Last year at the Autodesk University (AU) event, the company announced a major agreement on interoperability usa email list with products from Trimble, Ansys and Nemetschek, which is expected to be formally approved soon. Autodesk has previously signed an agreement to use IFC libraries from the Open Design Alliance (ODA) and create comprehensive web-based file translation services for its Forma offering.
I now believe that Autodesk is serious about openness and interoperability in the construction industry, which may seem counterintuitive when the company has enjoyed the benefits of closed DWG and RVT formats for decades. But it was heartening to hear Anagnost say at the AU press briefing, “It’s not our data, it’s the customer’s data.”
These are big words, literally the “fall of the Berlin Wall” for the industry (and David Hasselhoff is not around to ruin the occasion with his singing). All the key vendors agree that data should flow freely between applications and that proprietary approaches are against the interests of the majority. I hope they deliver on their promises.
Autodesk has benefited greatly from building its own ecosystems of products and combining them, first as packages and then as collections. While the company's applications may not all fit together perfectly, AutoCAD, Navisworks, 3ds Max, Revit, Forma, Docs, Civil 3D, and Recap are all used by customers. The move to the cloud, openness, and support for APIs instead of files and applications will allow users to move away from pre-built software packages and build a technology stack of best-in-class cloud applications and services from multiple vendors, subscribing to only the Autodesk products they actually need.
As proprietary formats become a thing of the past, tools and services will be much more flexible than they are today. Companies will have to be more data-driven when managing their cloud service stack. With data flexibility, we should worry less about being tied to specific development applications.
Artificial intelligence
Yes, AI is overrated. Yes, it is a necessary marketing tool for any software developer that has integrated ChatGPT or Midjourney into their product. However, AI will continue to influence the construction industry for a long time to come.
Companies like SWAPP are trying to use AI to automate the transformation of simple sketches into detailed BIM models, or reduce the time it takes to produce drawings from months to minutes. AI is already being used in analytics tools and generative design. Architects use it to write code in Python and other languages, extract data from files, reconstruct models, optimize sketches, assess energy efficiency, and reverse engineer BIM objects from those damn point clouds.
Civil engineers are identifying cracks in dams, bridges, and tunnels by running AI on video footage of them, while companies like Augmenta are using it to connect all the components of an electrical grid in a BIM model.