AutoCAD and SketchBook Designer software offer new interoperability tools that enable a user to take AutoCAD geometry into SketchBook Designer for illustration. The finished DWG™ file can be brought back into AutoCAD to be shared in plots or through DWF™ files.

Almost every original equipment manufacturer and design studio is trying to shorten the design process. And not just shorten the process-they want more and more innovative designs. More variants, shorter process. How could we make this happen? The answer is never far. It's time to let the designers get into the real 3D design world. Alias software is not just a tool for surface modeling. It is far beyond that: it is supposed to be the designers' playground. You can sketch 2D, model 3D, sketch 3D, and communicate with digital sculptors on one model, one platform. This class will explain how.

In this class, we will cover using Autodesk SketchBook Designer to create a product design. We will discuss the research phase of design and design ideation. Then we will talk about using SketchBook Designer to refine the concept design. Finally, we will examine design rendering. The class will focus on styling and creative conceptual designs, especially early design phases. We will bring a design into final rendering.

Learn to procedurally create any kind of physically based rendering (PBR) material with Substance Designer. This will enable you to create physically based materials that not only look believable, but also materials that tile perfectly when rendered. In this class you'll learn how to create some basic materials, and how to translate them into the major rendering applications including: mental ray rendering machine, NVIDIA’s Iray rendering engine, Chaos Group's V-Ray rendering engine, and A360 cloud-based collaboration service. We will also touch on creating material definition language (MDL) materials by using Iray directly inside Substance Designer. With Substance Designer at the center of your material pipeline, you’ll be able to create materials that will look relatively the same across any rendering engine you end up using for visualization. They will even translate into the major gaming engines, such as Stingray game engine, Unreal, and Unity. The industry use case for Substance Designer is unlimited. Anyone doing product design, automotive, architecture, film, and gaming can benefit from adding Substance Designer to his or her pipeline. This session features 3ds Max and A360. AIA Approved

Learn how to better communicate about your designs based on illustration on top of a DWG™-based drawing. We will use Autodesk SketchBook Designer software with AutoCAD software to understand the one-click workflows. See how this solution also scales and how you may add other image-editing applications, such as Adobe® Photoshop®.

Are you a veteran Inventor Simulation software user? Are you limited to what you can do with Inventor Simulation software? If the answer is Yes, this class is for you. This class will also be beneficial for designers with little knowledge of Inventor Simulation software. The session will start by demonstrating the powerful functionalities of Autodesk Nastran In-CAD software, followed by showcasing how designers like you around the world have made great designs by utilizing the powerful functionalities of Autodesk Nastran In-CAD software. This session features Nastran In-CAD.

We are entering an era in which the consumer is both the designer and the manufacturer: DIY creations on Kickstarter; 3D printers in your home; increasingly affordable computing and components; membership-based workshops filled with digital fabrication tools; and open-source electronics, combined with design techniques that create new, unique—and often highly creative—inventions and applications. The democratization of technology and the rise of the maker subculture are changing who does the work of design, and how they conceive, explore, and fabricate things. Are we all designers now? Or is this more hype, similar to the promise of the Jetsons™ and the paperless office? Join us to hear more from speakers—from an array of disciplines—who will share their stories, talk about how the “make-it-yourself” mindset is driving innovation, and discuss where this DIY movement is really heading. This session features Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables; David Lang, co-founder, OpenROV; Schuyler St. Leger, enthusiastic amateur maker; Jason Chua and team, SparkTruck, Stanford d.School; Ben Kaufmann, CEO, Quirky.com; and Anne Filson and Gary Rorhbacher, partners at Filson and Rohrbacher and co-founders of AtFAB.

Are you an industrial designer (or a CAD user in general)? Are you not doing much with the simulation tools? Come and learn why and how you should be exploiting finite element analysis (FEA) and simulation in Fusion 360 software. Engineers are designers’ teammates, not opponents. Design and validation tools will help you collaborate with engineers more effectively. Those tools will also help you to carry a design to production with fewer changes. You’ll go to engineering with a sound concept, rather than something that needs a lot of help. We will talk about static stress, shape optimization, and maybe even a little generative design.

