AEC Vision and Strategy

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NICOLAS MANGON: Wait another 30 seconds. How's everybody? Good, good. Anyone went to the EAC session? OK, yeah, so no robot here.

AUDIENCE: No.

NICOLAS MANGON: Yeah. OK. All right, so let's get started. So good afternoon, everyone. Let's talk about what's in everybody's mind. And it's not the happy hour. No, I'm joking. That was the beginning of the other session. So that's going to be different.

So hi, everybody. I'm Nicolas Mangon. I lead the global strategy for the AECO markets at Autodesk. I've been at the company for over 22 years, in different roles around product, specifically Revit, and more recently leading the strategy for all of the AECO segments, as well as AutoCAD. So today, it's the beginning of a number of sessions that we'll have, talking about the industry future. And it's the first one.

And the goal of this presentation is to share with you with more transparency about where we are going, the things that we are discovering. Of course, a lot of these things will appear in our solutions, but some of the things are also research projects. So we'll talk about the research we are doing, specifically these days with the rise of artificial intelligence. We are doing a lot of research so we can share a little bit about what we know.

Also, we'll share some of what our partners do to explain some of the new concepts that will come and change the way we are working. That's the Safe Harbor. Basically, what it says is you cannot buy any software based on what I'm going to talk about. You can read it, but I'm going to skip. So you need to go very fast. But I think you've seen it enough in the last two days that you don't need to read it, actually.

So as I mentioned, usually it's the first time that we do actually a class for this industry future briefings. In the past it was sessions under NDA, but we decided to provide more transparency. So it's both recorded, and it's also streamed online.

So hi, everybody, if you are watching from remote places. So this one is the first one, but you can see all the ones that we'll have-- actually there's one later this afternoon on AutoCAD and water, and then others around the key disciplines around architecture, civil, et cetera. But for me, the goal today of this session is to try to connect all the dots. Because from the outside we are quite complicated.

We have a lot of things going on at Autodesk. We are at times of changes and transitions. We have Autodesk Construction Cloud as a platform. We have Forma that's a new industry cloud. We have core desktop products. We have partners. So there's a lot going on. And it's hard to reconcile everything in the portfolio.

But today, I want to try to explain the science behind the madness of all of these different activities, and more importantly, how they will come together in the future. Also you can see here, it's a list of investments and acquisitions that we do. And you may not be aware of all of them, but what I'll do today, I'll share more details in terms of how they fit in the strategies that we have for AECO.

But to understand where we are going, it's always easy to talk about where we are coming from. And as you know, Autodesk led multiple digital transformations in the past, of course, in the 80s with AutoCAD. So I don't think I need to talk about it. I think everybody knows AutoCAD at this point. And then about 22 years ago, we acquired Revit in the Boston area. That's where I'm based.

And we introduced the concept of parametric modeling with BIM and Revit. And at that point, all of you created a lot of information. So lots of data was created. So we helped in many ways the industry, but we also created specific problems with so much data. It was difficult to move data from one place to another one, from architects to engineers, or from design to construction, et cetera. So there was always a lot of rework between the phases.

So about 8 years ago, 9 years ago, we introduced the concept of connected BIM. That was really the move to the cloud. That was the third digital transformation. Thank you for being patient with us because we had A360 and teams and BIM 360 and ACC. So we had a long journey to find our way to connected BIM.

But today, we are in a solid position with our common data environment that connects all of the different stakeholders of a project. And our common data environment is Docs. So many of you know Docs. And you can manage models and different drawings, et cetera. But at the core, Docs is still managing the files. So it's a file management system.

And we connect all of our solutions to Docs, so our core offerings, so the desktop, the AutoCAD, Revit, Civil 3D, and many others. Construction Cloud, of course, because Docs is part of the Construction Cloud platform, our incubations. And you will see one of them. We have three incubations. So we'll do a live demo of our virtual reality technology, Workshop XR, today.

So we have 10 demo Workshop XR and then Informed Design. And I'll touch base on these three incubations. I want to explain a little bit about incubation. We have an internal board at Autodesk, an incubation board. And within this board, we have three initiatives that are not part of the rest of the portfolio, if you will. They behave a little bit differently, because we want to protect them.

We want them to innovate, go as fast as they want, independently of the rest of Autodesk. So it's a good way for us to keep these initiatives around digital twin industrialization of construction as well as XR to be independent. So we'll talk about these three. So as you use, as you purchase, the interaction with Autodesk is a little bit different for these incubations.

