Autodesk University 2016 Day 2

By Clint Brown

I have to start my Day 2 blog, with an update of everything that happened at the end of day 1.

I finished off yesterday on my way to a Fusion Configure class, where I caught up with some of the team behind the product.

Following on from this, I attended an awesome class on Textile integration with Fusion 360. The premise of the class was to use a digital mannequin in Fusion 360, and to then use surfaces to create clothing panels. The next part was to use 3rd party software called Exact Flat to flatten out the panels for textile design.

Blogger Social

The blogger social was pretty cool this year, there were some pretty big names from Autodesk in attendance, including Shan Hurley, Lynn Allen, Jeff Kowalski and Kean Walmsley. Check out Shan's blog post on the event by clicking on the image below. It's always fun to catch up with the other bloggers at tweeters and "nerding out" at these gatherings. 

 image credit

 Day 2 Proper 

Product Innovation Keynote 

All I can say is WOW! Autodesk made some Huge announcements. 3 key areas have had some significant investment, the M&E (Visual effects) folks have a host of new cloud enabled tools that allow for easy collaboration and sharing. BIM 360 Docs has been updated with 58 updates this year, the product is starting to mature and is now the perfect Common Data Environment for all of your BIM needs.

Fusion 360 updates were announced by Steve Hooper of Autodesk. My 2 favourite new features that were shared, are Browser based modelling, which will mean that we should be able to design products anywhere and on practically any device, and the new generative design tools. The ability to create not only optimised geometry like we can in Inventor's shape generator, but the ability to create optimised lattice structures (Project Dreamcatcher) in the internal voids of the model.

I was chatting to Rob Cohee the day before, and he showed me this really cool part, which was designed in Fusion 360 using this new technology (see the images below). Turns out, that I had been holding the very part that was on the main stage presentation the next morning!

The images below are from the Autodesk blog post on what was announced at the keynote, including the list below.

Here’s what Autodesk is focusing on for Fusion 360 users in the coming months:

• Browser availability: With the forthcoming arrival of modeling in the browser (and more browser-based functionality to come later), Autodesk is fulfilling its promise of a complete end-to-end product development solution, providing more choice and flexibility for product developers. Inspiration can strike anywhere: online, offline, or on the go. Through mobile and browser functionality, there are no limitations to where, when, and on which device a product developer can access their design data and work on their projects.
• ECAD: With Fusion 360’s upcoming ECAD functionality, printed circuit board (PCB) integration becomes practically seamless. Users will be able to select any type of PCB file and have it translated directly into their designs via the cloud. Changes update automatically and cloud libraries will be available to populate boards with common 3D components. With this update at no additional cost, Fusion 360 is incorporating multi-discipline design capabilities, leaving behind the notion that project stakeholders should be limited to working within their respective design tools.
• Generative design: The ability to input design criteria such as desired criteria (weight, size, cost) and allow computer algorithms to generate design geometries that fit those constraints is coming to Fusion 360 in stages. Starting with shape optimization as seen in November’s release and with structural latticing to follow, designers will get access to the cutting-edge in design optimization and spare themselves unnecessary iteration and testing.
• Sheet metal: Highly-requested and highly-anticipated by the Fusion 360 community, sheet metal capabilities will be added so users can flange, flatten and fold to their heart’s content.

In addition to this, is the Nastran solver that is now also available!

Next I'm off to the "Crystal Ball" session on Vault futures, which I can;t talk about on my blog, but I am looking forward to it.