Designers often face the dilemma of unlimited options and a limited timeframe. AiCorb is an ambitious AI design tool made to address this issue. Established in 2017 as a collaboration between a top Japanese general contractor and a pioneering U.S. research institute, AiCorb currently focuses on facade study and 3D modeling, offering two key features: interpreting a designer's intent from sketch to design, then converting from design to building information modeling (BIM) via a Revit plug-in. As a result, designers can cut down their work time for a mid-sized building feasibility study from eight weeks to less than one week. This class will also explore how AiCorb possibly plans to implement a feedback system that will generate optimal facade designs based on engineering analysis simulation results from apps like Autodesk Forma software. Participants will discover the potential of AI to enable "rapid prototyping" in the early design stages, and they'll gain insights into an innovative design workflow where the designer helps the client make better-informed decisions.

The Construction industry is typified by time and financial pressure, rapid deadlines, low profit margins, large and distributed working teams, and huge fiscal borrowing. And yet, the European BIM Task Group Handbook reports, �The European construction sector output of �1.3tn (trillion) is approximately 9% of the region's GDP and it employs over 18 million people; however, it is one of the least digitalised sectors with flat or falling productivity rates.� Reports forecast that the wider adoption of BIM will unlock 15-25% savings to the global infrastructure market by 2025. BIM has become the accepted model of the construction industry. But now that we understand BIM, it's crucial to gain knowledge of how BIM can transform your own business processes. This presentation will discuss BIM implementation use cases in the MEP field from Skanska, Rambol, Slussen, and Granlund, and it covers the following areas: � Information flow � BIM beyond technology � Lean construction and levels of BIM maturity � 3 BIM cornerstones for MEP designers: calculations, coordination, and collaboration

If you want to learn more about how to use visual, generative, artificial intelligence (AI) tools in your workflows, then this class is for you. Regardless of their industry, artists and designers are discovering the advantages of an AI-powered workflow, making their processes faster, and allowing them to iterate over their products in ways that wouldn't have been possible or cost-effective before. We'll examine and cover the strengths and weaknesses of different tools, such as Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and some plug-ins for Revit software. Most importantly, we'll go over use cases for different industries that go beyond simple text prompting to give artists and designers more control over finished products. We'll showcase how we can use generative AI as a powerful visualization tool for creating images and even videos, and how it can help unleash creativity in game design, media, and building design.

Simulation technology for designers is opening powerful design tools to a wide community of designers. Now you can make the right design decisions, improve your product functionality, and decrease weight without time-consuming setup, model simplifications, and hard-to-interpret results. In this class you will discover how easily you can improve your design with a 1-Click Solution. No extensive experience or specialized education or training is needed for our Simulation software tools. In addition, I will demonstrate a couple of early implementations of the Fusion 360 app calculators that will help you to quickly generate right models, such as gears or bolted connections. This software is powered by known and industry-proven Inventor Design Accelerators technology.

This class will present a new software platform that facilitates information sharing between structural designers and steel material suppliers. The platform provides engineers with current information on material cost and availability in the context of the Building Information Modeling (BIM) in order to facilitate more-informed decisions early in the design process, which can significantly reduce cost and procurement time. In turn, material suppliers benefit from the project information shared by designers to better-forecast demand. We will present the platform architecture (developed collaboratively by Autodesk, Inc.; SteelCentral; and Stanford University) in the context of 2 industry case studies. Representatives from SSOE Group and Gerdau will describe their experiences using the platform from both a designer’s and a supplier’s perspective. Finally, we will engage the audience to discuss the potential of this technology to disrupt traditional workflows and promote innovation. This session features Revit Structure, Fusion 360, and Robot Structural Analysis. AIA Approved

This round-table discussion covers the business of being an independent business owner. Discover from the experiences of others that there's more to a successful business than just being good at what you do. We will discuss topics relating to the type of business you should form, as well as to marketing and advertising, financing, and paying yourself. Many freelance designers are very skilled engineers and artists; this course takes an approach that keeps that in mind. You will learn about community resources and online tools that make managing your business easier so you can focus on your clients.