And of course, third parties are key to Autodesk. It's actually part of our DNA. When Autodesk was created, we had two important genes. One was democratizing technology. And that's what we did, bringing all of these technical tools to the masses. And the second one was really to enable a third party ecosystem. Because we know that we cannot do everything ourselves.

And if you remember, AutoCAD was a platform and is still a platform. Revit was the second generation of platform. Actually, my first job at Autodesk was to build the APIs in Revit long time ago. And then we had Forge. And now, we keep building a platform approach to enable a large ecosystem of third parties.

All right. So with connected BIM and our common data environment, things get a lot better. So we are in a better position. We still lose information. We still have friction to move things from one place to another one, but it's better. We have a lot of information. And then we can better move the information. Through COVID, most of you-- a lot of people on the planet actually moved to the cloud.

So we don't think about using a common data environment and Docs as a disruption anymore. Because it's been adopted as the way of working moving forward. It's not a new thing. So not everybody is using the cloud, whether it's Autodesk or others, but it's more an adoption. It's not a transformation problem. So we need more people to use it, because there are a lot of benefits, of course. But people don't think about it as a process change anymore.

All right, so that was the current state. So now, I'm going to pivot to talking more about the future, and at a macro level, the big trends that we see in the industry. So the first one is there's a lot of work, more work than ever before. That's a big, big topic, driven by sustainability, resiliency, lots of natural disasters everywhere. You saw recently in this country, the hurricanes and all the challenges.

So we need to rebuild. We need to protect for future disasters. The built environment produces a lot of carbon. So we need also to retrofit. And then infrastructure stimulus. In this country, there's about a trillion dollars in span for infrastructures. So lots of work. That's good. Our customers are telling us that they have more work than ever before.

The second one is the declining workforce. So today, lots of professionals are retiring. So that's interesting everywhere in the world. So that's number one. We don't attract kids to come to our industry, so not enough architects, engineers, contractors. Somebody was asking me to do my dad's voice. I actually have four daughters, all in college right now. So that's why I'm doing this job, so I can pay for education.

Yeah. But it's true. It's hard to get these kids to be interested to be an architect, an engineer, or contractor. They think it's dirty. They think it's low tech. So it's a problem. And it's not just in this country. It's everywhere. We face the same problem. So it's a challenge today. So the workforce is changing.

And then finally, it's about data. So it's a big theme for this conference. You heard Andrew. You heard Amy on AEC this morning. And some of us spoke about it this afternoon as well. So there's a lot of data. We are not using our data. There's an explosion of data. We don't know how to manage all of this data. And it's difficult.

But also, it creates opportunities for all of us to really change things. Because if there's more work, less people to do the work, we need to find a solution. And we can capitalize on all of these data to change things. So I'll try to talk about it. Talking about data, so actually what we see in the last few years, so there is a 4X augmentation of data acceleration by all of you.

So we can measure the amount of data that you create. It's four times more. Most of it is not utilized actually, which is a big challenge. We also create more data than any other industries, at least comparable industries. If you think about manufacturing, they design one product and then they build a million of them.

For us, we design one, we build one. So if we need to do a million buildings, we need to have a million times more data. Not quite, but you get the concept. And data is very rich. So there are multiple types of data. So there's, of course, the project data. So that's all of your past projects. So everything you created in the past.

The second one is the context data. So it's everything around the project, environmental, weather, geotechnical, you name it, demographics, social sentiment about the area. And then the last one is your standards and preference. So it's the way you want to design and build something. So it's your special touch. That's the way you work today. So these are the three types of data that we see.

And now, when you think about these previous disruptions, what we are doing, what we are trying to imagine is, what's the next disruption? What's the future? And so we've been iterating quite a bit. We talked to a lot of you. We look at a lot of things happening. But when we think about the future of BIM-- last year, if you were around, we spoke about outcome-based BIM being the future of BIM, but I think there's a bigger of you.

So we think more about new ways of working. And these new ways of working is around connected granular data. And I'll explain what that means. The second one is there are a lot of different tools and changes, including the VR that you will hear about, and other things. And then outcome-based BIM that I'll explain in a lot of details, is really a process change. So when you think about a big process change, that's the big one right there.

