Autodesk Puts Its Money on Construction's Efficient Future

By partnering with VR technology provider Unity, Autodesk seeks to make workflows, like passing a Revit 3D model to a Unity viewer overlay, faster and more useful and user friendly.

IMAGE COURTESY OF AUTODESK

The convergence of virtual reality, prefabrication, manufacturing, building information modeling and construction came into better focus for Autodesk product users in mid November at the software vendor’s annual conference in Las Vegas.

CEO Andrew Anagnost told the 11,000 attendees the company’s strategy is to concentrate on its construction products—including the BIM 360 cloud sharing platform and its design and modeling tool, Revit—and focus less on its media and entertainment lines, except for those products, such as the rendering and animation tools Maya and 3ds Max, that also serve design, construction, and on- and off-site construction manufacturing.

“Construction is not just an AEC opportunity for us,” Anagnost said, “it’s the fastest-growing manufacturing opportunity out there.” He predicts that in 10 years, construction workflows will be much closer to manufacturing efficiency.

The company’s July acquisition of Assemble Systems, which helps designers use 3D model data for estimating, and a new partnership announced at the show with VR technology provider Unity to integrate Unity’s immersive visualization engine into Autodesk design products, were given as examples. “There are going to be multiple tools involved with prefabrication and delivery of manufactured building systems,” said CTO Scott Borduin. “We want the data flow to be more seamless and transparent.”

The partnership between Autodesk and Unity is non-exclusive for both, but for Unity, it’s a chance to streamline data transfer for customers who already use Autodesk products. “We will be simplifying the workflow between our products, making them faster and easier to use and eliminating much of the manual work that is being done today,” says Tim McDonough, general manager for the industrial division at Unity.

Anagnost said the Unity partnership will save Autodesk from spending a decade developing a VR platform as robust and well-adopted as Unity’s. “In a world where Microsoft, Apple and Google are building X/R capabilities into their workflows, I’d rather spend $100 million on generative design than that,” Anagnost said. He added that with tools like Assemble, Autodesk is working with AEC users to digitize project data, pulling it out of 3D models in some cases and delivering it in a form that they, as well as subcontractors and owners, can use. Borduin noted that Autodesk is working to improve its application program interfaces to make data-supported workflows more productive.

Construction had top billing at the event, with demonstrations and case studies such as the automation of curtainwall design and the panelization of construction. Structural engineer LERA+ showed how it uses Autodesk’s computational tools to create design iterations. Paric’s vice president of technology and innovation, Andy Leak, showed examples of how all Paric subcontractors use a 3D model as the “single source of truth” for project data. Autodesk hosted presentations from general contractors such as Mott McDonald and Paric to show what they have done with computational design, 4D scheduling and quantity take-off.

Anagnost noted that contractors with strong digital workflows will have the advantage of much better “bid fidelity,” than low-tech competition. “We want to help projects teams have what they need,” added Jim Lynch, vice president of the Autodesk building products group. “I really do believe in this convergence and that it’s coming. We … support those moving in the direction of automation and manufacturing in construction.”

By Jeff Yoders and Aileen Cho

ENR Midwest Editor and Associate Technology Editor Jeff Yoders has been writing about design and construction innovations for 16 years. He is a two-time Jesse H. Neal award winner and multiple ASBPE winner for his tech coverage. Jeff previously launched Building Design + Construction's building information modeling blog and wrote a geographic information systems column at CE News. He also wrote about materials prices, construction procurement and estimation for MetalMiner.com. He lives in Chicago, the birthplace of the skyscraper, where the pace of innovation never leaves him without a story to chase.

Aileen Cho, ENR's senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

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