AEC Futures Briefing: Structures

PAWEL PIECHNIK: Good morning. Thank you for coming. It's a full house today. This is our annual structural futures briefing session. We are so happy that this session has become available as part of the AU catalog, so it's more broadly, has a bigger exposure for you and more opportunities to come in.

This is your structural squadron for today, industry strategy and product strategy managers. We are going to give you a comprehensive overview of the product industry strategy, give you insights into what we are working on and what you can expect from us coming your way in the upcoming future. My name is Pawel Piechnik. I'm a director of product management looking after product strategy for Autodesk structural portfolio.

Please read or scan it quickly. We are going to discuss future investments of Autodesk. So those are not commitments or those are our intents. So no promises here and we'll explain our best understanding of what industry problems we are solving right now and what opportunities we are pursuing.

So with that, let's get into that, there's a lot to cover today. We have one hour, plenty of content and presentation for you. I'd like to first introduce Kaylene Isla, industrial strategy manager to walk you through the industry and business strategy.

KAYLENE ISLA: Thank you, Pawel. I promise I won't take too much of our time because I know you want to hear from them mostly. But I have the unique opportunity of standing up here giving you the why. So why are we investing in the direction that you're going to see us investing today and what's driving that behavior? Excuse me, thanks.

The takeaway is the industry is being asked to do more with less, and this is nothing new to anyone in this room. We've all seen it for a long time, but I wanted to call a little bit of context to that, to the fact that we're seeing unprecedented demand with growing population, with unprecedented government stimulus money being poured into economies. We're being asked to answer a demand of 2.6 trillion square feet of new building stock every month for the next 40 years.

We're being asked to do that with a third of the engineering jobs going unfilled. Where are the people to do the work? $177 billion in the US alone in the engineering and construction industry was spent just looking for more information. You're producing so much more data and so much more information today than you were five years ago. The paradigm of the industry has completely shifted.

At the same time, we're also being asked to address sustainability in a way we never have before. 88% of all global greenhouse gases are actually produced by countries with a commitment to go net zero. That's going to drive a whole lot of pressure on the industry to change.

So what does this mean to the people in this room? Those are global things, but how do we contextualize that for the engineers today? 30% of the building costs for that trillion dollar of building and infrastructure development, 30% of that's driven by structural framing. So you've been asked to optimize your whole career, but it's going to get harder. The price pressure is going to get more significant.

With the one third of the engineering jobs going unfilled, 50% of you are turning down work because you can't take it on without the people to do the jobs. Hurting your business growth, hurting the small to medium-sized firms probably the most where it's even more competitive.

Of all that data you're trying to search through, 35% of your construction projects have a major change on site. That's what's driving that $177 billion of data loss because you're dealing with changes that make you adjust on the fly. You need to respond right now and that's becoming a real time requirement by your clients, your owners.

Of those 88% of the greenhouse gas emissions being driven by net zero commitments, 13% of it's driven by your work, by steel and concrete. I hear it a lot that know you know what, that's not us. We optimize our designs all the time, but the world has a different answer. 13% of that net zero commitments going to come from us in this room, trying to hit that with our steel, our concrete, our wood, everything we deal with day to day, it's going to affect us too.

So what do we do? We have to do more with less, we have to optimize both our designs and our workflows because there are not enough materials, there's not enough time, and there's not enough people. From Autodesk perspective, we talk to a lot of people, we talk to a lot of customers, and we see an acceleration in digital transformation.

We've seen the businesses that have adopted more digital workflows as realizing a whole lot better business outcomes. The more mature you are digitally, the more your business is thriving. For us, the BIM is the backbone of digital transformation. It's that platform and methodology that allows you to turn the physical into the digital before it ever gets built.

So you can move those design decisions up earlier where you have the chance to impact those construction costs, moving the decisions up earlier so that you can make a tangible impact on the sustainability of your design before it even hits the field.

