Emerging technologies open up opportunities for utilizing new infrastructure construction approaches. vGIS is redefining construction projects with engineering-grade augmented reality and AI-powered digital twin technology.

Caltrans, in coordination with our software partners Autodesk, Trimble, and ESRI, is in the process of developing a digital geospatial ecosystem to centralize, standardize, and connect Caltrans' digital data across programs and divisions. New tools in Civil3D 2024 and Trimble Business Center have been developed and are being tested to assist with the needed data interoperability. The system aims to increase engagement, equity, innovation, integrity, pride, safety, climate action, stewardship, and efficiency by using tools of today and working with industry to develop tools of tomorrow. This Caltrans effort will support FHWA initiatives such as BIM4I to streamline data connectivity for Project Delivery and create, maintain, and provide access to a statewide digital catalog of Caltrans assets. The proposed milestones include beta testing new industry tools, creating project delivery dashboards, integrating digital as-built data from Construction's connected data environment, and developing new project delivery products such as mapping on demand and augmented reality in the field.

Join us for an engaging panel discussion with real-world applications at the intersection of robotics and extended reality (XR) in the AEC industry. Learn how companies like DPR Construction harness these technologies to safeguard the well-being of their craft teams, deliver quality work, and exceed customer expectations. We'll discuss how robots are transforming construction work with precise installation lines, and explore how XR is revolutionizing the way owners experience their projects and data, gaining their buy-in before work begins. Get valuable insights from industry experts as they share the work they're doing today, while shedding light on the future of these transformative technologies. Speakers will be Rayya Karaa, Senior virtual design and construction (VDC) PM at DPR; Tim Gaylord, Corporate Director of Innovation at DPR; Roy Malcom, Senior virtual design and construction (VDC) PM at DPR, Nicolas Fonta, senior director and general manager of XR at Autodesk and Alex Bingham Associate Architect at Cushing Terrell.

In this session, you'll see how you can maximize innovative VRED, Alias, and Shotgun workflows and tools for your industrial design processes and workflows. Realize the power of the connected solution and see how the software can help you streamline workflows and improve efficiencies. Understand how you can take best practices from automotive design and apply them to the industrial design process.

This class is aimed at architects and visualization professionals interested in learning more about the pipeline, best practices, and tips and tricks for getting a building information modeling (BIM) data set prepped for use in a real-time game engine. The majority of this class will revolve around work done in 3ds Max software, where we'll import a Revit architectural data set, clean and organize the model, set up initial shaders and lighting, and finally export the model for use in a real-time environment. We'll then bring the prepared data set into Unreal Engine, showing the import process. We'll explore how geometry, materiality, and lighting information is translated. And we'll show the process for making future updates to the original data set in 3ds Max, and demonstrate how to seamlessly translate these changes back to Unreal Engine.

VRED software is a renowned tool for automotive renderings and for virtual reality (VR) collaboration to review vehicle designs. Besides its popularity in automotive design, other industries such as manufacturing and engineering have been exploring VRED software's capabilities to showcase products, visualize workspaces, and test assemblies in 3D space. New to VRED 2023.3 is the ability to import metadata from CAD assemblies. Understanding how this extra data flows from one app to another may allow new ways for teams to communicate. This may include keeping track of dates throughout the project lifecycle and categorizing data for easier selection. Visualization designers can collaborate by sharing scene notes, transfer Microsoft Excel data into metadata tags, and convert physical texture sizes. They can work more efficiently, leaving scenegraph nodes unchanged and accessing metadata sets to make geometry and materials visible. Use cases for greater productivity along the digital thread connecting users are limitless.

While professional artists use high-fidelity animation techniques—pioneered and refined by Autodesk's animation products MotionBuilder, 3ds Max, and Maya—in games, film, and design production pipelines, we ask the questions: What if the user is not as skilled? What if their requirements for control are not as stringent Could we leverage new input modalities to allow untrained creators to record and edit 3D motion in just a few minutes? We'll discuss the speed and utility afforded by animating in a completely new paradigm: One that allows you to express intent with your body, fingers, face, gaze, and speech while enhancing presence, storytelling, and collaboration in real-time immersive experiences, and engaging your spatial understanding, reasoning, and memory to author 3D animations. Come and hear what our panel of experts from Meta Platforms, Workshop XR, Entertainment and Media Solutions as well as Autodesk Research have to say.

As AI rapidly advances, we stand at the crossroads of AI's immense potential and the risk and challenges it brings. How will this revolutionary technology affect our workflows and jobs? Join us to learn how the latest AI innovations can accelerate creativity, visualization, and simulation instead of replacing our skills. Get an inside look at experimental projects that transform co-creation between designers and AI. With the right mindset and tools, we can harness AI as a partner to accelerate our creativity, not replace it. Be part of the AI revolution and discover how to co-create the future of accelerated design and creativity!

Our industry is changing, and the way we collaborate and deliver must change with it. This change is having disruptive effects on how infrastructure is planned, engineered, and constructed. Digital twins (or virtual representations of the real world, including physical objects, processes, relationships, and behaviors) are promising to be a solution to creating deliverables that provide centralized, purpose-built access to stakeholders along the design and construction supply chain. We are at a time when the distance between building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) is shrinking, and emerging workflows require sharing new system engagement views with more collaborators, including asset owners. Although some customers are seeing the benefit of a digital twin, others wonder how best to modernize their approach to reduce risk, increase transparency in infrastructure asset delivery, and bridge information gaps between project and operator participants.

