Learn how BIM 360 cloud services can help improve collaboration and productivity for design teams and construction professionals, with higher client engagement, leading to improved project outcomes. This hands-on lab covers integration with Revit®-based software, demonstrating simplified collaboration and coordination between design teams; integration with Navisworks®-based software for construction activities such as quantification and 4D simulation; and taking BIM further than preconstruction into the field and beyond with BIM 360 mobile technology.

The collaboration features of Revit Structure software with Structural Analysis software were widely presented and experienced over the last years. However, despite all this featured software, many structural engineers still stay with their Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and their common pencil-and-paper routine. Not all software supports all codes, and very often it is faster to use those light spreadsheets than it is to work with heavy analysis software. This workshop will demonstrate how you can implement those spreadsheets into the parameter fields of a Revit software family, making use of the formula capabilities of the Revit software parameter and of nested families in order to make Revit software tasty for engineers. We will present examples that will include a reinforced-concrete footing design, a concrete retaining wall, timber joists designs, and a timber joist cantilever design. The workshop will also cover the documentation features and possibilities.

A real-life metro project design will be demonstrated through using Autodesk AEC Collection. Design Authoring, 3D Coordination, Existing Conditions Modelling, Creation of Design Documents and Engineering Analysis were the BIM uses of the project. Stations, tunnels, underground utilities and real environment of the project were modeled by using Revit, Infraworks and Civil 3D. Autodesk CFD, Revit, MagiCAD tools helped designers for engineering analysis and simulation studies. Active use of technologies such as reality capture, virtual reality played an important role in the design process.

In this session we will present how construction companies can capitalize on technology from Autodesk, Inc., to integrate data from disparate systems and provide value to clients. The basis for this session is formed by the story of construction giant J. E. Dunn Construction Group saving millions in cost avoidances by implementing a custom, cloud-based, Building Information Modeling (BIM) collaboration platform. Are you interested in engaging all team members with easy access to the right information? Is the lack of a single source of information for all project data (including BIM, schedule, cost, and so on) hindering your decision-making in the field? This session presents how Autodesk and J. E. Dunn partnered to create Dunn Dashboard, a groundbreaking collaboration platform to address these issues. J. E. Dunn will present the business cases and challenges faced in the industry today; then Autodesk will provide insights on how the company capitalized on powerful cloud technology to solve J. E. Dunn's challenges. We will also discuss effective practices and lessons learned.

Construction’s digital future is already here. To avoid falling behind, contractors must navigate new workflows and use new tools, despite a lack of clear standards on data and process. With huge advances in digital design management and an increased need for data access, being able to work effectively across 2D, 3D, and 5D for quantities, costs, and simulations is becoming mandatory. Construction information gathered during preconstruction is vital for minimizing cost overruns and delays when the project execution begins. The key to unlocking that information lies in the estimating process. Accurate and professional estimating makes or breaks projects. This is where the project is understood, risks identified, and decisions made for how it is to be constructed. Seamlessly linking this data across stakeholders and stages for optimized outcome is possible with the right tools. Join this session on how to take advantage of innovative tools to succeed in construction’s digital future—today!

Are you curious about what’s coming in the next Inventor software? Join this session to see the Inventor Product Management Team present the Inventor development road map and product strategy. Attendees are encouraged to engage with the Inventor product managers with questions and feedback during the session.

PlanGrid’s customer advocates Peter Razavi and Lorrin Blair have worked with hundreds of companies around the country to help implement PlanGrid according to their unique needs. In this session, you’ll learn how different companies have set up and standardized their workflows to maximize efficiency and productivity. Razavi and Blair will discuss real customer stories and lessons learned based on company business model, size, and region.