For us, we've thought a lot about what BIM looks like and it's been a transition over the last 40 years, supporting workflows from CAD to BIM and what does the future of BIM look like? We're focused on making better outcomes, not just making it better and easier for you to put lines to paper, easier for you to create your models, but actually deliver better outcomes for your buildings themselves.

Are they constructed more efficiently? Are they constructed more optimally? And did it take you less time to get there? Not just for geometry, not just for constructability, we're also in a position where we have the vision to unlock that for the engineering workflows as well.

What does this mean for structure? Our vision is enabling better outcomes with three different pillars for you. Before we can unlock all of the different things, you need a platform to do that with. To enable the digital delivery, you need to have the platform to be able to access and connect.

You need a better environment of better data, regardless of the origin, the entry point or the direction, it needs to come with a better foundation with connected people and a connected data environment. We aim to fulfill that vision. The other area we aim to fulfill is optimizing processes so you can coordinate, design, and integrate, and model faster, more accurately, with less effort.

Finally, we're planning to open and invest in opening up beyond our own solutions, augmenting them with our partners with an open ecosystem because we know that the industry works with more than just one product. We need to enable that connection to make a seamless workflow that you can customize to your own needs.

Your workflow is different than your workflow, and our vision is to enable that so that whatever you need to do to drive your business, to deliver the best results for your projects and your customers, you're able to do that through our open ecosystem.

We're looking to do that across our product portfolio too. So across our design solutions in the AEC collection, which includes Revit and AutoCAD and Advance Steel and Robot. All of these tools, but also with our key partners, extended into the plan with data collection and recap, extended into construction with construction cloud and even someday, the digital twins, creating a tandem model that we can offer as an additional service.

Can we sell this back to the owner so they have better context for the lifelong asset evaluation? And how much more can that deliver someday when that building or that bridge gets renovated? New delivery, new outcomes, new value for us, for the customer, the built world around us.

How are we going to do that? I'm going to turn it over to Pawel and our product experts to give you guys a closer look of the practical application. [APPLAUSE]

PAWEL PIECHNIK: Thank you, Kaylene. So now we are going to give you some insights into the product strategy for structures. This is to explain why we are doing what we are doing. We are going to have an overview of some highlights for the current structural value, structure workflows we have with our portfolio. And also more importantly, we are going to give you some updates or heads ups into what you can expect next to come.

So those are the four areas of our investments and partnerships in the same time. Those are also areas of user structured professional activities which are structural analysis to understand building behaviors. This is detailed or code-based design to determine sizes of elements and buildings to withstand natural forces. Design documentation, coordination, this is where Revit has been really strong, globally renowned for years, and finally detailing and fabrication.

So this may look like a sequential workflow, but it's actually not a sequence. There's many back and forth iterations, RFIs, change orders, overlaps between personas coming in and being constantly part of our quote unquote "plan" which is the source of the problem, actually, because these phases of these workflows are very much disconnected. And we can see that industry defines it on its own through a number of reports and discoveries.

And that really starts with structural engineers who are using standalone analysis tools, taking design decisions. They're not being connected to the BIM model, tools are not very well interoperable with Revit, and then engineers being standalone, disconnected, lonely.

The deliverables they provide downstream to detailed fabricators is breaking actually the workflow, DXF, PDF files, not model based data, not reusable data. And that's the key problem we are seeing and we are trying to solve.

So this is our vision, mission in a nutshell. We are going to make all the structural job roles, personas, professionals connected together through model data, model information. So we want engineers to take decisions where the BIM model is, which is Revit. Use model information as a language to discuss with other professionals, technicians, designers, detailers, fabricators, contractors, and also other disciplines as well.

We see Docs as a common data repository containing files and granular data with AEC data model. And on top of that, there's seamless workflow, which is inclusive also to the ecosystem of specialized regional vertical tools built or connected to the technologies.

Technologies can make people working together actually. Determined consistency enable working together and work sharing. So this is our vision in a nutshell.

