Autodesk University 2020: Being Virtually There and Reimagining the Possible

For as long as I can remember, Las Vegas in November has signified one thing — Autodesk University. This year, however, was different. It is November, and Autodesk University 2020 did take place, but the show went on virtually online due to the ongoing pandemic, and not in Las Vegas.

AU was free of charge to attend this year online (which I felt was a nice gesture), and Autodesk claims 100,000+ registrants/attendees. Given the circumstances, overall, the presentations and classes were well done with good content. Although there were obviously online production costs, and no attendee fees, I’m sure Autodesk saved a ton of money as compared to a “live event.” This year’s theme was “Reimagine Possible.”

As in years past, with industry-specific sessions, AU covers architecture, media & entertainment, and design & manufacturing. So what was announced for design & manufacturing in particular? Let’s take a quick look.

Autodesk Fusion 360 Extensions for Simulation, Nesting and Data Management

Fusion 360 got a lot of attention at AU 2020, as well it should. It’s becoming the backbone of the current and future of the design and manufacturing side of Autodesk. 

Even in “normal times”, transforming an existing business–changing how it produces its products, delivers its services, its back-office processes, and culture–is a tall order. “Digital transformation,” the process of transitioning an entire manufacturing business (or the industry itself) into a digital mindset and process, and having all the tools, infrastructure, modified workflows, and capabilities in place to do so, is a tall order. Fusion 360 brings design and manufacturing together as a cohesive experience, which is something I’ve observed for years and am glad to see the industry finally adopting.

Autodesk University 2020 General Session Keynote with CEO Andrew Anagnost

At AU Autodesk recapped a few of the Fusion 360 extensions they have released recently, and provided a preview of what’s on the roadmap for the next several months. Recent and soon to be released extensions include:

Machining Extension (Available Now) – For boosting the core CAM capabilities of Fusion 360 with advanced, multi-axis toolpath strategies, toolpath optimization, and automated programming to reduce programming time, increase control over machines, and improve the efficiency of NC programs. This year Autodesk announced toolpath trimming and multi-axis collision avoidance with technology from PowerMill. In addition, Autodesk announced full machine tool simulation for visualizing and verifying CNC programming to help achieve accurate results up front and avoid costly downstream problems during machining.

Generative Design Extension (Available Now) – Generative Design, initially intended for additive manufacturing, is becoming more broadly applicable across other types of manufacturing. This technology is now available in Fusion 360, and Fusion 360’s generative capabilities are being expanded with generative fluids through CFD, offering several options for exploring optimized designs for fluid flow, and specifically help minimize pressure drop of flow while avoiding obstacles. 

Additive Build Extension (Available Now) – This extension lets you set up, slice, and pack additive manufacturing designs to send to a 3D printer and for manufacture. Customized automatic orientation settings (available for FFF and SLM) and support structures settings (SLM only) can be stored in a template library to be used later in new additive manufacturing setups, making future 3D print preparation much easier. Powered by Netfabb, this Fusion 360 extension opens up a range of pre-defined additive machines.

Manage Extension (Available January) – To support teams that are standardizing on Fusion 360 for engineering, more sophisticated product data and lifecycle management (PDM/PLM) functionality will be introduced into Fusion 360.  Automatic part numbers, ECOs, process workflows and more will improve the efficiency of design and manufacturing teams. Traditionally, data management can take weeks (or longer) to deploy and requires costly setup. By contrast, automated data management using Fusion 360’s Manage extension can (according to Autodesk) be up and running literally in seconds.

Additive Simulation Extension (Available January) – Metal additive manufacturing can be time consuming and expensive, but with metal additive simulation powered by Netfabb’s simulation technology, designs and the numerous variables involved in metal additive manufacturing before sending a job to the printer can be evaluated. Expensive mistakes can be avoided by ensuring early that designs and additive setup are actually manufacturable.