So in this presentation, I'll try to touch base-- most of these topics, I'll talk about. And I'll start with the granular data. It's not completely linear, so I'll go back and forth on some topics, but just bear with me. We'll get there on time. So that's my promise to you. All right, so connected data. So let's start. So back to the common data environment, that's where we are today.

As I mentioned, the common data environment really manages files. And you can think about it as lots of files and then data. The data is stuck inside these files. So it's locked, if you will. And we have a lot of files, files of different kinds, different types with different kinds of data inside. And today, as I said, because we have these files, the data is not moving smoothly.

And actually, if we look in more details at the life cycle, so not only we want data to go from one phase to another one, but for the future, if we want to have AI-driven design, we need the data to come back. So we need the data to come back from construction. We need to understand what happened on the construction side. We need to understand what happened in the operations phase.

Because if we don't know what a good asset is, a bridge or a road, if we don't get a closed loop in terms of how it performs, we cannot do better. So we're going to keep generating the same problems if we don't leverage past projects and the knowledge. But in a perfect world, we want to have what we call a digital thread, where data can move freely around phases, around project teams without having to think about the data moving.

We need, of course, all the permission systems, et cetera. But ideally, we want data to be a lot smoother in this process. Because we hear that some of you spend more time managing the data than doing real design or construction. So there's a lot of waste in that process. So what we are doing, we are evolving Docs as our common data environment to manage files like today, to manage files and what we call granular data.

So we are basically unleashing the data from Docs. So we are exploding the files, if you will. And by the way, it's only if you wish to do so. So it's not something that you have to do, but that's something that you would be able to do. And that's going to add value to your workflows. The reason I'm saying that it's because we took you on this journey between different systems, BIM 360 where you were "forced to go in some places that maybe you didn't want."

So we don't want to reproduce some of these challenges. So the goal here is if you want to work with files, good for you. Keep working with files, no problem. But if you want to leverage the power of granular data, then it's going to be another way of working. So this granular data-- basically at the center of what we do is we decouple the data from the files.

So think about a project that has many, many files, hundreds, thousands of files. And then each of these files, it has data of different kinds. So what we are doing, we are extracting all the data, and then we are moving this data into our common data environment. So we decouple the data. So basically, what it means, believe it or not, there will be no more DWG files or RVT files or whatever Autodesk files.

These things will disappear if you wish to do so. You can still use them. But the idea is you remove the data. They are independent of the application at that point. And then any application that's connected to Docs will be able to open a project. So you're not going to open a Revit file. You're going to open a specific project, if you will. So if Civil 3D can open something, great.

Some of the objects or components may not be editable by Civil 3D, but Civil 3D will be able to open, edit, manage whatever Civil 3D nodes had to do. So we decouple the files from the application, and any application can get access to that. So as benefits, lots of benefits-- In terms of friction, so there will be no more friction. You don't need to import/export data from one tool to another one. The data will be of the same nature.

So that's going to drive a consistent experience to access the data from anywhere. The other thing is AI is really good at identifying patterns. And today, when we think about the future where AI will play a bigger role, we need the AI to identify patterns. And if you have, a fruit salad, it's hard. Apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries, it's hard for the AI. Now, if you have only bananas, it's easier to identify trends. So that's going to be a big part.

And also, as you have this granular data, it's going to be easier to look at the past, to look at what happened. Because you'll be able to compare a project from the past to the next project that you are designing. So we think that with this data, we'll be in an even better position. And today, we are at the beginning of it, with our AEC data model API where we can access-- we can get in terms of reading, the data from Revit.

So that's the reading of the data. And then we'll have some of the writing of the data. I think it's in beta now. So we just announced beta where we can also write some of this data. And then we'll keep going with Civil 3D and AutoCAD and Navisworks. So you will see drops of technology in the month, in the quarters to come. So that's one part. So that's going to realize this digital thread that I talked about.

So that was about the data. But how do we experience? So here's an example. So you'll be able to start in Forma, for instance, and then Forma will be soon connected to Docs. So Forma will just populate whatever Forma does. And then it's going to go in Docs as granular data. And then Revit will just open the data. So that's the way it's going to work.

And then Revit may make some changes to the data, and then Docs will get access to the data. So that's going to be a simple-- imagine it's the same universal file. You can imagine in the future other workflows, between Civil 3D, Navisworks, et cetera, the pipes going from Revit to Civil 3D, that kind of things. And there will be a lot more, like InfoDrainage around water, working with the Civil 3D as well.