So let's start with this area of activities, design documentation, coordination, which is critical to successful project delivery eventually, and making people working together across disciplines and across phases. BIM model is not a single model. It's a set of federated model. Architects authored their own models, engineers authored their own models.

Even architects, engineers, they need to deal with different versions or different phases of the model information, detailed design, conceptual design, early stage. There's also analytical models, there is fabrication models. They all need to be consistently in sync because changes are part of the game.

So every time change occurs, every model becomes a context to another model, and that's the key challenge here. There's many models, models are federated, they need to be always up to date and in sync altogether, along with the documentation, not forgetting the documents and drawings that are still very important to us.

So now we have recently invented release, a new type of a workflow, we call it linking coordination model from Autodesk Docs. So from an engineering perspective, as seen in this video, we can live link an architectural model into Revit and that's not loading the model, but making the model being visible and represented for referencing, for snapping visualization as a context of an engineering model.

Now these models can bring those who use Revit, engineers, designers, structural professionals, they can make them aware of the changes coming or made by other modelers from other disciplines. So you can see the comparison of the model coming from architects between the latest and before latest on earlier releases.

And we can model inside Revit while having these changes being totally aware of the changes yet snapping to this architectural model freely. So it's a new type of linking approach. Again, linking coordination from Autodesk Docs, it was released in 2024.

So let's see the same workflow, but highlighting the features that are actually upcoming, we are working on. Same structural model. Now we are live linking an architectural model and we are just isolating a floor to see architectural model as a context for our structural floor.

Again, we are selecting a data, a model, a file from Autodesk Docs, and you can see the same BIM model as seen from a different perspective, from an architecture perspective. And now we are going to be able to color code these models, make them transparent, more suitable to be seen as a context for our structures.

And also select categories that we want to be visible, not everything is important to engineers to see. And now the same thing, for the elements that are displayed on the screen, not loaded, but being represented and being there for referencing, we can also see changes. So here we can see architect and architect have has moved the column. So structural engineers need to take this into consideration and take a decision about that.

So this is a new workflow. We see this as a game changing workflow because it's letting engineers use models from other disciplines, from older releases of Revit, from future or next releases of Revit as well. From other file formats, you can see more than 45 formats. You can see IFC with changes comparison as well, not loading IFC, but again seeing this.

Others can share these models with us and sharing their intellectual property because we are not loading these Revit models with all these IP with families and everything. So it's also keeping our models highly performant because it's not an additional data. So pay attention to that, we see this as a very important change to engineers.

There's going to be more on top of that. We can make categories visible and color code categories and objects in the future, also for IFC models, DWG models, and so on. We believe this is very important.

So changes awareness comes along with issues management and with our cloud collaboration tools, also with Revit. Now Autodesk Docs can read export, export BCF issues. It's been a long-standing request finally coming in. And this is also important from the Revit point of view because issues are being integrated with Revit.

There is an add called Revit issues add in. We are going to make it even more integrated in the future, which is making designers, engineers using Revit to see the issues, deal with issues, create issues also from 2D and 3D views. So this is also an area that we believe this is very important for us to drive more improvements around.

Now, this is something really interesting for all the user-- for all Revit users, all personas. Very meaningful to engineers. We are building a new framework for numbering not just for digits, but also for symbols to provide elements, positioning for all the Revit model objects.

So for engineers, it could be used to number analytical nodes, members, panels, just like they do it in analysis software. It's a rule based system, so it's free to define. It's open to define any rules depending on the project regional customer specificity.

That applies to Revit numbering. It's going to improve Revit numbering. That applies to structural steel elements. Piotr will talk more about that, how it impacts Revit being more accurate design tool for steel as well.

Now, last year, we-- Autodesk acquired UNIFI, a prime software for content management, for content accessing deployment sharing. It's been re-released right now as part of Autodesk's portfolio and it has value for structural workflows.

