You now have the responsibility to manage CAD within your department and/or organization, but your job title does not include CAD manager. You do not or cannot dedicate your time full time to this task. So how do you do this? We will use my transition from reseller to mining equipment manufacturer in an examination of how to get buy-in from management, how to get participation by the users (and your peers), where to start, and how to proceed. Let us talk standards, processes, procedures, training, CAD, management, and continual leadership.

With the release of Design Automation for Inventor on Forge, it's possible to leverage the scale of the Forge platform not only saving money but also removing the bottleneck of processing automated workflows. You can now automate jobs in parallel and only pay for the processing time used. In this talk we'll go over a number of customer success stories in moving automation from on-premise Inventor servers to our cloud-enabled, scalable Forge service reducing time to process from days down to minutes, imparting a competitive advantage. Specific topics include: 1) design automation overview and typical workflows; 2) customer case studies on moving automation to Forge; 3) extending the value of existing design data through the Forge platform; 4) Manufacturing and Construction automations with Inventor and Revit engines together; 5) what's next: road map and things we’re hearing around automation and Forge.

Viewing your CAD 3D models in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) isn’t something that can be done with a one-size-fits-all, single-click solution. Tessellating, optimizing, and transcoding must be done to convert your CAD (parametric) 3D model into an AR/VR/MR-ready (polygonal) 3D model. CAD models consist of infinitely accurate curves and multiple materials that must be transformed into triangulated representations of these curves with materials converted to textures and baked onto the models for use on devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens. This class will provide a step-by-step demo showing how to convert your 3D CAD models into AR/VR/MR-ready assets using 3ds Max software. We will also show you how to create your own deployable AR/VR/MR application for viewing your 3D models using Unity’s real-time rendering engine and MRTK, the Mixed Reality Toolkit. The speaker has saved companies hundreds of thousands of dollars by producing MR design reviews, and will enable you to do the same.

In this class, a CIO of a leading ship-building company from India shall be jointly presenting with a partner a case study of their custom implementation of Vault software as a business process automation platform to synchronize their design and business workflows to their Enterprise Business systems—Infor ERP. The class will explore how various departments of a ship-manufacturing organization works around the design data that flows between various users and integrates critical items and BOM with their ERP system and automates several business workflows customized on Vault interface. The presenter will explain how they could save close to 20% of their design-to-manufacturing cycle time by streamlining Vault product data management (PDM) software to remove redundant work on ERP while enabling a collaborative and automated business environment. This class will explore the extent to which Vault can be customized beyond its basic features, and throw light on integration of BOM and related data to ERP or other applications.

Today’s workgroups are growing larger and larger. Whatever kind of seasoned expert or key user you might be, you need to maintain coherence across all workstations when organizing your design teams. This class will highlight and demonstrate available tools and technologies that you can use to manage consistency via presets, add-ins, overrides, defaults, locked settings, or multiple installation languages, always keeping in mind the optimal performance of your CAD system.

Ideally, a dedicated software development team, skilled in the software development lifecycle, handles the task of customizing Autodesk products to meet your business needs. More often, however, it is the advanced CAD user or manager who handles this task, starting off by tinkering with a few lines of script-but ending up spending nights and weekends wrestling a mountain of now-mission-critical code. If this scenario sounds a little too familiar, please join us for a crash course in software development best practices, and discover some tips and tricks that should make your code-wrangling days more enjoyable.

It is common for most sheet metal fabricators to have an ERP (enterprise resource planning) or MRP (material requirements planning) system, as well as software that addresses their needs for nesting and machine programming. What is not commonplace is for those systems to talk to one another very well. This class will present a case study in which the users are designing in Inventor software, managing their revisions and model data in Vault software, using a cloud-based ERP system to input sales and inventory information, and using TruNest to drive all of the machines connected to their sheet metal fabrication operations. What this class will demonstrate to attendees is a fully integrated sheet metal fabrication workflow, from the design of the product to its manufacture on the shop floor.

Let's clear up the Clouds. This class covers the latest in virtualization technology advancements and everything you need to know to plan your approach to virtualization with Autodesk software. Learn the difference between the Cloud, Private Cloud, and Virtual Private Cloud, and how to deploy a virtualized workstation solution optimized for Revit, Inventor, AutoCAD, 3ds Max, and other common Autodesk software. This class covers hardware and software technologies from HP, NVIDIA, Citrix, and VMWare.

Vault software products specifically support Inventor software’s iPart/iAssembly factory and member file management. This class will have practical examples that will illustrate and unveil the secrets from basic file management tasks up to advanced workflows like partial revision of families. Experienced Inventor software users and product data management administrators will learn recommended setup and configurations to capitalize on the full capabilities and benefits managing and consuming component families. The class will discuss file structures, setup of family tables, and the implementation of file and item numbering schemes for family members. Follow considerations and implementation scenarios to drive CAD and item bill of materials. Another important aspect is to manage component families over larger periods of time. Get introduced to revision management and all file management tasks like rename, move, and copy. We will also cover Inventor file migration for vaulted families. This session features Vault Professional, Inventor Professional, and Vault Workgroup. AIA Approved

In this hands-on lab, you learn how to move legacy 2D drawings made in AutoCAD® software into 3D digital prototype models in Inventor® 3D CAD software. This lab also covers how to use the 3D data in Inventor to digitally design, visualize, and simulate, enabling you to easily visualize your products virtually, thus reducing time and money for physical prototypes. We also discuss how to easily share the 3D model across multidisciplinary teams of designers and engineers.