So these type of workflows will happen. And not only with Autodesk technologies, but also with a third party like Eptura. Eptura is our partner for building operations, IWMS type of technologies. All right. And then someday, give us some time, we'll be able to have a lot more of these things working like that.

One thing that we need to talk about also is what's going to be the experience. So in the beginning, the experience will be, you go into Revit, but eventually what we want to do is also evolve the experience. And we are in the early thinking of it, which is what we call a connected client. So basically, if you think about Google Docs, it's in the cloud.

If you think about Microsoft Word, it's very different experience, but they both edit text, that kind of things. I don't think he does actually. Maybe I should look into it. But imagine that today in the Word, you can have multiple people editing the text at the same time. And then in real time. But imagine that Google Docs and Word can do it. So it's an experience between two very different technologies, a desktop Word and then a Google Docs.

So that's exactly what we want to do in the future where Forma and Revit can work at the same time, on the same data set, where you could edit and see the changes done by the other ones. So that's going to be the experience. So as I mentioned today, we have this AEC data model API. And we have already thousands of customers using it to create custom applications.

The beauty of it is you can start writing specific tools. Goldbeck, it's an industrialized construction company in Germany. It's actually the largest construction company in Germany. And then they build this dashboard where they can query with a natural language. They can query information, so you don't need to be an expert in BIM or in 3D.

You can ask questions, show me all the BIMs, or what's the dimension of the BIMs, or what's the embodied carbon of the BIMs, or whatever you want. So using the data, you can start doing a lot more things. All right. So now, we're going to switch to augmented tools. And I think the first one we're going to talk about is Workshop XR that we are launching.

And I'd like to bring Nicola Fonta on stage. People today are called Nicola, so all of them. And they all speak French, by the way. All right, so Nick.

NICOLAS FONTA: Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you, Nicola. What an exciting time that we're living in today. Now, the AEC industry, let's face it, is facing some challenges. And we have some challenges ahead of us. Now, that being said, the progress in technology that we've seen in recent years is opening the doors to plenty of new opportunities.

And Workshop XR, which just became commercially available this week right here at AU, is a great example of that. Workshop XR allows people to bring and experience their Revit and Navisworks projects in collaborative, immersive space without the need of convoluted data preparation, and without the need of a laptop. So all users need, all you need is your data to be on Docs, a Wi-Fi connection, and a VR headset.

Speaking of which, Gabe here, who is the Head of Product for Workshop XR, is going to show us and demo what that looks. So, Gabe, are you ready to take the audience through this experience with you?

GABE PAEZ: I'm ready. Let's do it. All right. So hello, everyone. My name is Gabe Paez. I'm the Head of Product for XR here. I'm joined today inside of Workshop XR by Seb and Gerard. You guys want to introduce yourselves?

Oh, of course-- audio, come on. Can you guys turn it on? All right. Well, maybe audio through the system, whatever. I can hear Seb and Gerard. They're both with me. Gerard's out in Canada and Seb in San Francisco. We're joined today inside of Workshop XR in this collaborative environment, looking at this beautiful model from Kane Group. This is a mixed-use building in London called the Wood Wharf project.

You can see this is the entire project here, federated Navisworks model brought into Workshop XR. And the beauty of Workshop XR is it's built right on the backbone of this common data environment. So this model, you can see here, if we load up files, is loaded directly from a common look here of the file browser in Docs. I can go here inside of the Wood Wharf folder, and I can load out any model here that I want.

And just like that, it will stream in real time into Workshop XR so that we can all join and view this together. The beauty of Workshop XR inside of the workshop here is that we can all join together. So Gerard and Seb can launch themselves into the space in one-to-one mode. They can be exploring in one to one, just like while I am here exploring inside of the workshop.

I can come down here and teleport into the space with them, and get this real first-person view of what this building is going to look like once it's built. Now, the advantage of scanning through, doing a coordination review, a design review inside of VR is you get that real experience of what it's going to be like. You can see this building from every angle. You can peek inside of rooms.

You can move inside of places that would not be possible even inside of the physical world. Checking clearances is as easy as bending down and seeing what maintenance on this pump is going to look like. We can take measurements inside of this space naturally by just pointing and clicking inside of the space. And of course, we also connect issues so that we can track an issue naturally, inside of this space, by just pointing at a position.