Obviously this is a very simplistic example of how we can find load and distribute within a company RFI families like structural foundations, but it has way more value. Piotr will later explain how we can save Revit type objects into this content catalog to make them deployable within a company.

I was truly surprised seeing this potential of the content catalog so please pay attention to that. Now common data repository. This is here-- we talk a lot about this week. This is here to contain and store files and also granular data.

And this is AEC data model, which is here to provide access in a granular way to BIM model data. It's been recently generally available for everybody to have Revit models published to the cloud as data.

And this data can be accessed through Revit models properties right now. Could be accessed through queries, through API and open QL queries. What does it mean? It means that we don't need to open the whole file to access one property. It's really quick and make

Revit data very affordable. This is one of my preferred examples. Another one using this API for AEC data model, another to add on to Power BI that is querying Revit sourced data very rapidly, very quickly, giving you some reports and understanding on quantities of Revit models.

And this is real time. It's really quick. No opening files. No opening Revit data. Just asking questions. So right now, what is publicly available is access to properties. We are having access to geometries, which is the essence. This is available under Revit preview right now.

It's a big enabler for the future workflows we are discussing this week. Now something last but not least, really a great helper for effective design and collaboration, we are working on creating a new graphics engine in Revit.

Under the hood, we are creating a new engine based on open standards like UGS or Hydra. The focus is on much better look and feel performance and the quality of visuals as well. This is going to be soon available as a technical preview for testing and sharing feedback with us. OK.

Moving into structural analysis, which for many is the sense of structural design. I'm going to be focusing on analytical modeling here because analytical-- we believe analytical modeling-- or modeling in one environment across different types of material, across different types of model representation is key to get analysis being interoperable and coordinated with other disciplines and also construction models here.

So recently, we have released a new approach to analytical modeling automation finally, or eventually making it really working well, providing high quality connected analytical models. This is not just about the connectivity.

The new approach is representing how engineers think about analytical model for analysis. This is not just about the geometrical connectivity representation of physical construction model, but this is about how this building-- buildings as whole system should work and carry loads top to down.

So analytical nodes are aligned to levels, to grids, Cardinal directions of a building. It's quite a long journey for us but eventually, we have landed with a really good approach for analytical automation.

That comes along with the new approach, still new, released in 2023, new approach to analytical modeling overall to Revit so that engineers technicians could take their own, like, pencil cursor and draw an alkaline as it is typically being done in analysis software.

So Revit is going to be-- it is actually a prime modeler for analytical modeling right now. We are going to build on top of that in the upcoming future. So just to recap on that because this is very important.

Not only models now are automatically much better connected, like with one click approach, but also they think like engineers. And outcome panel's members notes are aligned to grids.

There's vertical alignments provided for columns and end walls, and we are working on making this parameters on rows visible graphically, like on the screen rather than through a set of parameters.

The algorithms and rules are seeking for also aligned horizontal alignments to level. This is to render how engineers would normally manually create an outcome model in context of a physical one. So that's a big thing.

So we see Revit being in the center of coordination across the portfolio of analysis and design tools because engineers would use not just one analysis tools, not maybe more than two, more than three global analysis software different from object-based design software.

So we believe Revit should be governing consistency across these workflows. And therefore, it's really important to make Revit and BIM models containing loads definition for structures. So we are going to excel at loads definition management now and in the future.

We are modernizing the UI for load cases and load combinations management and also helping defining those to stay in accordance to the local regulations. What's next is the load combinations automation to generate all these combinations automatically inside Revit, not in analysis software, so that having combinations and loads in Revit could provide the exact same input data for an analysis tool and an object-based code checking tool working from Revit models.

Now, ecosystem is really critical. So we are partnering with many software vendors, providing and developing Revit native analysis and design solutions, building them on top of Revit. And I just wanted to highlight, again, emphasize that it's really critical for us to make all the analysis software tools working and being well connected to Revit.