Technology and our professions are evolving at rapid rates, markets continue to tighten, and people are living and working longer. As we continue, we need to establish and maintain a skilled workforce, which is more challenging as more generations need to work together. Each generation provides unique individuals with preferences, skills, and values formed by their life experiences. Varying ideals and styles of communication can cause problems between generations, which has always been somewhat the case—but this baseline discrepancy is heightened by swiftly advancing technology and a continually changing professional landscape. We will examine differences and similarities among the generations in such a way that the dialog will offer strategies to capitalize on the strengths of each group. It is understanding and appreciating the uniqueness of each group that will help establish a successfully collaborative environment in a multigenerational workplace.

This class will cover the story and the key technicalities of My Home Experience, an ambitious project that is replacing “normal” decorated apartments by customizable virtual reality (VR) ones all across Brazil. We will start by showing off how a partnership between IM Designs and MRV is helping change the way people experience their dream homes. We’ll then dive into how to prepare your data set to fit your immersive technology (XR) hardware. For that, we’ll show how we solved performance and hardware limitation issues while achieving incredibly realistic looks through a series of optimization techniques in 3ds Max software, and we’ll explain their impact on real-time rendering. You’ll gain info about light baking, UVs, retopology, RTT for baking AO, normals, and more. On the hardware side, we’ll see how those techniques affect your GPU, CPU, and memory, and how to profile them to boost rendering performance. We’ll then finish by showing off the final implementation in untethered VR, and its challenges. We hope everyone learns a lot from our case.

This session will focus on transfer of steel fabrication elements from Revit software to Advance Steel software and back. There have been many changes in recent years, so for users and managers of these systems, it is sometimes difficult to understand the background process being used. Therefore, we’ll focus upon the various database types, tables, and locations, and what’s used for which parts of the process, so users can understand how to manage this operation in both platforms to achieve a successful collaboration. We’ll see how the correct use of the mapping database and creation of elements in both software systems, as a management operation, enables a smooth transfer, which is very important in multidisciplinary organizations—so CAD managers understand the need for this processing. Have correct Revit families created to the steel fabrication format, materials identified and mapped, and connection instances created.

At Autodesk, we know there is a need for our customers to bring their work to the cloud for collaboration and automation at scale. If you’re a Revit API developer and would like to get started on Forge Design Automation for Revit, this class will cover the full basic workflow. We’ll walk through a simple example of a Revit add-in, turning it into a Design Automation application. We’ll go through all of the steps necessary to go from the desktop to Forge. This will include code samples as well as a working end-to-end example of both desktop code and Design Automation code. We’ll teach you the syntax for using Design Automation. We’ll show you common errors and how to avoid them. We’ll explain how to troubleshoot problems. You’ll walk away knowing all of the building blocks and have a solid starting point for automating your processes on Forge. Come learn from someone who is part of the team that built Design Automation for Revit.

What an exciting time for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry as the benefits of BIM (Building Information Modeling) will soon be experienced by engineers in the same way they’re enjoyed by architects. This course will look at Autodesk’s approach to “Collaboration for Infrastructure” by applying the same BIM process to civil engineering projects. The function of modeling in 3D is nothing new for civil engineering professionals; the difference is that we can now dynamically connect the data and workflows with other disciplines using BIM 360 software. In this class, we’ll explore how to access BIM 360 for Civil 3D software, whether utilizing the web-based interface or Autodesk Desktop Connector. We’ll also showcase the use of BIM 360 for design collaboration by translating a surface from Civil 3D into Revit software. Then you’ll take a look at how to take your markups to the next level within the BIM 360 environment and learn how to access and write Civil 3D data to BIM 360 directly from within the Civil 3D software.

Immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) are taking the world by storm. Over the past three years, we’ve seen a huge interest in VR. But with current VR, technology teams have spent way too much time preparing their projects, and they require a heavy workstation to render VR experiences. In this talk, we’ll show how to automate common data preparation tasks using BIM 360 software and the Forge Design Automation API. We’ll share how to turn intelligent models into immersive experiences and how to make these experiences available on thin-client endpoints for VR headsets. Learn how to maximize productivity by using modern Autodesk, network, cloud-rendering, and streaming technologies. This lets engineers get a deeper understanding of the design, and makes for better-informed decisions in less time—at the push of a button.