And here we have ACC issues all ready to go. Anyone inside of this space, whether they're in XR or not, can action one of these issues. Gerard changing the status from in process to in review. And just like that, everything is connected inside of this virtual workspace. And we can experience, resolve issues, and move through the life cycle from beginning to end very naturally. Nick.

NICOLAS FONTA: Thank you so much, Gabe. So as you can see, with the caveat of the audio, it was pretty trivial even on this stage for Gabe to just hop in VR and be joined by collaborators across the continent. So don't take my word for it. Thank you, Gabe.

[APPLAUSE]

If you want to know more, just visit our booth and experience it for yourself in VR. Now, Nicola talked about XR being used across the different project life cycles. We've just seen a demo of InDesign. Now, I want to talk about what that might look like on the construction site. So let me introduce a partner in a third party in the Autodesk ecosystem, GAMMA AR.

GAMMA is also connected to Docs through our APIs on ACC. And it allows us to bring the design into on the construction site using AR. What we're looking at here is a prefabricated pump that is sitting in one of the rooms of the very model that we were just experiencing in the demo before. You saw Gabe kneeling near that very exact same pump.

So we can bring the design in, overlaying-- you're playing with the transparency, at scale on the construction site. And the different trades and professionals can look for problems, errors, and do QA/QC. So this is a very powerful use case on the construction site, leveraging augmented reality. Now, I'm inviting all of us to think a little bit further, a little bit further out in the future, and think about a use case that we might want to see in the future.

So today, we know that surgeons in a given country can actually operate on patients in a different country, live using these technologies. Is there really a reason why we couldn't leverage and use these technologies on the construction site ourselves? Why could we not, in the future, imagine trades and professionals remotely operating models and robots to perform specific tasks, and probably dangerous tasks on a construction site?

So just to take a step back, we've looked at how XR can be used today in AEC and how it might be used in the future. We're super excited about the progress we've seen with these technologies in recent years. And we think that this is just the beginning. Now, thank you. Back over to you, Nicola.

[APPLAUSE]

NICOLAS MANGON: Merci, Nicola. All right. So the next topic I want to talk about in terms of new ways of working is around digital twins. And the way to think about it from an owner's perspective-- so if you look at the past, we used to deliver papers to the owners at the end of construction. Then we moved to other supports like DVDs, USBs, et cetera.

And today owners are asking for-- they are using a common data environment. And they are asking for digital assets that you deliver by contract. And all of this is great. But what we see is, in the future, what the owners will require is the digital twin, which is completely different than everything that we've done before. Because when you think about a digital twin, it's a lot of different kinds of information.

Of course, there is all of the model information that comes from models. But there's also IoT data, IWMS data from the maintenance system, information about the tenants, et cetera. And today, owners are not getting that from contractors. They are getting 3D models that were created for quantity takeoff or clash detection, for all kinds of things, but not for managing the facility.

So that's why we created Tandem to really support the needs for owners. And owners, what they want to do is they want to participate in the process of creating the digital asset. Because today, we don't design and build a digital asset. We design and build a physical asset using digital tools, but we don't design and build a digital asset for the owner.

So they want to be part of that process. They want to get insights into their operations in terms of how they perform, so they can optimize them. And then the last one, they want to reuse that knowledge for the future or for new projects. And that's why we created Autodesk Tandem, which does two things. So number one, it helps organize the information from architects, engineers, and contractors in the process during capital project.

And then it connects with all kinds of systems. So here, what you see is multiple sensors at the same time. You can see different heatmaps about temperature, around humidity, et cetera. But we can also have binary information. Is the room occupied or not in real time? So all of this now is part of Autodesk Tandem. And it connects also with some of our partners like Eptura.

So all the maintenance tickets, you can also track, and additional information directly inside Tandem. I'm going to skip this one. So thinking more about the future, using IoT and the 3D model that present all of the changes, the condition changes. In the future, you will also see some of this work using IoT for job site.

And in this project-- it's a research project that we did a while back-- we can understand the conditions in a room, if there's particulates in the air. We can track people on the job site. But you can imagine that we can give a notice and say there's a problem. Everybody needs to evacuate the job site, for instance. And you can track if you don't leave anybody behind.

You can also track materials, because people walk kilometers or miles on a job site just to search for tools and equipment. So at the same time, in the future, on the job site, we'll be able to track equipment, materials, and the workforce as well. So that's not for today. Today, digital twin is focused more on the operations of buildings. But in the future, there will be other use cases. I'm going to skip this one.