So we are really proactively, including to everybody connecting analysis tool to Revit. And we are working on APIs and other better ways to make this happen to provide smooth interoperability. Now, with that being said, let's get into the concrete. Introducing Dan Peticila, product manager for concrete.

[APPLAUSE]

DAN PETICILA: Thank you, Pawel. So let's dive into concrete and rebar. First, I want to present the current readiness. And it's important to say up front that rebar detailing in Revit, it's not just about 3D modeling.

It's about blending the ease of use, the methods that you are familiar with from the CAD era, with the benefits of the parameterization and of the 3D representation of elements that BIM provides.

So you can still do a lot of operations very simply directly into the environment as you can do it in the Canvas, while in the same time you are benefiting, for example, from a very enhanced modeling precision by using the rebar diameter.

We automatically define rules between the concrete elements and the rebar's so that whenever a modification changes, things update as you would expect them to be. And of course, we can further enrich the model by adding your additional constraints or rules, as you want to call them.

When it comes to rebar definitions, once you draw one, it's easy to further tweak it by adding, removing or moving particular bars to mitigate clashes with other model elements. And this works for sets, area reinforcement systems or path.

And once your typical design is ready, you can propagate rebar patterns across similar concrete elements like walls, columns, beams, individual footings. But you can also propagate relevant rebar patterns that are particular to a phase from one such location to another.

Starting with Revit 2025, you also have the option to splice the bars and this can be performed either by setting predefined maximum lengths or by simply clicking directly in the Canvas, precise locations where you want those sets to be spliced.

And you also have, starting with that same version of Revit, the ability to freeze the bars so that they do not react to model changes. This is something we heard from many of you as a need.

We also support the more architecturally demanding concrete elements, so there are easy ways to populate those with reinforcement. And of course, rebar propagation also works with free form so that we are transitioning to supporting complex geometries that are very frequent in the world of the civil structural projects.

Of course, additional methods for fine tuning the precise positioning of such rebar patterns even in double curved concrete elements. Let's say you need to make a change later in the design phase. You can easily adjust the constraints of multiple rebar sets at once.

And if we shift now and refer to the documentation practices, we support most of the worldwide applicable tools such as the multileader tags, the ability to displace bar representations just in some views to make it more easily to be read.

And we have improved the multi rebar annotation to facilitate how the tags of such annotations are placed. Starting with Revit 2024, you benefit from live bar bending details that can be placed either directly in the drawing or in the schedules, and these are always up to date, instantly react to any changes, are customizable to look exactly as your practice dictates to.

And we've also introduced, more recently, the schematic bending details which offer a more condensed but similarly comprehensive way of communicating the fabrication instructions on reinforcement drawings. We also support typical drawings for civil structural elements.

And of course, all of these model data can be used as the source of truth that drives the fabrication, the logistics, and the construction stages. Now there is one more very new thing out from the factory in Revit 2025.3 released just, I think, two days ago.

We made it possible to export uniform bars as a group when exporting them to IFC. And now, shifting towards our future plans, we are looking to improving the rebar modeling productivity for detailed rebar models. This is the ability to split a rebar set into two with just one click.

And then each of these subsequent sets can be further split into two. And it becomes very easy, for example, to define the reinforcement definitions in very large slabs or walls and then simply eliminate the sets that you might not need or change their shapes and so on.

We are also working on the parametric rebar cranking, which is particularly useful for column reinforcement because we know that's a place where typically the area, the density of reinforcement increases a lot. And you can expect a very parametric behavior of it.

And in order to facilitate the way you are placing such cranks, but also any other end treatment, we are introducing these new visual helpers directly in the 3D or in the 2D environment to see which is the start or which is the end of the bar. And coming back to the cranks, as I was mentioning, these are fully parametric.

They can also be overridden per instance. So if there is one particular place only where you still need to avoid a clash somehow, it's very easy to, I don't know, change the slope or change the splicing length only for that particular situation. It's very basic through parameters that drive all of this.

