Throughout the last decade, Danville/Pittsylvania County has developed a world-class manufacturing training pipeline to address the skills gap and workforce shortage. More than $100 million invested in innovative training programs, robust K-12-through-university collaboration, and key strategic alignments have resulted in impact at the local, state, and national levels. Explore best practices and lessons learned from a tactical and strategic prospective, and get advice for setting up your workforce training pipeline.

Drafting in VDC programs takes a combination of industry knowledge and software knowledge. In order to be proficient, a drafter has to pull from both knowledge sets and the best VDC personnel have some level of field experience in order to know how systems should be built correctly and efficiently. This session will moderate a discussion on ways to train union labor, both from the field and through the apprenticeship. In both cases, there is a need for some level of proficiency. For apprentices, more jobsites are incorporating coordination software in the field. They need to be able to use the software tools to read, interpret and build. For journeymen using their experience to become draftsmen, they need training on how to use software to design, coordinate and fabricate. The discussion will talk about how contractors around the country are approaching this training, what content should be taught to each set of people and how they approach bringing in labor to the office.

Before now, learning about small satellites was open to a limited number of people, such as aerospace undergraduate or graduate students. On top of that, its complexity created hurdles to understanding it unless you had an engineering background. Plus, it required a significant amount of time to go through. The Autodesk Fusion 360 software has enabled us to develop small satellite training that everyone can learn in a short period of time. In HEPTA-Sat training—designed to teach students about the design and development of small satellites—we use Team of Autodesk Fusion 360 to share information and design, and to simulate modeling. Moreover, we adjust electronic board and CAE, and add elements of generative design. We’ll demonstrate how Autodesk Fusion 360 streamlines processes, fosters innovation, and improves learning.

Training a diverse group of users requires more than a little bit of strategizing. From new users to seasoned veterans, everyone has something they can discover about the software they use. But how do you engage them all and keep them all growing? Explore various methods of engagement and find the approach that works best for you and your trainees. Join our discussion of learning styles, presentation styles, training tools, on-demand content development, and ways of testing progress and identifying topics relevant to your users.

It is no secret that change is difficult. And a culture based on innovation and efficiency is critical for success in our industry. We’ve seen great progress over the last couple of years using highly collaborative workflows and out-of-the box thinking surrounding the way we do work. Autodesk Construction Cloud, and the partnership with our customer success team, has empowered our enterprise to implement technology in ways that allow us to work closer—even from afar. This presentation will cover Barton Malow’s strategy surrounding the implementation of both BIM 360 software and Autodesk Build software on our projects. We’ll cover the use of on-demand training to standardize success, the use of critical data to verify company-wide adoption, and our collaboration with clients to promote unity in process. This class will serve as a down-to-earth understanding of the challenges we’ve faced, and how we properly navigated those challenges to galvanize Autodesk Construction Cloud as our gold standard for success.

With the 2023 release of AutoCAD software, Autodesk has expanded and improved its advisory engine known as My Insights. When introduced, this feature was delivered to the AutoCAD user by serving personalized productivity insights based on product usage data. Now, Autodesk is exploring how CAD, building information modeling (BIM), and IT managers can also benefit from access to the product usage data from the industry and from within their companies and teams. Imagine having a line of sight into how and where products are used, where training is needed, what efficiency opportunities are being missed, and how CAD standards are being followed—and being able to make better technology decisions, all supported by data. In this roundtable session, we’ll do more than imagine—you’ll be able to brainstorm, explore, and learn from other industry experts, technology managers, and Autodesk data specialists about how we can expand the My Insights feature to better meet your needs.

case study from the Red Sea Development which illustrates our journey from defining our digital delivery requirements to the construction of hotels using prefabrication and off-site manufacturing. With examples of precast volumetric apartments, laminated structural timber frames and entire villa modules assembled and shipped to site, we will share lessons learned from managing information, design models and shop drawings during the design, procurement, and construction phases for 3,000 buildings. Learn how we, as the owner, configured and implemented BIM 360 for our large scale complex projects. Our BIM processes, workflows and use of BIM 360, were awarded the BSI Kitemark for delivering projects to ISO 19650 standards. Our challenge is ensuring everyone has the knowledge and skills to participate in our digital delivery process. We will explain how we invest in education and training to onboard teams quickly, improve methods of working and increase productivity.