All right. So now, it's time to look at AI and some of what AI will bring also to the industry. And we see three different areas. So the first one is around analyzing data and then providing insights. So that's the first, analyzing a large amount of data. The second one is around automating tedious tasks. And that's what you heard in the different keynotes, driving productivity.

And the last one is around augmentation. And that's the Gen AI, generative AI. And I'll show you examples of each of them. So let's start with a-- By the way, there was these cards that Raji talked about on main stage. So in the future, you will see in our products-- when you have Autodesk AI, which is our AI capabilities, there will be transparency cards in terms of what the specific AI does, what kind of data it's using.

So you have the confidence and decide to opt in or not in terms of these capabilities. So in terms of analyzing, here's a first example. It's actually a simple example. It's around water. So we started in InfoDrainage. So it's our tool around water infrastructure. So this tool here, it's a camera that goes inside the pipes. And then using AI capabilities, can detect if there's a crack, if there's something, and then bringing this knowledge.

So it's a simple way to have the AI analyze the condition, something, and then giving you information about the problems it saw. So that's one. This one I'm going to illustrate on a real project. But what you see here, the AI is very good at identifying patterns and shapes. So if you have a phone and you have, I don't know, flowers or dogs or sharks on your photos-- you type shark, and then the AI will show you all your shark photos, if you have any.

So the AI is good at recognizing these type of things. So here, the AI can also analyze point clouds and recognize components, so different shapes. We acquire this company called PointFuse that we are bringing into ReCap Pro. And then here, in this case, it can recognize shapes and then transform the shapes into scan to BIM workflow. So that's another way of in this case, analyzing, but also automating some tasks. And you can go further in the future.

So do AI can also recognize the materials and also provide a diagnostic on embodied carbon, for instance, for a facility that you need to renovate? So do AI can just analyze a lot of things and then giving you insights, and you can do something about it? Talking about automation, so we saw an example. I'm going to show you another reality capture one. So in this case, it's around rail.

In the same way, in this case, the AI is recognizing point clouds, and then creating some different horizontal structures, like retaining walls and et cetera and tracks. So that's also automating some of the tasks. So you don't need to model all of that. This one is quite interesting. So that project was one of the Olympics projects in Paris for the Grand Palais. So they did a lot of analysis for this.

And when you do all of your projects, you need to do structural and solar and CFD, and this and that. So there's a lot of analysis that you need to do. And it takes time. It takes 15, 20 minutes to do a single analysis. So what AI can do today, we can train AI on synthetic data. So synthetic data are fake data that we create artificially but that are valid for simulation. And basically, that's something that we integrated in Forma.

And today, Forma can do real-time analysis. So instead of taking 10, 15 minutes to do a calculation, it's going to do a calculation in a tenth of a second. So it's called predictive AI. So the model is you do that very early in the process. And it's going to be-- you're going to get about between 60% to 90% accuracy very early on. But that's for typically something you would not do. So you can explore thousands of options based on analysis.

Here's a demonstration in Forma. So that's a fluid dynamics. So in this demo, we basically rotated the building. And I'll show you again. And you will see very quickly that the CFD is done instantly. So this type of calculation with a-- you'll see it here, we rotate the building, and then boom, the calculation is done. So that's very quick. Calculations like that would take minutes on different solvers. Again, it's based on AI and automating.

The last one is important. So that's the augmentation. And that's what everybody calls generative AI. And this one is quite different. And for us, we are giving it a name. We are calling it outcome-based BIM. And we want to differentiate from a traditional model-based BIM. So if you look at all the disruptions that we've seen, CAD, BIM, connected BIM, and then the new one is outcome-based BIM--

Outcome-based BIM is a new way of working. It's not a replacement of BIM that you've been doing for decades. It's just a new way of working. And some of you will use it for a project or part of a project. And I will show you three or four different examples of what outcome-based BIM is. You've been hearing about Forma for a little while. So Forma will realize this promise of outcome-based BIM.

It's a new offering that will have a set of capabilities in the future. We are still in early stages. But it's going to be a set of outcome-based, AI-driven capabilities for planning, design, construction, and operations for all of our industry segments. So we are just at the beginning of it. But that's what Forma will be doing. And as I mentioned, it's going to be powered by this granular data and AI.