And as Pawel mentioned, we are working on this new numbering framework. And of course, you can expect the rebar numbering, which you've all been familiar with for so many years, to transition to this new tool offering even more flexibility, even more customization, and the benefits of having better ways to define partitions of how those bars are numbered.

And as an additional new capability, you will be able to manually override the numbers of the bars while we still making sure that you are not making any logical errors through this process. And of course, all of these numbers can be used just as before, in schedules or in tags.

Now, I want to circle a bit back to the current readiness of Revit, and it's important to highlight the benefits of the coordination models in the context of rebar failures or structural engineers working on concrete projects.

Because with this workflow, you are able, basically, to collaborate with project stakeholders that may use a different version of Revit than you. It can be a newer version or an older version. It can be a different product. So you may receive a 3D DWG file. You can receive an IFC file.

As long as you connect them, as you upload them to docs, you can then link them as coordination models and see directly in the environment familiar to you what has changed across versions. And there are three main benefits to this. The first one is that there is-- it's all about light data. These don't add much to the file size.

Second, it's the benefit of you not needing either to upgrade every time you get a new version from another project stakeholder. You wouldn't need to upgrade every time that file or you are not forced to use the same version of Revit as other stakeholders.

And the third benefit is that you can use these lightweight geometry for quick reference to understand how you should be making adjustments of your concrete model and of the reinforcement.

What you are seeing in the examples that I've prepared for you, you can see how easy it becomes, for example, to change the opening within a wall when the architect, for example, decided that a larger door needs to be fitted or you when the steel fabricator basically communicates to you via newer IFC version of his file, the fact that the position of the steel beams adjusted.

So basically that means you also need to move some of the stirrups a bit up. And look how easy it becomes to do that when you have the context available firsthand to you. And so this is all about streamlining collaboration with other project stakeholders who may use different types of files or even different versions of Revit.

And there's one more thing that I want to talk about, one more workflow possible today. And this is the clash checking of rebar using the BIM collaborate tools, particularly the model coordination. And there is something new, which was released earlier this year, which enhances a lot, this workflow.

It's the ability to filter out irrelevant categories for your clash checking process. In this case, it's important for us not to take into consideration the clashes between the concrete geometries. We just want to focus on the bar clashes, OK?

So you can filter those out but still see them as you are performing these clash checks, because that's what the concrete structure is all about, rebar inside concrete elements. You can filter those out.

And then when you go to the clash detection tool, you can set the desired level of precision for these clashes, convert each of the identified clashes into an issue, add any other relevant comments that you consider and once you publish that, you will see that it becomes instantly available in Revit through the Revit issues adding.

So the rebar detail or the structural engineer can simply consume this information, perform the necessary adjustments in the Revit model. And then, of course, maybe mark this as completed, add any other clarifying comments.

And in order for this new-- for these new changes to be visible to let's say, the BIM manager, the new version of the Revit file needs to be published to the cloud and then that becomes available in ACC where, for example, maybe as a preliminary step, the manager wants to do a comparison between the older and the-- old and the new version of the file.

And this tool, from the design collaboration, module allows you to see what exactly changed and how, for example, it changed by-- some elements were moved with a particular distance. And then getting back to the clash detection module, you can see that the clashes have been resolved so you can close this.

All of this is for improving a lot of collaboration and for ensuring that getting a clash free model is as seamless as possible. Now, as Pawel also mentioned, we are relying-- we are defining Revit as a BIM platform and so is the case for concrete because we know how diverse the practices are.

And that's why we are relying on partners such as CADS, Graitec, SOFiSTiK and Symetri to provide additional rebar detailing tools, improved routines for automating stages of the drawings or of the documentation phases, or even code-driven rebar generation such as the case of the Graitec tools.

And a similar story can be told in the case of precast concrete. I would say actually that here it's even more important, the need of customization, because here, every factory has its own individual needs, because the hardware setup is typically unique and that drives then a lot of the demands that exist at the Revit level.