Nesting & Fabrication Extension (Available in early 2021) – Aggregate and nest sheet metal designs based on material, thickness, and other variables to increase the efficiency of fabrication processes. Powered by TruNest, this extension will optimize sheet metal design layouts to ensure output is effectively maximized and waste minimized.

Injection Molding Extension (Available in early 2021) – Plastic part designs can be evaluated to ensure proper manufacturability before sending to an injection molder. This extension will give insights into a plastic design’s manufacturability early in the product development process, helping reduce the number of cycles and iterations. Pack, fill, and warpage of any injection molding setup can be evaluated.

Autodesk and Rockwell Automation Extend Value of Factory Layout Tools, Strengthening Foundation for Digital Twins

As manufacturing becomes increasingly complex, more efficient engineering workflows are required to ensure timely deployment of critical manufacturing assets on the factory floor. To address this need, Autodesk and Rockwell Automation are working together to streamline data flow between their respective solutions to enable customers to more effectively, design, lay out and virtually commission factory systems for better optimization and less risk.

Autodesk offers 2D and 3D digital factory layout tools as part of its Product Design & Manufacturing Collection, while Rockwell Automation brings its sophisticated simulation capabilities in Emulate3D to help demonstrate, simulate and virtually commission manufacturing assets. Synched together with smooth data flow, these solutions allow companies to digitally design and commission factories in less time, with greater efficiency.

The Autodesk Product Design & Manufacturing Collection provides the ability to add operational and functional parameters of a machine during the factory design phase

Virtual commissioning has become a vital tool for organizations to quickly get a physical manufacturing environment up and running. It involves creating a digital twin from a 3D CAD model, linking automation systems and connecting models, making it possible to virtually demonstrate, simulate, and optimize the performance of an entire manufacturing workflow.

“Bringing together the specialized expertise of Autodesk and Rockwell means we can better address needs throughout the factory lifecycle, from design through virtual commissioning, operations and maintenance,” said Derrek Cooper, vice president of product development & manufacturing solutions, Autodesk. “This is a crucial step in the creation of digital twins and will give our customers the ability to get more out of their data, extending design models to help optimize operations and connect across the growing digital ecosystem.”

The ability to add operational and functional parameters to manufacturing assets during the design phase opens new opportunities to further hone increasingly complex workflows.

“Enabling commissioning of manufacturing assets in a virtual environment helps separate it from the critical path,” said John Pritchard, digital engineering business lead, Rockwell Automation. “It’s now possible to optimize the integration of hardware, software and controls early in the factory layout process, reducing project risk as manufacturers look to expand.”

With the global pandemic, manufacturing companies have been forced to rapidly adjust to new ways of working remotely, disrupted supply chains, and dramatic shifts in consumer demand. In the Design & Manufacturing Keynote, industry leaders shared strategies for adaptation and driving digital transformation.

Autodesk and Sandvik Coromant to Combine Knowledge Metal Cutting on the Fusion 360 Product Development Platform

One of the most common and challenging choices that a CAM programmer makes is what tools to use and how to use them. Most often they need to go to a physical or digital tooling catalogue to find specifics of the tool, then go back to the CAM software to manually type in tooling parameters and cutting data. This process can be very time consuming and tedious, especially if it needs to be done need several times for every component that will be manufactured.

Autodesk and Sandvik Coromant are working together to address this issue by providing Autodesk Fusion 360 customers with digital access to Sandvik Coromant tool libraries. This is the first step in a shared long-term vision for digitizing manufacturing across production, including making tool data and recommendations widely and easily available to users of Autodesk’s cloud-based product development platform.

Autodesk University 2020 Design & Manufacturing Keynote

“Manufacturing and metal cutting are already complex processes, and they’re often made more difficult by manually managing tooling information resulting in delayed setup times and increased room for machining error,” said Srinath Jonnalagadda, vice president of business strategy for design & manufacturing, Autodesk. “By pairing our CAM software solutions with Sandvik Coromant’s deep tooling knowledge and expertise, we’re helping customers reduce time and improve efficiency in the preparation phase.”

