Industry cloud x 3
Autodesk has, for the most part, been for architectural design. The favoritism was shown at last fall’s Autodesk University 2022 by numbers of sessions: 243 classes were offered on building design and construction, 74 on manufacturing. This is, in some ways, understandable, as the MCAD/CAE/CAM problem has largely been solved; building construction, by contrast, continues to be hugely under-digitized. Look at any building site: those aren’t iPads construction workers are carrying around.
Digging into the AU presentations, we learn that Autodesk is using MCAD’s success to move along building design. Figure 1 shows MCAD as part of the AEC design slate from Autodesk; the number of programs can, however, feel overwhelming, and even confusing: what might be the difference between Fusion 360 Manage and BIM 360 Ops?
Fig 1: Autodesk adding MCAD software to the architectural production line
(all images from Autodesk sources)
Still, not all of MCAD has been a roaring success. Sexy technologies like cloud-based CAD and generative design have found limited adoption, and so are not the cash cows CAD vendors at one time hoped they would become. Users, it turns out, prefer practical progress, like better drawing generation from linked 3D models or an easier way to draw threads.
Autodesk’s Next Stab at Cloudification
It was a decade ago when then-CEO Carl Bass bluntly stated all Autodesk software would be on servers by 2015: “The only way to use them will be online.” Phil Bernstein, then Autodesk’s vice president of building industry strategy, added, “Right now, we are moving some apps (collaboration and analysis tools) to the cloud. Our long-term strategy is to move everything there.”
It fell to Andrew Anagnost, then Autodesk’s senior vice president of industry strategy and marketing, to contradict his boss: “I cannot say why Carl Bass said that. The cloud is really important to us, but it is not the whole story.” He told me back then that cloud would be an optional way to carry out tasks like analysis.
In the end, Anagnostian view (that cloud should assist CAD) prevailed over the Bass-Bernstein view (that cloud should replace desktop); later, after Bass stepped down, Anagnost prevailed again by becoming CEO.
During his Autodesk University 2022 keynote address, Anagnost offered not just one new cloud service, but three separate ones that he called “industry clouds.” Autodesk’s Next Grand Design is for the three clouds to house all design and production:
Autodesk Fusion for manufacturing, a name easily confused with Fusion 360, which is a program for doing mechanical design- Autodesk Forma for architecture, engineering, and construction
- Autodesk Flow for media and entertainment
Fig. 2: CEO Andrew Anagnost introducing Autodesk Fusion at AU 2022
The three, however, are promised for some point in the future. Anagnost’s talk was peppered with “will,” “our vision,” and “first offering.” The home Web page for the industry clouds provides little hard information, sadly. See figure 3 for what https://www.autodesk.com/company/autodesk-platform looks like at time of writing.
The tentativeness is bit of a letdown, given that we went through a similar emotion at the previous AU, which highlighted the Forge programming interface. It too was described by provisional statements like “excited about the potential” and “making strides.” A year later it remains unfinished, although one of the strides Autodesk made was renaming Forge “Autodesk Platform Services.”
So, what can this new not-360 Fusion do for MCAD users? Autodesk sees it connecting data from many software sources, and between many kinds of users -- management, designers, and the shop floor. It is not one product, but many held together by the Autodesk Platform Services’ programming interface. Initially, Fusion 360, Fusion 360 Manage, Upchain, and Prodsmart will be part of Fusion, with more added later.
As a reminder, Upchain had been acquired by Autodesk for its cloud-based PLM (product lifecycle management) and PDM (product data management), and Prodsmart for shop floor scheduling, purchasing, and inventory management.
Some of the MCAD functions listed by Anagnost include
- Creating part designs automatically
- Minimizing modeling of individual parts and assemblies through configurations
- Changing part sizes, loading conditions, and tool paths with configurations
- Generating drawings and dimensions automatically
- Flowing all data relevant to a product's development, from the design firm to the shop floor, including how it was designed, manufactured, and how it performed
- Managing machining and fabrication processes
- Handling shop floor scheduling, purchasing, inventory management
- Working directly with Fusion 360, Inventor, AutoCAD, and Solidworks
- Connecting with plug-ins to non-Autodesk programs, like Rhino
The approach is not new to our industry. Siemens offers its CAD-neutral Web service Xcelerator, which is kind of like Fusion and Autodesk Platform Services combined. Graphics board maker nVidia has its universal, “all are welcome” Omniverse environment.
The word that Autodesk marketing chose to highlight the three new cloud services is “disruption.” (See figure 2.) The theme from AU was, well, you survived the disruption of covid, you can now survive the disruption of our new software. Anagnost even fit the word several times into one sentence: “Unlike all the unwanted disruption that’s been thrown at us, I believe a disruption of the technology we use to do our jobs, a positive disruption, is probably long overdue.”
Fig. 3: Autodesk marketing ‘disruption’ as a necessary positive
There is much customers do not know about Autodesk’s future for them, and so I checked with Autodesk to learn more about the new industry clouds. Four months after the big reveal, it was unable to provide me with more information.
- How much do industry clouds cost, and how will users pay -- by tokens, subscriptions, per-use fees?
- Are industry clouds glue that connect software users already have, or bundles, such as Fusion + Fusion 360 + Upchain + Prodsmart?
- Do they run only on Autodesk’s servers (operated by Amazon) or will they also be available for on-prem (in-house) installations?
- How is data stored (“file-free functionality” is hinted at), and how can easily non-Autodesk software extract it?
- What is the future of desktop applications?
As for the date on which industry clouds become available, Autodesk plans to release connections for data, teams, and workflows gradually over the next half-decade or so. Of the three, Fusion is the furthest along. Even so, Anagnost warned, “Building them will take time, but we’re making huge progress...”.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
When Autodesk first promoted the cloud, some of us were heard that we would experience computing “to infinity and beyond.” No, really: it really was suggested that computing power on the cloud would be unlimited; what we got was a zigzag of products and policies as CAD vendors, including Autodesk, teetered between figuring out how to fund expensive cloud providers, like Amazon, and the limitations inherent in Web browsers communicating with distant servers.
After a decade, the cloud has became very good at certain tasks, like any other technology. Now with realism having set in, customers are better attuned to embracing the parts of cloud from which their operations can benefit.
For now, it’s Autodesk battling itself and its customers. The dream of all-encompassing system for storing data in a single silo is not new. Autodesk faltered through earlier iterations with names like Navisworks, Quantum, and Project Plasma; they either underwhelmed or were shelved. Autodesk biggest failure is bringing its big three -- AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit -- to the cloud. AutoCAD Web is a pale imitation of the real thing; cloud-oriented Fusion 360 seems to lack the sales figures to replace Inventor; and by Anagnost’s own admission, no Web version Revit will ever happen.
The five-year timeline for Autodesk Fusion gives the company itself sufficient runway to adapt to disruptive transition; but perhaps not. The last ten years have shown that a CEO saying “The only way to use [our software] will be online” doesn’t make it so. Customers still prefer desktop CAD, even when Autodesk no longer does.
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[This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine, and is reprinted with permission.]
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