Autodesk Flies into the Clouds

Company announces Clouds for each of its 3 industries

Autodesk advances cloud collaboration and coordination for AEC customers with the Forma Cloud. (Picture courtesy of Autodesk)

Autodesk advances cloud collaboration and coordination for AEC customers with the Forma Cloud. (Picture and caption courtesy of Autodesk)

Autodesk advances cloud collaboration and coordination for AEC customers with the Forma Cloud. (Picture courtesy of Autodesk)

Autodesk’s biggest announcement at Autodesk University 2022 may have been the lightest, that of three “industry clouds” to manage and contain the workflows of the three industries that the company addresses. The three clouds are as follow:

  1. Autodesk Forma for AEC
  2. Autodesk Flow for media and entertainment and…
  3. Autodesk Fusion for design and manufacturing.

The 3 industry clouds are currently in varying states of maturity. The Fusion cloud, based on the Fusion 360 design and manufacturing platform, is the most robust, as the Fusion 360 platform, has had the time to have the most applications integrated into it. The Forma and Flow Clouds were introduced with one application each. Forma seems to have only Formit, introduced years ago as Autodesk’s answer to SketchUp. Flow, perhaps the most thrilling for Autodesk’s contribution to superhero movies but with the least relevance to engineering, has only an asset manager.

The common thread of all the Clouds is Autodesk Platform Services, the new name for the set of cross-industry APIs and services we had known as Forge. As before with its more succinct though less descriptive name, Autodesk Platform Services “provides customers with the ability to customize solutions, create innovative workflows and integrate other tools and data with our platform.”

Autodesk Forma means to “unify all its building information modeling applications and facilitate AEC workflows for all AEC stakeholders.”

Autodesk’s history and reputation with industry leading design applications AutoCAD and Revit give it a solid base with designers and architects but just a slice of the trillion-dollar  building and construction market. Clearly, Autodesk intends to reach out from its base to all the trades and professions involved in building and construction projects… and more. With the building model a trove of information, including 3D design, MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems), part and cost information and more, basically a digital twin, would it not also be of value to facility managers and owners?

Autodesk is offering the Forma Cloud for this purpose, with the promise of providing an all-inclusive access to building information for everyone involved from the conception to the end of life of a building

“The first Forma offering will help customers extend the BIM process into planning and early-stage design,” says Amy Bunzel, EVP of AEC Design at Autodesk.

It seems to be the right time to push the AEC industry up to the cloud. While software vendors have known the cloud was the way for years, users of design software have resisted, favoring the security and familiarity of their local computers. But this being 2022, after being buffeted by the pandemic, the economy, broken supply chains, etc., those in the construction industry seem to be more accepting of technology. Crews in the field are as  likely to be looking at 3D models on iPads as blueprints.

But just try pushing the amount of data contained in a BIM of an airport or a football stadium into an iPad, says Jim Lynch, senior VP and general manager of Autodesk Construction Solutions. It is better to store the model in the cloud and deliver a subset of the data, only what is needed, when it is needed, to the device.

Autodesk has been smart in leading its AEC userbase to the cloud. The company is not force feeding the userbase, extolling using the cloud for cloud’s sake, but showing the advantages the cloud will provide. Users of the venerable AutoCAD, perhaps the most cloud-averse of all users, have been given cloud access to store their drawings. And by doing so, they can share drawings, convert to different CAD formats and enjoy almost unlimited storage. They can access from their drawings from the office, the field, from home, anywhere, and from any device. Like adults who have learned to like vegetables, they not remember why they had resisted.