This is a description of the journey that Unverferth Mfg. Co., Inc., took when the company went from drawings boards and paper to a virtual digital world using Vault Professional software. We will talk about how the firm merged 3 independent and separately located Engineering departments into a single department. We will demonstrate our procedures—including file management, items use, and establishment of a 100%-digital Change Order and Approval process—and we'll talk about how we did them. Then we'll show how we are integrating with our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

The Autodesk Forge platform delivers brilliant technologies that enhances the daily work also in the desktop world. This session will explain and show how to benefit from the forge APIs within your desktop environment with practical, real examples. See how to use the Forge Viewer within Vault, or how to leverage the Design Automation API with your local files, how to use the Data Management and Derivative API. This session will explain how Cloud and Desktop can work together today, with practical examples and so give you new ideas for your business. (Joint AU/Forge DevCon class).

Vault Data Standard is a free Autodesk add-on for Vault software, Inventor software, and AutoCAD Mechanical software. This class will show what it is, what it can do, what it’s good for, and how to install it, along with first insights into customization. Vault Data Standard comes with cool features out of the box, and can really improve your Vault experience. Join this class to see the latest version of Vault Data Standard and learn how to improve your workflows.

"In this class you will learn how to provide your application engineers, sales team, and even customers with a rich, 3D, graphically interactive, guided, design automation solution using Autodesk Forge Design Automation API together with Knowledge Bridge. Knowledge Bridge is a cloud-based, advanced configuration and engineering automation solution. Using Knowledge Bridge together with Forge, you can build your own custom solution guided selling experience that includes graphical selection, drag-and-drop, and advanced rendering using super-fast web-based graphics. These UI’s are constrained by and drive engineering selection, configuration and design rules that automate both pre and post-sales engineering process to create quotes, models, drawings, BOMs, and other engineering related reports. All this can be achieved without programming. And the structure is such that it can support even the most complex products. We’ll also show several examples of previous successful projects."

Have you ever been responsible for converting Inventor models to Revit content or had a need to bring Revit models into Inventor? If so, this class is for you. We’ll cover interoperability between Inventor and Revit, as well as best practices for managing your data with Vault software and BIM 360 software.

In this presentation we will discuss how to store and manage standard parts (devices) into a library, and how to store standard configurations of those parts into a catalog of controlled circuits in Vault Professional software. We will also talk about how to apply your custom/company standard support files and configuration files, and how to set up for all needed environments. We will also detail various methods for developing a standard workflow for content control and for accessing the latest released content. We'll look at how to hone in on the most effective methodology using AutoCAD Electrical software in a Vault Professional software environment. We’ll place emphasis on a detailed step-by-step presentation approach, and we will allot time for questions and answers so that you will find the presentation useful, regardless of experience with AutoCAD Electrical software and Vault Professional software.

In this class, we examine substation assemblies and models for a utility. We also look into the lifecycle for substation parts in Vault Professional software. We cover the use of Items to keep track of information, such as purchase price, basic impulse level (BIL), operating voltage, specification information, and more. We discuss how to work in Inventor software and how to use the released bias or non-released bias to an assembly for insertion into your model. Finally, we examine how to keep track of legacy designs and greenfield designs in a standard format.

This class is about the process of making an assembly model that is built by iLogic codes. It will demonstrate the steps of automation, and how the iLogic component should be used to reduce errors of the assemblies. We're a team of 4 people who almost always work solely on coding, and we've reached an area where iLogic is fully saturated. In this class, you'll be able to understand why you have to rebuild and update your assemblies in order to get your iLogic code working again. We've found a way-what we believe to be one of the best ways to create an assembly with 500-plus unique parts. This class is not suitable for beginners, as it will be showing real-life examples of how our algorithms work their ways around the "non-starting rules." In this lesson you will also learn how to program your Content Center Libraries with a delicate touch.

This class covers several workflows that answer the most common questions that Inventor software users have about assemblies, parts, drawings, and Content Center library. You will learn how to add parts to top-down assemblies; create a chamfer on a corner point having freedom in the xyz dimensions; automatically show bend up/down direction for a sheet metal part in the drawing based on line color; control the display of alternate tolerance; copy multiple Inventor software drawing views as blocks in AutoCAD software's model space with the right scale; to manage the content center files when you move to a newer Inventor release; place a Tube & Pipe fitting in an assembly as a normal part; change the BOM (bill of materials ) Structure of a standard part family; and calculate the cost of a Structural Shape component based on a standard cost-per-meter/length.

LAIKA is a stop-motion feature animation studio in Portland, Oregon. Autodesk’s Shotgun project management software has been used to organize and automate aspects of the production of all its feature films over the past 10 years, from Coraline to the forthcoming Missing Link. In this talk, we will present how LAIKA tackles the design and manufacturing of the assets that show up on the big screen, how we use Shotgun software to track our production data (from scheduling to final delivery and beyond), and how we have built an efficient production pipeline using Shotgun as a platform. LAIKA exists at an interesting junction between visual effects and manufacturing, producing physical assets for a digital final product. As we go through our workflows, we will also reflect on the commonalities we have seen in how to create both physical and digital assets efficiently.