Autodesk customer DSI Spaceframes, with its factory in Chicago, is at the forefront of space frame design, engineering, fabrication, and installation.

Digital transformation is bringing better, smarter, more sustainable products to market faster than ever. 

And yet. 

Endless iteration cycles still set back new product launches and carve away profits. Factory floors still stall while programmers tell machines how to make parts. Materials still go to waste during prototyping and manufacturing. Switching between software tools still slows down design and make. Too many team members still lack access to projects on the right device at the right time. And skilled workers, rather than innovating and creating, are still required to spend their time doing mundane tasks that could be automated. 

But with open and extensible tools, partnerships with industry leaders, and Fusion 360 defining what cloud-based product development software can do, Autodesk is solving those challenges in manufacturing and moving customers closer than ever to a click-to-make future. One with greater productivity, lower costs, and fewer environmental impacts. 

I’m really excited that this week at Autodesk University (AU) 2022, we’re introducing innovations that enable rapid iteration, automate the machine programming process, and bring both the agility and power of Fusion to a browser or device near you. 

New Autodesk Fusion 360 extensions powered by Ansys and ModuleWorks unlock advanced product design and manufacturing capabilities 

We’re constantly expanding the capabilities of Fusion 360 to address needs across the entire product design to manufacturing process. At the same time, through extensions, we’re continuing to add advanced functionality to increase productivity and innovation in specialization areas of product development. Two Fusion extensions are taking center stage at AU 2022. 

Signal Integrity Extension, powered by Ansys, brings PCB performance analysis to Fusion 360 

On-demand PCB electromagnetic performance insights are coming to Fusion 360 in the new Signal Integrity Extension.

Today, we’re announcing a new milestone in our ongoing strategic partnership with Ansys. Industry-leading Ansys simulation technology is being integrated into Fusion 360 to power a new extension that will quickly provide useful insights about printed circuit board (PCB) signal quality as a part of the board design process. For more than 50 years, Ansys software has enabled innovators across industries to push boundaries by using the predictive power of simulation. 

The new Signal Integrity Extension will complement Fusion 360’s growing PCB design capabilities and help bring smart products to market more efficiently. It offers the PCB designer insights into design impacts of electromagnetics on product performance. By embedding this technology, we’re enabling engineers to identify and resolve issues using simulation from directly within Fusion 360. The new solution will increase confidence in product viability and overall productivity by reducing the number of design-test-redesign cycles, time to market, and costly prototypes. Learn more here. 

Toolpath creation using ModuleWorks technology, and 5-axis control capabilities, debut in Machining Extension 

Advanced roughing, finishing, and multi-axis toolpath creation capabilities, using algorithms from ModuleWorks, are coming to the Fusion 360 Machining Extension.

ModuleWorks, a leading software component provider for the digital manufacturing industry, is recognized throughout the industry for its expertise in toolpath creation and simulation. I am excited to announce today that through our partnership with ModuleWorks, we’re bringing more advanced toolpath creation capabilities into Fusion 360.  

Earlier this year, we began combining advanced toolpath creation algorithms from ModuleWorks with enhanced 5-axis machining and other complex manufacturing workflows originally from Autodesk PowerMill into our Machining Extension. The result: new capabilities are coming to Fusion’s Machining Extension that generate higher-performance, collision-free toolpaths for efficient multi-axis milling. The first advanced strategies include new rotary pocket, rotary contour, and automatic multi-axis deburring. You will save time and money and reduce errors – some of which can be very costly – as you go to production. 

And this extension enhancement is just the beginning. We will continue to combine toolpath calculation technology from ModuleWorks with our CAM workflows to strengthen your ability to get to “make” faster with fewer mistakes. 

Two new industry partnerships bring more world-class capabilities to Fusion 360 

Autodesk continues to attract premier partners from our related industries. We’re quickly adding integrations for Fusion with two new partnerships. 

Makersite plug-in adds multi-criteria sustainability analysis to Fusion 360  

Sustainability analysis driven by the Makersite plug-in will highlight costs and environmental impacts of various materials in a product design. This heat map mockup of a pedal from biking manufacturer PEMBREE quickly identifies components with higher environmental impacts.

We’re bringing sustainability insights into the early-stage design process with Makersite, an AI and data management company that powers sustainable product and supply chain decisions at scale. Our partnership combines Makersite’s environmental impact and cost data with Fusion 360’s product design data.  

The new plug-in enables designers to push a button within the Fusion 360 workspace and have Makersite instantly calculate the environmental and cost impacts of a product or component design based on its structure, materials, and weight. 

Designers will get back recommendations regarding the Global Warming Potential, expected costs (also known as “should costs”), and alternative materials that are based on their organization’s own material masters and procurement data. This integration will provide real-time environmental transparency enabling enterprise manufacturers to work toward design-led sustainability goals, eliminate burdensome rework, and decrease time to market. 

CloudNC technology furthers click-to-make future  

Our partnership with CloudNC, a developer of autonomous manufacturing software, is a big step toward reducing CAM programming times by eliminating the arduous and error-prone task of creating toolpaths. In the typical design-to-make process, programming a machine to make a part can take as long as designing the part itself. Together we’re closing the gap. 

CloudNC software reduces the amount of input needed to program parts. By uploading a 3D model of any part, the software determines the needed tools and their use and generates the required toolpaths and numerical control (NC) code.  

Our partnership will enable passing a design file from Fusion 360 to CloudNC for automated manufacturing analysis. CloudNC will then return – directly inside the Fusion project –the strategies for manufacturing the part using native Fusion 360 toolpaths. This is a big step toward realizing a true “click-to-make” experience, similar to how desktop printing moves a document right from your computer to paper simply by hitting the “Print” button. 

To support this automation, Autodesk enhanced our existing CAM API, enabling integration with CloudNC and future software partners. 

Browser-based Fusion 360 availability expands, marking significant step toward device independence 

Fusion in a browser, for commercial Fusion 360 customers, provides users from the design office to the shop floor access to Fusion on tablets and other devices.

The pandemic has highlighted the value of having access to software tools and data anywhere, and on any device. We’ve believed this for a long time. Cloud-first technology, like Fusion 360, executes complex CAD and CAM modeling in the cloud, making it possible to provide powerful modeling capabilities to less-powerful computers through a browser. 

We’ve offered that Fusion capability to the education community for years. Today we’re announcing we will be making Fusion on-the go available more broadly to commercial Fusion subscribers. Fusion running in a browser will run on anything. Anytime. Anywhere. 

Countless people come together to design, make, supply, market, sell, and deliver every product. Each role needs timely, relevant access to project data to provide input or track changes that could impact their work. Opening online access to Fusion moves Autodesk closer to our vision of data and device independence, meeting the needs of our customers now and into the future.  

Together, the new capabilities and partnerships announced at AU 2022 will help our customers reimagine what products look like, how quickly and efficiently high-performance products are produced, and make them more sustainable. I encourage you to check out my keynote as well as our live and on-demand classes at AU to learn more. 

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