Engineering.com’s roundup of recent design news.
Autodesk revenue up 12% as company seeks leadership in 3D AI
Autodesk, Inc. announced financial results for its fiscal year 2025 first quarter, which ended on April 30, 2024. Compared to the same quarter in the previous fiscal year, Autodesk’s total revenue increased 12% to $1.42 billion. In Autodesk’s news release, CEO Andrew Anagnost emphasized the company’s leadership in “3D AI,” a reference to Autodesk’s experimental Project Bernini, a recently-announced AI model for generating 3D geometry. “We are well on the way to reasoning about all CAD geometry,” Anagnost said.

Siemens brings AI to hydrogen production
Siemens Digital Industries is planning to release new AI-powered design tools for the hydrogen industry. The developer announced Hydrogen Plant Configurator, a generative chatbot that will assist users in designing, engineering and automating hydrogen production plants. Siemens says the AI will provide block flow diagrams, layouts of system units and connections, and key figures including power consumption and heat generation. Hydrogen Plant Configurator will be available by the end of 2024, with additional AI tools for the industry planned for 2025.
Tech Soft 3D acquires Theorem Solutions
Tech Soft 3D announced that it has acquired Theorem Solutions, a developer of CAD data translation and publishing software, for an undisclosed price. Tech Soft 3D says that Theorem’s CADTranslate, CADPublish and TheoremXR products will complement its own engineering software developer toolkits including HOOPS Exchange and HOOPS Publish.
VariCAD gets 3D PDF support and more
VariCAD has updated its eponymous CAD software to version 2024-2.0. The developer says the latest version of VariCAD offers new 3D output formats including 3D PDF, Collada, ACIS and PRC.
SyBridge Studio offers DFM features for Onshape users
SyBridge Technologies launched SyBridge Studio, a manufacturing insights application, on the PTC Onshape app store. SyBridge said in its announcement that the new tool includes design for manufacturability (DFM) features including automated DFM checks and part thickness analysis.