Habitat 67 is a model community and housing complex in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It is one of the most recognizable projects in modular urbanization and construction. Sadly, what was built is only a fraction of Safdie's original design. The existing structure was intended to be the first phase of a much larger complex, but budget restrictions meant his original vision never came to life. Until today. In this class, you'll learn how Unreal Engine was used to create an immersive and interactive experience of the original Habitat 67. You'll explore the value of using Unreal Engine to bring architectural designs to life, and discover how 3ds Max software was used in the creation of this project, in addition to RealityCapture.

This session will cover facility maintenance as a step toward a virtual factory. We'll address effective visualization workflows for equipment modeling using Inventor software. Then we'll create an immersive virtual environment that will be implemented with a head-mounted virtual reality (VR) device and hand controllers. You will learn how to operate the equipment within a virtual environment to perform a task while remaining off-site. This method is useful for facility managers/owners, especially when physical presence in the field is impossible for reasons such as natural disasters, pandemics, regional shut downs, and time limitations. 

Everybody's talking about Digital twins, but what are they? What does it take to get or build one? What are the challenges? During this session, we'll go over the process involved in achieving a Digital Twin. We'll explore what it is (as it could be different things depending on what you need), we will examine the uses and benefits, we will go over the technology involved and analyze the steps to get into the Digital Twins world.

In an era dominated by big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and generative AI, the question on everyone's mind is: How can these groundbreaking innovations impact your business? Don't miss out on the opportunity to discover the transformative potential of collaborative digital twin solutions in our exclusive session, hosted by experts from Lenovo and NVIDIA. Picture a world where work becomes more efficient, interactions with decision-makers become seamless, and your supply chain operates smarter than ever before. With the fusion of Lenovo Workstations and the latest innovations in NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise, we're here to demystify the challenges of digital twin deployment. Join us, and embark on a journey to master the art of intelligent transformation (I.T). Arm yourself with the knowledge and tools to not just survive but thrive in this new era of business excellence. Your future awaits!

As the relentless march of technology continues, it's becoming increasingly imperative to explore the boundless possibilities and potential of artificial intelligence (AI). In this thought-provoking session, we'll shed light on the exciting developments and chart our course ahead. We'll delve into the evolving landscape of AI, and examine the profound impact it has on industries and society as a whole. We'll embark on a captivating journey that explores the innovative advancements in machine learning, deep neural networks, and natural language processing, among others. And we'll highlight the real-world applications and transformative potential they offer. Renowned AI experts, industry pioneers, and forward-thinking professionals will share their insights, experiences, and strategies for harnessing the power of AI. The discussion will revolve around critical questions, such as: What's next?

Industries are converging, and so are the workflows and products that today's leading brands are using. In this session, we'll explore workflows with 3ds Max software for digital representations of products that can be used in a variety of ways, including marketing materials, online product imagery, and real-time applications such as augmented reality with the use of open standards which can also extend into the metaverse.

With the rise of the metaverse, more engineers are seeking ways to take advantage of new technologies to enhance their workflows and improve productivity. New visualization and virtual reality (VR) tools are available, but how can we make the most of them? This class will delve into the newest VR and visualization tools to explain how they can be used to enhance workflows within infrastructure projects for rail, highways, and bridge structures—and get the whole team onboard with your project proposals. During this class there will also be an opportunity to experience these projects using a VR headset.

Do you want to learn how BuroHappold is adapting to a digital transformation? We're using new virtual reality (VR) technologies to provide an additional layer of immersive reviews to a project to help increase efficiency, improve outcomes, and deliver value for our clients and our company. This class will explain our VR problems and how we resolved them through investment in new hardware and software—with a spotlight on Iris VR. The session will show you how we developed and implemented a simple VR strategy that allows us to integrate VR into our daily building information modeling (BIM) workflow. We'll cover the challenges we faced, lessons learned, and outcomes achieved.

Traditional estimation methods for new build and renovation projects involve hours manually measuring the physical space. If you're lucky, the 2D drawing or a 3D "model fairy” has blessed you with somewhat accurate drawings at best. But, in most situations, we don't hold our breath. Brandt recognized they could divert time spent on multiple site visits to other critical project needs by bringing reality capture to their estimation process. With one Matterport scan, Brandt built a great foundation of project information using the digital twin to collect, document, and record spaces for quick reference to create long-term value for their clients. Learn how Brandt built remote estimation into their projects, saving time and money by reallocating resources to more critical tasks, all while minimizing disruption within their estimating team. The result for Brandt was the same. Accurate and reliable estimates, but in less time without the overhead costs involving multiple site visits.

Learn how we took a concept idea from inception to construction using virtual reality (VR) tools. We'll begin by stepping through design meetings, reviews, and daily design working sessions. The course will highlight how VR can be an effective, efficient design tool—not just a cool idea. We'll demonstrate how to make design team members comfortable in headsets in order to engage project teams to provide valuable feedback about design, possible construction issues, and operational hurdles. You'll learn ways to integrate VR into design and project visualization. In addition, we'll touch on overcoming obstacles and challenges that can arise when implementing VR into your normal workflow.

This topic was nominated as the focal topic for Autodesk CEO's investor relations AEC Q1 earnings call on May 28th. The pandemic has accelerated the use of technology in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. As we all settle into the "new normal,” there has been significant technological change. We can no longer create the same traditional design teams and expect to deliver on all of the coming infrastructure work. We must rethink how we build our teams to support all of our clients' needs. As we look to capitalize on immersive collaboration platforms, such as The Wild, we are adding entirely new skill sets and resources to our design teams, including immersive media specialists, digital delivery experts, trainers, and adoption strategists. This is enabling rapid growth to our business and changing the way we deliver our infrastructure projects. As a result, we're developing novel adoption strategies to ensure long-term success for our clients in this new digital reality.