It was obvious coming into this year’s AU conference that the role and prominence of the word geospatial has changed within Autodesk as a result of recent reorganization. Certainly there’s good ongoing support for Map 3D and Autodesk Mapguide, but there were no tracks identified as geospatial.
Instead, Autodesk has expanded their infrastructure group to encapsulate their geospatial tools and domain expertise in specific markets. The idea that was articulated is that geospatial data and visualization serve to inform infrastructure projects, and Autodesk has identified opportunities around specific market segments rather than geospatial platform development.
Among the areas that Autodesk feels there are opportunities within the newly redefined infrastructure grouping are transportation (with beefed up capabilities in Civil3D), water/wastewater, electrical utilities and renovation and retrofit of buildings. The software tools that dominate the opportunities in this group are Revit and Navisworks, with an emphasis placed on analysis with Ecotect and Green Building Studio as well as increasing the capabilities of Revit to work as a better collaboration tool for larger distributed project teams.
Last year’s push for digital cities has been muted by the state of the economy, and particularly the overwhelming challenges that cities face due to reduced tax revenues. Autodesk’s acquisition of Land Explorer is still undergoing a transition from its German roots to become standardized for the North American market and the rest of the world. The tool’s ability to create detailed 3D models quickly has generated excitement within the group, particularly for scenarios where cities seek to manipulate their future design.
While the role of geospatial thinking within the product lines has been shifting for a while, it speaks most clearly to a convergence of technologies. While model-based design feeds nicely into the role of geospatial tools to form the base reality that everything is built upon, there still isn’t a strategy for sharing models between tools other than the FDO process. While this capability addresses many user needs, the vision of a detailed city model that ingests the building models and as-built drawings from multiple Autodesk tools seems a far way in the making.