Autodesk is providing insights, technology, and training to help you and your business prepare for the future of work. However, how do you practically implement this transformation—whether its greater automation, AI (artificial intelligence), or digital twins—effectively in your projects? Are you accidentally exposing yourself to (potentially uninsured) risk and liability? Are you taking on more than you expected or costed for? In this practical and pragmatic class, receive guidance and tips on how to minimize risk and maximize profitability and effectiveness through clear documents, scope, and processes.

Many components in manufacturing or woodworking (just to name two industries) start their production journey as flat materials. This makes an easy-to-handle workflow for mass production very important, especially when you’re running a job shop. Attend this training to take a closer look at the full workflow, starting with designing or importing parts, moving to creating a nesting layout of all components, and closing with the computer numerical control (CNC) production.

Hear from ASME experts as they share the in-depth research results and insights that predict how new workflows will shape the future of work in manufacturing throughout the next five to ten years. A panel of industry and technology experts will discuss the overarching industry implications and business outcomes driving the advancement of manufacturing and how the roles of mechanical engineers, manufacturing engineers, and machinists will evolve—and we’ll identify the new set of hard and soft skills required to succeed. Learn how new workflows are taking hold in the industry. And discover the workforce training, technology, and operations infrastructure that is required to achieve fundamental improvements in productivity, quality, and profitability. Finally, learn how industry, academia, and government can support the development of the skills and knowledge among students and professionals.

The ability for teams to address and adapt to change is becoming a critical element of survival for many organizations in the current digital transformation landscape. We can acquire new tools and design new processes, but how do you ensure that your employees apply these technologies in their daily work? Equipping our staff for the future is one of the essential pillars of Royal HaskoningDHV’s (RHDHV) digital transformation. Our ambition is to provide 90% of colleagues with relevant digital skills and competencies in order to prepare the organization for the future. Together with Autodesk and Eagle Point Software, RHDHV has managed to increase productivity around learning and ensure targeted learning for its employees. In this industry talk, RHDHV will share how to prepare the workforce for the future of work, improve workforce ROI, and create a training strategy that meets industry requirements, energizes employees, and is aligned with company culture.

Epic Games and Theia Interactive have partnered to build a sustainable, scalable innovation lab environment streamed in the cloud using Revit software, Maya software, and Unreal Engine software. The Detroit Experimental Lab was designed to be both a collaborative space for meetings, training sessions, and product demos, and a testing environment for future technologies. Epic Games’ Heiko Wenczel and Nimrod Friedmann of Theia Interactive will lead attendees through the workflows and tools used in creating the virtual lab, and will highlight some of the most innovative features of Maya and Unreal Engine 5. The speakers will also detail how the Detroit Experimental Lab’s highly interactive design process can serve as a road map for enterprise companies looking to secure their positions in the evolving digital landscape. It will be highly informative for creators, as well as innovation and digital practice managers preparing to enter the metaverse.

Are you a glutton for employee learning and upskilling? Do you lust over new employee onboarding and upskilling programs that work? Bad experiences can leave your employees full of wrath and joining the ranks of the Great Resignation. With the battle for top talent stronger than ever, there’s no time to be slothful. Your employees, both new and established, will be green with envy for the outstanding learning experiences you’ll learn how to provide while attending this class. Who knows, you might even find employees greedily consuming learning content versus avoiding it like the plague. Taught by two award-winning Autodesk University instructors, this session will focus on overcoming the sins of onboarding and upskilling employees, and putting your programs on righteous paths. We’ll explore the process of defining program objectives, developing scalable training plans, initiating strategies for social learning and mentoring, and providing a pathway for your team to learn, grow, and lead.

