Emily Suzuki
Autodesk University 2025 is right around the corner! Happening September 16-18 in Nashville, Tennessee, the conference is set to bring together over 12,000 Design & Make experts across a wide variety of industries. You know what that means: it’s time to start packing your schedule with Fusion-focused sessions.
We have many industry partners and customers who are joining us this year to lead sessions. From advanced workflows to AI exploration to inspirational case studies, here’s a list of sessions you won’t want to leave off your schedule.
1675 | The Manufacturing Shortcut: A Hands-On Configurations Lab with Rivian’s Prototyping Secrets
Ready to slash setup times and boost machining efficiency? In this 90-minute hands-on lab, dive into Autodesk Fusion Configurations alongside experts from Rivian and Autodesk. Using a provided PC, you’ll learn to build a configurable work-holding setup—straight from Rivian’s playbook for prototyping and production. Discover how to minimize manual setup, reduce errors, and free up time for what matters: programming and perfecting your parts. Leave with practical skills to streamline your workflows and impress your team.
3734 | Design Like a Rocket Scientist: Generative Design Versus Topology Optimization in Autodesk Fusion
What’s the difference between topology optimization and generative design, and why does it matter for advanced components? In this hands-on lab, we’ll explore how Elara Aerospace designed a record-breaking, launch-ready rocket to withstand the extreme forces of spaceflight using Autodesk Fusion. Through guided exercises, you’ll learn to harness both generative design and topology optimization to reduce mass, increase strength, and improve performance under tight constraints. We’ll cover setting up loads, constraints, materials, and interpreting outcomes. You’ll also learn about post-process geometry for manufacturability. Gain practical experience in setting up and comparing generative design and topology optimization, and understand when each approach is appropriate. By the end, you’ll have built and optimized a component for spaceflight-level performance.
4305 | From Circuit to Sky: A Mechatronic Drone Design with Autodesk Fusion
Designing a drone involves integrating electronics, mechanics, and performance into one seamless system. In this session, we’ll use Autodesk Fusion to create a fully functional mechatronic drone. You’ll learn how to integrate a complete 3D mechanical assembly and run simulations to validate thermal performance and structural integrity. Whether you’re an engineer, product designer, or educator, this session will show you how to efficiently and precisely take your ideas from circuit to sky.
3934 | Optimized NPI, Change, and Supplier Management Integrated with ERP
Discover how Sensio (dba Made by Gather)—America’s fastest-growing kitchen brand—transitioned from manual and semiautomated workflows to an automated, integrated ecosystem using Autodesk Fusion Manage Extension and ERP. This presentation highlights their transformative journey, showing how they integrated their ERP and evolved product development, change management, and supply chain automation to leverage Autodesk’s continual enhancements. Learn key insights and strategies for transforming your business with connected data and processes through Sensio’s experiences.
2101 | Using Conversational AI for Design Inspiration with ChatGPT and Autodesk Fusion
Unlock the potential of conversational AI to enhance your design ideation in Autodesk Fusion. This session explores how AI image generators like ChatGPT can help generate innovative design concepts through natural language interaction. Learn to articulate your design goals and constraints to ChatGPT, and develop conceptual ideas further in Fusion. We’ll cover effective prompting techniques, interpreting AI suggestions, and integrating these ideas into your design workflow. Whether you’re facing creative blocks or seeking fresh perspectives, this session will equip you with tools to use AI for enhanced creativity and efficiency in your design projects.
2997 | Rotate to Elevate: How a Fourth Axis and Autodesk Fusion Collaboration Drive Shop Success
Adding a fourth-axis rotary fixture to a three-axis CNC mill unlocks new capabilities, allowing access to multiple sides of a part in one setup, reducing handling, and supporting complex features with fewer operations. This upgrade boosts throughput and precision, transforming small-batch workflows into scalable production. Combined with Autodesk Fusion’s connected platform—which includes fixture design, CAM programming, scheduling, and machine monitoring—shops can benefit from a seamless, collaborative environment where design updates, toolpaths, and machine data stay synchronized. Fusion enables teams to reduce lead times, minimize errors, and gain full production visibility, making the fourth axis a strategic investment in smart manufacturing.
