I recently attended the Autodesk AEC Technology Day 2013 (for the Autodesk 2014 release) in Brisbane. The morning consisted mainly of snippets and demos of the products. If you keep up to date with the software scene there wasn’t much new. The emphasis was on the suites, cross software workflows, and a focus on the new additions such as ReCap (point cloud capture tools) and InfraWorks (re-badged Infrastructure Modeler). What sounded promising to me were the improvements to Inventor – Revit workflows, and the improved capabilities of some of the ReCap tools.
The mobile tools got a quick overview as well. Autodesk BIM 360 Glue and BIM 360 Field are great applications, most definitely the way forward, but with one major flaw – they are still only available for use on the iPad! While iPads may be the most predominate tablet, the other platforms are increasing in popularity. Not to mention that some businesses have a Windows only policy, and we all know that Android plays much better than Apple in this environment.
Apparently there is a long term plan (according to US Autodesk employees I hassled at AU last year) to bring all Autodesk Apps to all platforms. There was no time frame mentioned though… At the AEC Technology Day I again raised the issue of many apps being iPad only. The response was: if it affects you, speak up! The more people that make it known to Autodesk that options other than iOS are required, the sooner it will happen.
Finally, the most exciting rumour of the day was that at some stage after Vasari is retired, a desktop version of FormIt will be released! Details weren’t easy to come by and I couldn’t get this confirmed, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see…
New technologies and tools make a betterRevit for all!
[…] complaining to everyone from the guys launching it at AU last year, Shaan Hurley, through to our local Autodesk resellers, I’m now very happy to learn that an Android version isn’t far […]