So we are working with partners from Arkance, IDAT PTAC and Progress to deliver customizations in terms of how the shop drawings should look like, what data needs to be written in the cam files that drive the robots. And we are also relying on them to deliver automation for more types of precast elements such as columns, beams, other types of walls or slabs.

And as a last note, it's important to say that especially for the US market, there is a very strong partnership between PTAC and Progress to deliver a full solution from design to fabrication, including Progress' more recent tool that ensures model constructability check by having a direct link from Revit to the factory environment.

And with that, I think we can move over to steel. So thank you. And Piotr, the stage is yours.

[APPLAUSE]

PIOTR PYSZ: Thank you, Dan. Great to be here. Let's switch gears and talk about steel a little. My name is Piotr Pysz. I'm the product manager for the steel structures managing Revit and Advance steel. And today, I'd like to guide you through our vision, latest developments and what's ahead of us for the steel structures.

Now, this is the reality of a structural project. It involves multiple people like the structural engineer, BIM managers, steel detailers, rebar detailers, just to name a few. And all of them requires a different set of tools that can be used and trusted.

And on top of that, we hear that projects are getting more complex and it's difficult than ever to find a skilled workforce to get the job done. Now, this reality creates a process that is fragmented. There is a lot of disconnection between people and work is sequential.

And projects complexity and labor shortages put a lot of pressure on schedules and budgets, cutting them to the minimum. Now, this translates to the actual customer's problems that you have and that we hear, need for better collaboration, need for seamless exchange of data between different applications and need to automate low value, repetitive work.

Now, this is our product reality right now. Revit for the design phase. When you want to have a design intent models, design documentation, when you want to collaborate and coordinate, Revit is the right tool for you.

But if you want to add more level of details to your models, turn them into fabrication models, produce shop drawings and NC files, then you use Advance Steel because this is the tool for the job. Now, right now, we are changing this.

Last year, we strategically placed Advance Steel on the maintenance mode, which literally means maintaining its current value in the AEC collection, compliance with the ecosystem, like plant 3D, Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and also providing an extensive product support along with our partners.

But it also means that we are not developing any new features in Advance Steel, which allows us to shift resources for Revit development and accelerate here to make it a fully functional steel detailing tool.

And this is how we envision the future, Revit hosting the entire workflow from the upstream design and analysis to downstream detailing and fabrication. And of course, Autodesk Docs sitting on top of that as a central repository for all of your documentation.

Now, this is quite high level, and so let's dive into the details of how are we planning to deliver on that. So our first area of focus are accurate design intent models. We're trying to make them more accurate and more usable downstream for detailing and fabrication.

This is the standard Revit behavior. When you create elements, Revit detects that they are joint and creates the setback that moves the end of the element back so that there is no clash between elements. Now this is the legacy behavior that is focused on the drawings presentation, neglecting the model accuracy and usability downstream for detailers and fabricators.

But right now, with the latest development, that is still in progress, but in preview release, you are able to remove those setbacks with one click. It works on all the existing elements that you have in your model as well as newly created elements making them modeled from point to point just as in other steel detailing software.

And what's the most important part is that it works both ways. So it's not a one way street. You can turn it off at any time of the project, making the setbacks visible again. So a quick recap of the benefits.

Now, historically, Revit was not very good in providing design intent models that could be reused downstream by the detailers and fabricators. Now those days are gone with the latest development and with the introduction of point to point modeling workflow. Get your data right with the reliable parameters.

Now, you will have more parameters that can be used in schedules like the exact lathe and the paint area and also the weight is calculated based on the new formula making it more accurate.

And finally, the rule based numbering. This was mentioned before by Dan and Pawel but this is so important for the steel workflows, OK? This is the foundational step towards the steel detailing. It automatically lets you assign numbers to your objects, any objects, of course.

