Anna Nixon, a 16-year-old from Westview High School in Portland, Ore., took the main stage at Autodesk University, the world’s biggest CAD event, to deliver a message from her generation about technology and ongoing learning.
“We are a generation that has grown up with technology, where technology is everywhere and accessible to anyone. Technology has also brought unprecedented change across industries. Many of the jobs that exist today will have no place in the future.”
To keep up with rapidly evolving technology and industries, Nixon shared that learning can't end at graduation. “Technology changes how we work, where we work and what we work on. The most valuable asset to any future worker is the ability to learn.” The new generation of engineers is smart, capable and hungry to learn. So, rather than fear a rapidly evolving industry, we should be inspired by the next generation's passion for learning and excitement.
Rethinking Collaboration
Some of the future of the industry was on display at the exhibit hall at Autodesk University. Exhibitors showcased technology, like the world's first car engineered with artificial intelligence (AI) and designed in a virtual environment. Attendees were able to experience immersive design, interacting with designs in a completely novel way. And an open-source 3D printed drone with generatively designed wings may have changed how they thought about collaboration.
“Today, powerful technologies are emerging, converging and giving us an infinite expressibility that will help us shape the future,” said Jeff Kowalski, CTO of Autodesk. He shared that while this new collaborative technology is powerful, it is not a threat. “The most important thing happening in software today is AI and machine learning. In less than a single human lifetime, computers have gone from learning a simple child's game to mastering a game pinnacle to human thought. Computers are getting better at things that require human-style capabilities. We don't tell it what to do, we tell the computer what we need. The computer augmenting natural talent, that's what I call infinite expressibility. These technologies are not a threat—more like superpowers. The real threat is any competitor that adopts these solutions quicker than you do.”
With that mission in hand, the “future of making things” was exemplified by Autodesk's Fusion 360. Autodesk expects its users to make custom and interactive products but suggests that the traditional product lifecycle is painting them into a corner with an inflexible business process. A shift to manufacturing is taking place that is agile, with product as a service and greater overall lifetime customer value. Key features of Fusion 360 support this trend:
- Fusion 360 is a responsive software, meaning that it is aligned with the type of devices people want to use, like a tablet on a shop floor, Mac computers and more. At Autodesk University, it announced that the company is making Fusion 360 Web accessible, available on any device at any time, completing its transition to cloud software.
- Fusion 360 has also added an “Ultimate” subscription that offers more capabilities than the Standard subscription, like advanced simulation studies. The software is still free for students, hobbyists and startups so it continues to make CAD accessible.
- Collaboration is important to the future of design and Fusion 360 announced branching and merging for design options to iterate collaboratively. These features will be available in the software soon.
- In the coming months, Fusion 360 will be launching generative design capabilities, providing the ability to input constraints and let the software provide possible solutions. The current capability that Fusion 360 offers is shape optimization, and soon the company will add structural latticing for optimizing designs in additive manufacturing.
For manufacturing companies, how fast you can make an impact is the definition of success. The move to the cloud will allow for rapid iteration, tight communication between a geographically diverse team, innovation and greater accessibility to engineering software.
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