4089 | PLM Summit | From Pilot to Production: A Bridgestone Journey
Bridgestone is dedicated to enhancing its digital maturity by refining its digital thread and preparing for connected data. With a 95-year history, the company recognizes the need to address entrenched habits and enforce standardization. This session will examine its current status, future vision, and the steps required to achieve its objectives. It will analyze business obstacles that led to innovative solutions in project and asset management, challenges of managing business change during development, complexities of developing an integrated solution, discrepancies between development timeline expectations and reality, and valuable lessons learned along the way.
1032 | From Schematics to Reality: Turbocharging Mechatronics with Autodesk Fusion
This session will explore a practical, classroom-tested workflow for integrating advanced electronics and mechanical design using Autodesk Fusion software. Using a mechatronics case study—a Raspberry Pi Pico-controlled NERF turret—you’ll learn to streamline multidisciplinary design, enhance collaboration, and prevent integration challenges. See how Fusion can simplify electronics PCB and mechanical design integration, optimize prototyping, and support real-world educational outcomes. Gain practical methods for improving your electronics-mechanical workflow efficiency.
1837 | The Productivity Gap: Rethinking Skills in the Age of AI
Manufacturing has long emphasized a skills gap, the need for more people trained in traditional tasks. However, this assumption may limit progress. Perhaps the real challenge is a productivity gap—the growing disparity between what skilled individuals can achieve and what current systems allow. In this session, Al Whatmough, CEO of Toolpath, will explore how AI and automation can transform human roles on the shop floor. Instead of replacing workers, the focus is on empowering them, automating mundane tasks, enhancing decision-making, and redesigning work around human strengths. This session will ignite a discussion about the future of manufacturing work, evolving roles, essential skills, and building tools, workflows, and cultures that enable people to perform their best. Join the conversation and help shape the future.
2642 | Accelerating Design Innovation: Integrating Autodesk Fusion with AI-Powered Iterative Form Exploration
Discover how to seamlessly integrate ideation powered by artificial intelligence (AI) into your Autodesk Fusion design workflow. This session will explore a dynamic, iterative process using generative AI platforms like Vizcom and GPT-4o to rapidly generate, refine, and visualize diverse form variations directly from your Fusion models. Learn practical methods for exporting your designs, using AI-driven form exploration, and then effectively reimporting enhanced concepts back into Fusion for further refinement. Unlock greater creativity, accelerate your iteration cycles, and elevate your design innovation by strategically combining Autodesk’s powerful CAD capabilities with advanced AI tools.
1812 | Obliterating Barriers: Designing an Extreme Sports Machine for Wheelchair Users
In this session, we will travel on the journey of how students and staff at NYU created Project Mjolnir: the world’s first open-source, adaptive mountain bike to enable those with disabilities to participate in the sport of adaptive mountain biking. We’ll look at how we help students develop industry skills through experience-based learning, the methodologies we use, and the outcomes we produce with a project that goes beyond the boundaries of the university. The team has built and ridden more than 20 adaptive mountain bikes in different parts of the world, enabling people with disabilities to experience the outdoors in ways they never thought they could. Incorporating design to accommodate off-the-shelf bicycle components, an adaptable frame design, and the ability to self-build the bike, we aim to drive down the cost to a third of current offerings—as well as empower and grow a community of adaptive bike builders through educational experience-based learning.
1606 | Banishing Obsolescence from Your Electronics Design
Avnet’s mission is to accelerate the adoption and seamless supply of new technologies. Understanding the challenges engineers face when bringing innovative designs to life, Avnet’s latest app empowers engineers with direct access to critical resources, streamlines the design process, and optimizes the supply chain. This session includes a demonstration of Autodesk Fusion Electronics and Avnet’s App to address challenging obsolescence issues within the electronics supply chain.
4258 | Shaping the Future of Manufacturing: SmartRoughing, Open Standards, and Cross-Pollinating Innovation
How can innovation from one part of manufacturing transform another? In this session, we’ll explore the Autodesk–ModuleWorks journey with the Manufacturing Data Exchange Specification (MDES) and introduce a new chapter: third-party Autodesk Fusion plug-ins bringing advanced technology to the shop floor. We’ll spotlight SmartRoughing, the next-gen roughing toolpath launched with Kennametal, showcasing how MDES and an open ecosystem deploy deep tooling know-how seamlessly within workflows. This session goes beyond one toolpath, introducing the “cross-pollination of manufacturing technology,” where ideas leap across disciplines to unlock new value. We’ll preview how this approach extends manufacturing technology into the industrial mainstream.