So let's look at some examples. But that's our process today. So the process is very linear. And then at the end of the process, we measure the outcomes. And the outcomes is sustainability, construction time, et cetera, the cost of the project. But we measure at the end, and it's too late at this point. The idea here is to flip the model and start with the outcomes.

So we're going to define all of the different outcomes. There are many kinds of outcomes. And we're going to let the AI iterate and try to match all of the criteria. Of course, it's never going to do for all of them, but it's going to do its best job. And the role of the designer will be to do tradeoffs and to pick not the first option or the second one, but the best option.

Last year we've showed you this example, that's called Project Phoenix. So it's a project that we've done. It's a residential project in the Bay Area, where here the AI iterates to find the best option. And on top, you see the different criteria around carbon emission or embodied carbon, cost, et cetera, et cetera. So that way I can iterate very quickly, doing real time analysis that I mentioned, and identify the best option.

Here's another example. So it's a partner. It's a company based in Singapore called Podium. And what they do, they do the same thing. But they don't do it for architecture. In this case, we bring Forma model. So that's a building done in Forma with all kinds of analysis that's been generated. And then this data is going to Podium.

And what Podium does that's quite interesting? It designs-- it's using also generative AI. And it's doing all the structure and all the MEP. So number one, that's awesome because you can imagine now, we can iterate thousands and thousands of options, including these type of things. But one of the key beauties-- something that I love-- is it designs structure and MEP together.

So any MEP people here? So people do the structure, and then you need to find out a way to do MEP. Here, it's different because it's going to do both at the same time. It's going to find all the spaces for MEP. And the solutions that will be provided will take into consideration all of the cases. So again, you define your criteria, and then it's going to create structure and MEP.

A few things that I want to say also. In the world of industrialized construction, it also works from a database of manufactured contents. So different manufacturers, whether it's structural or others, are able to enter a catalog of products, like gray form here. And it could be different kinds of products. And AI will only design with these products and will match if it supports the required forces, moments, et cetera. So it's quite important.

It's one of the first time that we see AI go so deep in terms of generating components. Because a lot of the AI that you see, it's more for the architectural part. That's for the engineering part. So it's a big, big progress. All right. This one, we showed it earlier today. It's a research project at Autodesk. It's called Autocomplete, where basically what we do is we passed a number of Revit models. They use wood panel constructions.

And then from this, we extracted graphs or relationships, patterns of relationships between different components for all of these data. So basically, we taught the AI based on past project data. And in that way, I can iterate and then see all of these different graphs. And then when we ask the AI to design the shapes-- again, it's a lot of details compared to what we showed last year-- the AI will look at these patterns and then provide the options.

In this case, it's two of them. So one is to optimize the manufacturing, and the other one more focused on sustainability and reducing carbon emission. We can also use it at a different level, at the framing level. So we can do it at a building level, but also at a more local level in the project. So here, all the framing is also generated. So it shows you where it's going. We are going to a lot more levels of details in terms of what can be populated.

So we spoke about the mechanical. We spoke about the structural. How about electrical? This is another partner, a company called Augmenta, out of Toronto. And basically, the same way-- In this case, the criteria that they put is for the routing of electrical. And there are three areas. So some areas that say, hey, I know there's a wall, but it's OK. You can still put your cables, your trays.

Areas which are no, no, here, you cannot do anything. So that's a no, no one. Yeah, yeah, you need to go this way. So you can put all of these constraints, if you will. And then the AI will understand as criteria the electric installation, and then will provide many different options that you can see here. And then you can decide to prioritize your criteria for the band of the cable trays or the cost or the installation time.

But basically, everything is generated by the AI. So it's co-creation of the electrical system. So it's directly inside Revit. And in this case, there was this one proposal. You can look at other kinds of proposals and then compare. So that's proposal number two. Here you can see the two different ones. So they have different shapes.

So again, now we passed the phase of architecture. And we can see where AI can provide a lot more engineering. And here, you can see everything that's been populated on the model. All right, one more example. So this one is a company, Transcend. So we made an investment. And the same way is for plant, water/wastewater treatment plants.

So in this case, same thing, you put your criteria. So that could be the location, and then lots of things that you need in the water/wastewater. I never designed a water/wastewater plant, so I would not know what the criteria are. That's a P&ID that you see here. And then from this, it's going to also iterate and then provide different examples of water/wastewater plants.