With rapid growth in technology—especially in manufacturing processes—coordination between designers, engineers, and shop-floor CNC (computer numerical control) programmers is a challenging scenario. Manufacturers cannot always make designs created by designers and engineers, and they send the designs back to the design team for modification in the part model. Additionally, sometimes the right tools may not be available on the shop floor. To overcome these problems, designers and engineers should obtain a basic knowledge of CNC programming and CNC-code generation, which could reduce the time to market and enhance the company's return on investment. This class covers the steps involved in importing the CAD Model into Inventor HSM integrated CAM Solution for Inventor 2015 software. This process reduces the errors involved during importation and further enables designers and engineers to generate CNC codes and set up models for manufacturability. We will also discuss workflow regarding sending the codes to a machine.

So you want to be independent? Freelancing and running your own small business can be fun and rewarding. However, there's more to it than just being good at what you do. This course is an introduction to the business of being an independent business owner. We will cover topics relating to the type of business you should form, as well as to marketing and advertising, financing, and paying yourself. Many freelance designers are very skilled engineers and artists; this course takes an approach that keeps that in mind. You will learn about community resources and online tools that make managing your business easier so you can focus on your clients.

This roundtable discussion focuses on topics around freelancing and running your own small business. Discover from the experience of others that there's more than just being good at what you do. This discussion covers the business of being an independent business owner. We address topics relating to what type of business you should form, marketing and advertising, financing, and paying yourself. Many freelance designers are very skilled engineers and artists. This session takes an approach that keeps that in mind. Learn about community resources and online tools that make managing your business easier so you can focus on your clients.

The promise of BIM is that it makes the design and construction of a building more efficient and, over time, it reduces its overall lifecycle costs. At the same time, setting up and delivering your first BIM project can be a major endeavour for any MEP design firm. However, after BIM is used for a first project, the necessary tools, procedures, and know-how will be already in place for the next project. Relevant technology, good practices and cooperation with other stakeholders come as a standard in all projects. This is true even if they are not needed in all projects yet. The basic demand is to have a building completed in a fast and cost-efficient way, on time. In addition, construction projects must now take into account sustainability and environmental impact. The end user’s needs are taken into account sooner. This session will take into account this complex web of demands weighing on the MEP design and its role in each phase of the BIM process: design, procurement, construction and maintenance. In addition, we will discuss how to reach the following benefits:•Reducing costs throughout the business processes via a rapid exchange of design information–different scenarios can be explored faster, allowing for more iterations. The outcome? A more robust design and a more efficient decision-making processes overall•All design work captured in one comprehensive model in 3D format, keeping them all together in a single environment, rather than relying upon individual drawings•The production of necessary engineering calculations done quickly and easily•All geometric and spatial data required to perform energy calculations produced directly from the model•The demands of being able to demonstrate environmental compliance eased; reducing the building’s lifecycle costs•Integration of cost (5D) and scheduling (4D) data enables online cost estimation and visualisation of the construction, over time•Accurate Bills of Quantities produced directly from the model. The data required to control procurement can be linked directly from the model, optimising the whole procurement process•Integration of interoperability further into the BIM environment•The detailed model contains all data and geometry required for installation of the MEP systems•Once the building is completed, the next version of the model will inform all facilities management (FM) decision-making and systems, including linked data specifically for FM

How do designers' and engineers' models have an impact on machining and manufacturing? This class explores topics that need consideration throughout the design and engineering phase of each new project, including feature selection and issues surrounding modeling with parts versus assemblies.