In steel, this is crucial, but it's important in any other workflow. All of those features are right now in progress and available for testing in preview release, and we're hoping to get them released soon. The second area of focus for us is around productivity.

Now, we see a growing demand for the design intent models that are delivered with more level of detail, with connections, for example. And we are addressing this with the latest developments that enhances the productivity.

So Pawel already mentioned the Content Catalog, that this is a great tool to centralize storage of all of your data. And that's true. This is also great for the steel workflows. It allows you to store your connection types inside the Content Catalog, making it easy to reuse the connections that you defined on different projects.

In this case, I start the base plate connection in my model, and I pull this into my project and it can be reused on any other projects. Next, we have a small enhancement around the default material of steel plates. Previously, it was coming out incorrectly, the material of the steel plate.

Now, we fixed this. When you have the imperial unit set, it will come out as A36, which, again, increased productivity because you don't have to change it each time you add a connection or model the plate. The other small enhancements is around breaking multiple connections.

Previously, you needed to go one by one. Right now, we open this up, make it is possible to select many objects, many connections at once and break them. Third thing is the split feature available for elements with connections. This is a big thing.

In this scenario, I've added all of the base plates for my columns. However, at certain point of the project, I noticed that some of the columns are too long, exceeding 60 feet, so I need to add a splice. Now previously, that would require remodeling of those elements because the split feature was not available for the elements with connections.

But again, we're changing this with the latest developments, and the split functionality works well on the elements that have connections. There is no problem here. More flexible custom connections. Again, this is a great functionality.

In this scenario, I added a Lambert plate from the standard library of connections, but I also added manually modeled plates, plate washer and the bolts that are outside of the connection. Now, I can add them to the custom connection.

This was previously possible to just add or remove elements, but what was not possible was editing those subcomponents inside of the custom connection. Again, we're opening this up, making your job more productive.

You can change the slot length thickness of the material-- thickness of the plate, for example, the material of the plate, geometry of the plate and any other parameters that are inside of those subcomponents.

Again, quick recap of the latest developments. So the Content Catalog allows you to store and manage your content easily. In steel workflows, this is great. You can store the connections. You can boost your efficiency with the default material of steel plates coming out correctly and ability to break multiple connections at once.

No more remodeling of elements with the split feature enabled for fabrication shapes and more flexibility while working with custom connections. Now, that was the latest development. Let's see what's ahead of us in the midterm perspective.

So the split feature was just a small subset of the bigger projects that we have on the table, which is the compatibility issue between the family-based objects and the fabrication shapes. Now the fabrication shapes are created when you add a connection.

So the end goal here is to make the whole workflow cohesive so that design intent models and fabrication models can coexist together and talk to each other seamlessly. The second big project are the steel assemblies, which are the prerequisite for the automated generation of fabrication drawings, for assemblies and parts.

Now this is the biggest project that's ahead of us. And all of those projects are very foundational and core to the future development and the future of steel detailing in Revit. Of course, we are a platform solution company, as Pawel and Dan mentioned already, and we create products that can be further customized by our partners.

With the Graitec, you can boost your efficiency while working with Advance Steel and Revit with their power packs. IDEA Statica allows you to calculate connections modeled in Revit or in Advance Steel regardless of their complexity. Caltec is our strategic partner for the Japanese market.

And Qnet, which is coming out of beta today, allows you to automate the constructability checks in your Revit model. OK, so wrapping up the steel part, I would like to leave you with three things. First, Advance Steel is not going anywhere, OK? We're maintaining its current value in the collection.

Second, we're placing a lot of energy and focus around making your design intent models more accurate and reusable downstream for detailers and fabricators. And third, if you would like to add more level to your detail, turn them into LOD350 or further, we've got your back with the latest development around the productivity.

And getting to the closure. How can you learn more? Where you can get involved? So first of all, the public roadmap for structures and for any other disciplines. This is the place where you can find everything that's new, and you can leave your feedback too. So this is the great place.