vault and Buzzsaw and better integration with Revit itself so that content is managed better.

Infrastructure Design Suite – This suite spans planning, designing, building and managing infrastructure and utility projects. Infrastructure Modeler offers upfront design option tools for analyzing project performance and visualization in dealing with stakeholders. BIM for Infrastructure is broadening that concept.

AutoCAD is in every suite, and interoperates with all the modeling, presentation and other products. The company is committed to creating a better interface so that all products look the same, and elements work the same. Customized workflows can be created between the products.

All Autodesk’s Cloud services are called Autodesk 360 provided to subscription customers to allow collaboration and sharing and access to their own work wherever they may be.

Autodesk 360 is good at finding things, connecting people and information. There is the app store Autodesk Exchange App Store, which is now for Revit, Inventor, 3ds Max, as well as AutoCAD. The Cloud is also good at crunching numbers and problems as it has lasting brain power can solve the most challenging design problems, and provide a series of answers.

Rendering services on the cloud are growing at 22 percent each month, and right now only support Revit and AutoCAD 3D, but will begin to support more data types such as Inventor.

All Autodesk products are available through suites; Autodesk 360 is available as part of the subscription package.

Tags: AEC, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Autodesk Media Summit 2012

Category: Autodesk

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