The Autodesk Fusion 360 team often hears comments from beginning users such as, “Autodesk Fusion 360 is so hard to learn. I don’t know where to start. There are so many commands and workspaces, it’s too intimidating.” We’re here to bust that myth. In this class, we’ll demonstrate—live—the creation of a real-world design (not a trivial demo design) using just 12 commands in the Design workspace. Join your expert Autodesk Fusion 360 instructors—Phil and Jeff—for this interactive demo/training class aimed to help newer Autodesk Fusion 360 users who just want to learn the basics. Once you’ve grasped these 12 commands, you’ll have the skills to create moderately complex designs. With that confidence, you can expand your knowledge by learning the rest at your own pace. You’ll leave the class with the best basics and a road map to further explorations in areas that are relevant to you.

Discover decarbonization design strategies for building design, as well as a data-informed workflow for implementing these strategies to decarbonize the training Revit House. We’ll use Revit software, the Revit One Click plug-in, and One Click LCA to show you how to extract and manage quantitative and material data to measure the embodied carbon emissions associated with the design of the Revit House. After examining the results, and discovering the carbon hotspots, we’ll decide on appropriate decarbonization strategies, aiming for a 40% reduction in line with the World Green Building Council goal. We’ll then apply those strategies to the Revit House. Integration between Revit and One Click LCA has streamlined the data-informed workflow and provides carbon data when the designer needs it. The designer can use this data to make design decisions and subsequently deliver measurably lower carbon buildings.

The New Government Quarter is an ambitious project with seven buildings containing more than 125,000 square meters of highly attractive office space. The challenge: keeping dozens of Revit models consistent across different teams—starting with the same templates, but not ending up developing different model “dialects” over time. How can we avoid the cost of massive worker hours and still keep data quality and data management easy to maintain? To solve these issues, the design team is developing a set of automation processes for Revit software. These are built as scalable add-ins that anyone can use and configure, and they’re implemented using structured support, training, and documentation strategies. The heaviest processes are run at night using a large set of external resources managed by the owner and configured by the building information modeling (BIM) team. The result is a staggering reduction in the amount of non-value-adding time spent by the design team, leading to a much greater return on investment in the form of design quality.

Victoria Hand Project (VHP) is a charity that designs and deploys low-cost, 3D-printed prosthetic arms in developing countries. VHP provides medical professionals in low-income countries with the tools and training to create custom prosthetic arms. VHP has developed software solutions which use Autodesk Fusion 360 software to efficiently create these devices. Recently, VHP struggled to create prosthetic devices for upper-arm amputees (i.e., above elbow), due to the complex geometry of the 3D scans and the in-depth knowledge/workflow required to make the devices. Through the new Autodesk Fusion 360 Product Design Extension, VHP can now organically convert the complex mesh bodies of upper-arm scans into solid bodies for further 3D modeling. This has substantially improved the workflow of creating upper-arm prosthetic sockets, and allows for automation using APIs. This empowers VHP’s in-country partners to create custom upper-arm prosthetic devices quickly and easily, allowing for improved access to prosthetic care.

When using immersive systems such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) for design review, a key attribute of the system is a seamless interaction with at-scale, realistic digital models. VRED software is a well-accepted, manufacturing design-review application offering close-to-truth photorealism and a highly immersive extended reality (XR) interface. Using artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled speech control with VRED software can increase the level of immersion, allowing a user to have direct interaction with the digital model without the need for scene-occluding graphical user interfaces (GUIs)—and also allowing the user to naively interact with VRED, enabling more users to perform unassisted design reviews in XR. Project Mellon is NVIDIA's internal speech-enablement project that uses the innovative Riva automatic speech recognition (ASR) software with a prototype dialogue manager and 0-shot learning natural language processing (NLP) to achieve a developer-friendly integration of AI-enabled speech. In this session, we’ll show Mellon and VRED, and we’ll discuss how Mellon is used to easily update command lists without the need for extensive NLP training.

This class will be about using better data management as a tool to increase productivity in Revit software. Researching for quality data is vital for improving Revit and architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry productivity. We’ll present a methodology that combines information management and research for quality inputs when working in Revit to boost your Revit productivity. Information is king—however, managing information and knowledge is power! You might already be familiar with Revit, but combining information management principles with Revit best practices can powerfully improve your productivity in building information modeling (BIM) projects. This process can lead companies to create structured data for future analyses. The critical point is to prioritize quality data!