Human beings have always had the means to do a lot, but despite the expansive nature of their capabilities, they are still yet to do anything better than simply improving on a consistent basis. This progressive approach, on our part, has already got the world to hit upon some huge milestones, with technology emerging as quite a major member of the stated group. The reason why we hold technology in such a high regard is, by and large, predicated upon its skill-set, which ushered us towards a reality that nobody could have ever imagined otherwise. Nevertheless, if we look beyond the surface for one hot second, it will become clear how the whole runner was also very much inspired from the way we applied those skills across a real world environment. The latter component, in fact, did a lot to give the creation a spectrum-wide presence, and as a result, initiated a full-blown tech revolution. Of course, the next thing this revolution did was to scale up the human experience through some outright unique avenues, but even after achieving a feat so notable, technology will somehow continue to bring forth the right goods. The same has turned more and more evident in recent times, and assuming one new construction-themed development ends up with the desired impact, it will only put that trend on a higher pedestal moving forward.

Autodesk has officially announced the launch of its product called Autodesk Informed Design, which is a cloud-based solution that connects design and manufacturing workflows to streamline the building design and construction process. According to certain reports, Autodesk Informed Design comes bearing a deep sense of knowhow in enabling architects to work with customizable and pre-defined building products that yield valid results. Apart from architects, the stated product can also work alongside manufacturers to help them share their products with design stakeholders. In both the cases, however, the idea is to reinvent industrialized construction by applying manufacturing principles across built environment so to scale up the prospects of architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) industry. To understand the significance of such a development, though, we must start with acknowledging how the AECO industry is currently up against a mounting pressure to deal with growing populations, urbanization, and a global housing crisis. A more concrete example of the same would relay a fact that nearly 100,000 new affordable homes are required to be built every day to house an estimated 3 billion people by 2030. The call for some semblance of a change is only accentuated once you take into account the construction industry’s impact on our efforts to achieve a sustainable ecosystem. You see, going by the current numbers, the construction sector happens to be one of the most wasteful industries in the world, solely responsible for causing no less than 40% of global CO2 emissions. Having touched on the problem statement, we can now turn our focus towards the solution in Autodesk’s new Informed Design solution. Understood to be part of the company’s well-known Design and Make platform, the solution packs together cloud-connected software solutions that unite teams, data. and workflows across entire project lifecycles to deliver better, faster outcomes. Markedly enough, this the product will do using two different versions i.e. Autodesk Informed Design for Revit and Autodesk Informed Design for Inventor. Starting from the former version, it effectively allows design professionals to design with known-manufacturable building products, and therefore, clock unparalleled certainty and quality. Bringing to the fore an improved design look, enhanced workload capacities, and a sizeable reduction in errors and the need for rework, Autodesk Informed Design for Revit will help you, in a more specific sense, with template discovery. Here, you can seamlessly explore building product templates to incorporate manufacturing-level detail into your design files. Next up, the version unlocks a possibility to customize products and align them with your individual building’s requirements. We touched on the certainty aspect, but more on that will also inform you about how customers can actively confirm whether design decisions are accurate and manufacturable so to reduce project risk and prevent errors.

“The way the AECO industry works today is not sustainable or scalable. For the industry to keep pace, it needs to build more, faster and more sustainably. The answer is industrialized construction,” said Ryan McMahon, director and general manager of Informed Design at Autodesk. “Autodesk Informed Design connects design and make from day one and brings industrialized construction workflows to reality. Our solution is unique because it empowers architects to design with certainty and validate their plans in real-time, while product managers and engineers can share accurate manufacturing information with design teams. As a result, projects are completed quicker, with higher quality and generate less waste.”

Moving on to Autodesk Informed Design for Inventor, it paves the way for product managers and product engineers to achieve that synergy between customer requirements and their own manufacturing capabilities. Again, on a granular level, the solution does so by aiding those managers and engineers in building parametric models of a given project, models that can be used later on for achieving a more productive partnership with designers. Not just that, the stated parametric project models can also come in handy to confirm that only compliant versions are being used. Another detail worth a mention in the case of Informed Design for Inventor is its pledge to generate powerful Building Information Modeling (BIM) content. This sort of content can become significant in ensuring that building products are meeting project requirements, and at the same time, retaining their compatibility with other relevant components and industry standards. Rounding up the highlights for us is a feature to streamline the entire product documentation process. Such a feature is notably geared towards conceiving product documentation at scale. Alongside that, it should also play a role in generating the necessary outputs for fabrication.

“Through a connected, bidirectional digital thread and sharing of data across the AECO ecosystem of partners, it is easier to optimize supplier performance and deliver quality products and services that complement the overall design of a building,” said Jeffrey Hojlo, Research Vice President of Future of Industry Ecosystems & Energy Insights at International Data Corporation (IDC). “With Informed Design, Autodesk enables AEC organizations to streamline the connection between asset design and the BIM process.”

Founded way back in 1982, Autodesk has risen up on the back of its ability to solve design-related challenges across a range of different industries, including architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media, and entertainment etc. At present, the company delivers on its promised value proposition through a set of solutions that includes AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, 3ds Max, Fusion 360, SketchBook, and more. In case you are looking for some concrete evidence of Autodesk’s excellence, though, then we can also mention how company’s product line-up is currently serving more than 100 million users across the globe.

“Autodesk Informed Design has shown that there’s a way to bring customized details, good aesthetics and quality engineering into a product that can be mass produced. Designing with constraints doesn’t curb my creativity – it gives me choices I know will work. And that is good for the planet, the building’s inhabitants and for the building industry,”  said Benjamin Hall, senior product manager at Green Canopy NODE, a construction technology company which has been using early access versions of Informed Design for Revit and Informed Design for Inventor to improve its building design and engineering processes.