Our firm has grown from 15 to 22 offices in less than 7 years. Of those offices, 19 are in the United States, but the other 3 are Canada, Mexico, and Panama. Working in collaboration with all these offices has presented its challenges with regard to software licensing, data exchange, model sharing, and many others aspects. This class aims to share some of the obstacles, hits and misses, and approaches our firm has encountered and applied. We will discuss network and Internet issues, hardware solutions, cloud solutions, and some unique approaches.

This class will cover using different cloud products such as Fusion 360 software, Fusion Team, and Shared Views to further collaboration between companies and suppliers.

In this class, we will talk about everything you need to know to get started with Simulation in Fusion 360 software. We will look at how to take advantage of simulation in the context of your Fusion 360 design, the benefits of simulation being tied to the cloud for both solving and collaboration, the problems types that can be solved, and the basic steps to get up and running with your first simulation.

Only a few years ago, we saw the introduction of new technologies such as 3D parametric and intelligent bidirectional design tools. Now we are trying to retrofit them to serve our ability to design and deliver products in ways that are very complex. We've heard a lot about the trends and tools, but we have spent little time addressing the impact on the people in our organizations. We can teach skill sets, but shifting people's approach to design, collaboration, and build among themselves, their consultants, and clients through technology is now an urgent issue that may decide between the success and failure of our financial investments. In this roundtable session, we look at the key variables that keep our staff from embracing this new way of doing business. We provoke the legal, financial, cultural and technological aspects of our transformation, only to realize that we have years of processes to undo to make our new approach worth investing in.

The Las Vegas Stadium will provide a world-class home for the NFL Raiders upon the team’s relocation in 2020. The Mortenson|McCarthy joint venture team is currently building the $1.9 billion domed stadium. To overcome the aggressive schedule, scale and complexity the project is supported by a culture that fosters an innovative approach to implementing advanced technology, processes and lean construction methodology. In this session Joel Jacobson, and his 3+ years of managing Drone deployment on large-scale Mortenson projects, will share his unique approach to partnering with industry experts such as Dustin Williams of FlywheelAEC to deliver enhanced project awareness and improved communication across the entire Las Vegas Stadium project team. Joel and Dustin will share and discuss best practices, future outlook observed within the industry, and will demonstrate the lessons learned and data visualizations produced as a result of effective planning and coordination.

As our global population increases, remote indigenous communities are compelled to develop to accommodate growth and responsible tourism. Technology is now available to support and promote development of remote communities in an environmentally and culturally sustainable manner. Specifically, photogrammetry and virtual reality (VR) enable effective decisions about sensitive development by empowering stakeholders with intuitive, immersive experiences of site conditions from new points of view. This session will present a recent project on the remote Fiji island of Vorovoro, executed as a joint effort between an indigenous island tribe, a university construction management program, a social enterprise promoting positive social impact, and a global AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) software corporation. The collaborative team created a feasibility study for a dam to retain fresh water on the island; developed new data workflows; and used drones, VR, and cloud-based collaboration platforms with a Forge partner.

Do you design things that move? If so, read on. Design cycles get shorter and shorter. To compensate, mechanical engineers and designers must engage with related disciplines earlier in the design process. In many cases, understanding the performance of the design at these early stages is crucial to facilitate such collaboration. The Inventor Team is investigating tools and technologies that will enable mechanical engineers to characterize and understand the performance of a design much earlier in the design cycle; encapsulate such "Performance Models" in such a way that other design disciplines can capitalize on them; use these models to ensure that the mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and even controls-engineering designs meet machine requirements; use the outcome of these "Performance Models" to size both purchased and fabricated components. This roundtable will enable you to influence this exciting technology, and it will help us understand your workflows and needs.