In today’s manufacturing facilities, CAM programming increasingly requires more sophisticated approaches and programming as machines are becoming more advanced, batch sizes are getting smaller, and designs of components are getting more complex. Autodesk and Sandvik Coromant share a vision for providing manufacturers, especially those in mid to lower markets, with new and innovative technologies and services delivered with a seamless experience, so they can be more competitive and increase profitability.

Decathlon Reimagines Bicycle Using Autodesk Generative Design

One of the more interesting product development companies profiled at AU was Decathalon, a creator of more than 3,000 recreation products. Decathlon is capitalizing on technology, Generative Design, that yields lighter, stronger, greener, more affordable, customized products. The latest from this company is what it calls a “vision project”–in this case exploring what’s possible through use of new manufacturing techniques and AI-powered design–as it develops a new high-performance bicycle with the potential to be custom 3D-printed from aluminum for each customer.

With help from the Generative Design capabilities of Autodesk Fusion 360, Decathlon has designed, produced, and unveiled prototype components intended to be high performing and environmentally friendly. By eschewing carbon fiber (the typical material for light, strong, high-performance bicycles, but also difficult to recycle) and planning instead to 3D-print these bicycles from aluminum, Decathlon aims to reduce both the raw materials and transportation-intensive shipping required to build and deliver this futuristic racing bike.

Generative Design, the Autodesk technology at the heart of this project, is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides a design engineer hundreds, even thousands, of potential solutions to a given design problem in minutes or hours. The technology is powered by Autodesk’s Fusion 360 software and uses algorithms, machine learning, and computational geometry to quickly generate multiple solutions that meet precise requirements and constraints set by the designer. Optimized solutions that satisfy requirements are then presented to the designer for consideration and optimization. This process radically changes the way a product is designed.

In this project, Generative Design was used to design the frame and fork, initially taking into consideration the significant dynamic forces the fork would be subjected to under braking and at speed, as well as aerodynamics, and many other factors. A crucial aspect of the structure of a bicycle, the fork is the component to which the front wheel is attached, enabling the bike to be steered, and is comprised of several parts that must bear those significant forces. The company forecasts its reimagining of the traditional product design process may dramatically reduce the bike’s weight through use of less material.

“Autodesk technology played an integral role in helping Decathlon designers and engineers reimagine the new possible and broaden the range of options they considered for this bike,” said Scott Reese, senior vice president at Autodesk. “Decathlon’s bicycle project beautifully illustrates the pivotal contributions generative design can make to the creative process for designers. With the help of Autodesk tools, Decathlon combined artificial intelligence and human creativity to pursue sustainability and performance goals that meet high consumer expectations. The project also enabled designers to familiarize themselves with new design and manufacturing technologies that will create the products of tomorrow,” he said.

“The start of this collaboration was technical at first, because we didn’t deeply understand generative design or what it could bring,” said Decathlon Advanced Design team member Charles Cambianica. “Thanks to this project, we realized how this technology is not just an additional tool but truly a new way of conceiving and designing our products. Autodesk offers us a view of a new possible when creating products of the future. Clearly, this technology allows us to go even further because it saves us time, makes the products better and above all–this is a very important point–keeps people at the heart of the creation process,” he said.

So, is this year’s virtual version of Autodesk University foretelling the future of this specific event and/or conferences and trade shows in general? That’s impossible to predict right now since we’re still in the throes of this pandemic. One thing is certain, though, events like this will never be the same. Whether this new reality is a good thing or a bad thing has yet to be determined, but the times are definitely changing. I’m sure that AU will continue to thrive in the future, but I wonder if Las Vegas will return as part of the equation and experience. Time will tell.

Tags: AU 2020, Autodesk Fusion 360, Autodesk University 2020, Decathalon, Emulate 3D, generative design, Rockwell Automation, Sandvik Coromant

Category: Events

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2020 at 15:40. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.