Viva BIM Vegas!

bimstore summarizes Autodesk’s premier conference for those who design, build, make & create

Just as I began to catch up on emails, questions, queries and get settled after RTC Europe it was time to jet off once again. This time for the annual Autodesk centrepiece conference, Autodesk University 2016 held in the bright lights of Las Vegas. Whilst AU has already popped up around the globe in venues such as Australia, Brazil, China the Middle East and the UK in 2017, there’s still no place quite like Las Vegas! Having attended the conference twice previously I thought that on my return I would let the dust settle (and catch up on some sleep!) before I provided my thoughts and opinions on some of the goings-on stateside.Firstly it's worth mentioning that once again the list of attendees from the UK was as impressive as ever, regularly bumping into members of the #UKBIMCREW as you raced from class to class around the Venetian’s extensive conference centre. The week’s events, discussions and announcements were all well organised and coordinated through a designated Slack channel (special thanks to @clarkrob for setting this up). The amount of UK organisations that pay for their employees to attend AU clearly shows the enthusiasm, willingness to collaborate and to stay at the forefront with all things BIM, so hats off and thank you!It’s fair to say Autodesk don’t do things by half when putting on a show, and the opening keynotes venue and lighting rig could have you thinking you were in a nightclub rather than preparing for 3 days of lectures, learning and networking!

The conference itself is attended by more than 10,000 from a variety of backgrounds, product designers, architects, manufacturers, visual effects specialists and even computer game and movie makers. The software that Autodesk provides across its range of platforms is sold as tools to assist with ‘the future of making things’ be that a suspension system for a car, a chair or even a building. The programme and class schedule is enormous and choosing your classes prior to attending is often a case of sifting through the extensive catalogue and hoping that there are spaces available to attend. Unfortunately, it would be impossible for me to cover it all but I’d like to highlight some of the interesting points taken from the various keynotes and sessions I had the privilege of attending.

Autodesk’s Chief Technology Officer Jeff Kowalski opened the event and provided us with the concept that Autodesk is looking at ‘changing the future of work’. Through advances in AI, and machine learning Autodesk believe we now have an exponential possibility. The unprecedented computing power available to us has given us the ability to teach computers to teach themselves! Yes, this is very Terminator-esq but it’s already happening. One of the examples illustrated by Jeff was the classic Atari game ‘Breakout’. How did we get better at the game? By playing it over and over again, and sometimes hoping for the best, but we learnt by playing. However, how did a computer go about getting better at it? Through an AI called ‘Deepmind’ a computer learnt to play ‘Breakout’ better than any human has ever done, in just 1 night. How did it do this? It played it in computer time, playing millions of games in parallel over that time period, awesome I know! But let’s think about this in context now if I played ‘Breakout’ and got good at it there is nothing to say that my best friend who played it would be to the same level as me. As the computer mastered the game in that night so did every computer ever, by running that same AI, efficient eh!

Jeff’s example highlighted that machines and the available processing power are allowing them to become smarter, no doubt. But they are also becoming more creative. Allowing machines to grasp the ability of creative design, something that has only been provided by us mere mortals. Autodesk’s generative design tools (due to be released in early 2017) are allowing the computer to act as co-designers that can assist in the creative process. Through generative design the need to tell the computer what to do is no longer a requirement, what we can now tell it is what we wish to achieve. To highlight this Autodesk illustrated ‘Dreamcatcher’ a generative design tool that was picked up by an intern to assist them in designing a chair.

By inputting her goals into the computer it was able to customise and provide 1000’s of possible variations for a chair solution which matched here initial requirements. Providing options that the designer herself may not have been able to envisage or manufacture. A chair designed by human and computer, the ‘Computer augmenting natural talent’.

Autodesk also seems very keen in developing VR products to allow their users to experience their product first hand, interacting with it digitally. ‘It’s about exploration, a feeling experience’, these tools are developing rapidly to provide a richer experience between the design and the customer. It is possible using products like ‘Autodesk Live’ to take your building model and allow users to wander around the spaces and interact with them. This concept has been around for a while but the process of being able to do this is now simply a few clicks of a button. Using an Oculus or Vive headset’s with Autodesk Live, the design intent modelled in Revit can be experienced first-hand in a few clicks of a button. These process’s and experiences are likely to continue becoming part of our day to day with clients themselves having greater expectations and seeing the technology in use in other areas, Autodesk Live makes this process even easier.

Whilst there were many amazing speakers at the conference I feel that Anna Nixon was worthy of a special mention. Anna has been working in robot design and collaborating with global teams for the last 9 years. She is the creator of her own non-profit which supports girls in perusing their interests in science, technology and maths (STEM), Oh and did if forget to mention that Anna is a high school junior from Oregon. At aged 16 she commanded an entire conference centre relaying her experiences and wishes for the future. As Carl Bass had highlighted these are our future designers, creators and builders, these are the people who are going to make our future landscape. Anna’s confidence and willingness to share were really impressive, she knew what she wanted to do and was asking Autodesk to assist in providing the tools that would allow her to do her job more effectively, quicker and more accurate, a lot like the reasons why those in construction are adopting BIM right?

In summary it’s clear that Autodesk have one eye clearly fixed on the future and the way we work, whilst the event is Autodesk based there was a lot of discussion about interoperability and how file type should not limit the way we design and create, but rather how software, applications and tools can assist us and be used to maximize creative solutions we may not be able to see. The future of making things is changing, Autodesk wants to play a part in that and AU is the environment to find out what the software giants are doing. AU London will be held at Tobacco Dock, London between June 21-22.

You can view the full keynote session for AU2016 by following this link http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/class-catalog/2016/class-detail/22760

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