San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk announced it's separating its cloud offerings into three separate platforms—one each for its major business divisions—while still promising data interoperability among all of its design and content creation tools at its first live and in-person Autodesk University trade show since 2019, held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Sept. 25 to 27.
The software giant is keeping its manufacturing tools such as Inventor on the Fusion cloud platform (formerly Fusion 360), but it's creating a cloud collaboration platform called Forma for all of its architecture, engineering and construction tools and services, including as Revit, AutoCAD and the Autodesk Construction Cloud. A third platform, called Flow, is being developed for the company's media, gaming and entertainment-focused products such as Maya and 3ds MAX. The company also announced its rebranding Autodesk Forge, a technology development platform, into Autodesk Platform Services and said it will develop a conceptual design tool based on the technology behind Spacemaker, a cloud-based, AI-driven, planning and development tool it acquired in 2020.