Autodesk AI formed the main announcement at Autodesk University 2023, with its intelligent assistance and generative capabilities added into products and native to Autodesk’s Design and Make Platform.
Debuting in Autodesk’s automotive design studio tools, Generative AI for conceptual design leans on Autodesk’s recent acquisition of BlankAI, adding generative AI technology that can augment the work of designers, to create 3D concepts ‘in milliseconds’. Autodesk says that the technology can pull from a company’s libraries of past work to rapidly generate new concepts that build on existing design styles and guidelines.
“As the trusted technology partner for Design and Make industries, Autodesk sees AI as a way for our customers to tackle the challenges they face and turn them into opportunities,” said Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost.
“AI is the future of design and make, and Autodesk is pioneering this transition. We sit at the junction of many of the most creative and impactful industries in the world. We’ll continue to invest in AI because of its transformational potential to drive better outcomes for our customers’ businesses and the world.”
Fusion will also utilise AI across every phase of the product development lifecycle. The first Autodesk software to introduce generative design for manufacturing over six years ago, AI will now unlock ‘all kinds of opportunities to automate repetitive processes, analyse shop floor operations, and augment creativity’.
Jeff Kinder, Autodesk executive VP, Design and Manufacturing, said that ‘the Data Model’, which he describes as ‘the heart of Fusion’, makes this possible. “Leveraging our cloud-based data model, customers can automate and streamline their workflows. Autodesk AI uses the same cloud data to eliminate repetitive tasks and free people up for higher-value, creative work,” he said.
As a pertinent view of these tangible benefits, Fusion will add the ability to provide fully dimensioned 2D drawings from 3D models at the click of a button before the end of the year.
Equally tangible is the change to the price of the software and its extensions. The ‘rebalancing’ is set to to reflect the ‘additional capabilities and customer feedback on the value of our offerings’, says Kinder.
In short, the price of general subscription is heading up, while the cost of the extensions packages is going down.
The full list of price changes can be found here, but as of 30 January 2024, the new subscription prices will increase to the following:
$85 paid monthly
$680 paid annually
$2,040 paid every three years
Some good news is that all current active annual subscribers will get a lock-in price of $490 until their renewal in 2027.
A noticeable stat among the list of various subscriber packages, it the effective of 14 November 2023, Autodesk has changed some of the eligibility criteria for the free startup subscription.
The price drop can be found in the extensions packages, which currently retail at $1,600, and will see a price reduction to $1,465.
