Emily Suzuki
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
Connected data from design to manufacturing to production unlocks the opportunity to achieve significant, AI-driven productivity gains. By moving beyond repetitive, non-value-added, and time-consuming tasks, you can focus on what truly matters to your business: driving innovation.
Innovation isn’t limited to the ideation stage of design; it encompasses the entire product lifecycle. When your data is open and accessible in the cloud, and your workflow is unified, you can capitalize on the benefits of AI throughout the development process, from design and beyond.
Below are 5 ways you can leverage Autodesk AI in manufacturing today:
These insights come directly from Stephen Hooper, VP of Design & Manufacturing Product Development, Autodesk’s AU 2024 industry keynote. Watch the full keynote here.
1. Sketches
The key to avoiding problems in assemblies and improving productivity in part modeling is getting this right the first time. And to do that, we’re automating constraint generation. With AutoConstrain, Autodesk AI analyzes design sketches to identify the perfect set of relationships to maintain design intent. This means your sketches are always fully constrained without taking any time or effort, letting you focus on the fun, productive part of design.
Since your sketches are fully constrained, the downstream reliability of designs is drastically improved. So, when you come to model and assemble content based on these automated sketches, everything will work right the first time, every time.
2. Drawings
Our new Drawing Automation features streamline design detailing to dramatically speed up the creation of drawings. By automatically recognizing purchased components and removing them from drawing sets, and by generating dimensioning strategies to fully document designs in seconds, manufacturers can significantly reduce manual work, minimize errors, and accelerate time-to-production. This automation ensures consistency, enhances productivity, and enables teams to focus on innovation and refinement rather than repetitive tasks.
3. Electronics
For consumer product designers, we’ve improved our automation capabilities in the Electronics workspace, with interactive and automatic length tuning driven by our new customizable design rules engine. We’ve also worked with Cadence to simplify the PCB design process, allowing PCB designers working in Cadence products to easily collaborate with their mechanical design partners working in Fusion. So, no matter what tool you’re working with, you can improve design quality, minimize errors, and ultimately reduce turnaround time for your customers.
4. Manufacturing
Now that you’ve modeled, assembled, and documented your design, it’s time to move to manufacturing. Our partnership with CloudNC has cut toolpath programming times in Fusion by up to 95%, and this year, we’ve integrated natural language AI prompts in Autodesk Assistant with CNC machining, making it even easier to cut parts.
So, for example, you can simply provide a prompt, like “machine the top face of this part,” and Fusion automatically knows what to do and how to apply the relevant machining strategy. This is completely unique in the market and drastically simplifies the user’s experience.
With the new cloud-based Design Automation Service API for Fusion, anyone can apply Fusion’s automation capabilities in their business processes, like many of our customers, who are investing more in manufacturing automation for online quotation and machining, helping them win more business and improve their profit margins.
5. Simulation
But CNC machining is just one piece of the puzzle. Profitable manufacturing involves the entire production process, including the factory itself. When building and manufacturing operations are connected—you unlock new levels of efficiency—enabling you to make informed decisions sooner—hit production targets with confidence—and reduce time to market and costly inventory.
Simulation is key to making these informed decisions, as it allows you to identify the need for changes in design, workflows, and products before costly physical changes are required. This year, we’re enhancing this by adding the ability for Flexsim to consume native Autodesk file types directly.
Achieve a seamless design to manufacturing process with Autodesk AI
Imagine if you could ensure maximum efficiency and cost control with optimized power consumption and verified sustainability—all while ensuring that your products are produced right the first time, every time.
But the thing is, you don’t have to just “imagine” anymore. This could be a reality for you today. With tight coordination from design to manufacturing to production, you can transform your business—unless one of your competitors gets there first. Autodesk is excited to scale alongside you, wherever you are in your journey, to make sure you become #1 in your industry!