Autodesk simulating forward

I had the chance recently to talk with Autodesk about its plans for CFdesign, the evolution of Autodesk’s simulation portfolio and how the Blue RIdge Numerics team adds significant gravitas and expertise to drive the whole forward. Scott Reese, Sr. Director of the Autodesk Simulation Team, and I covered a lot of ground during our chat, but here are the highlights:

• Blue RIdge Numerics’ key developers have joined the Autodesk simulation team and Charlottesville, VA, is now an R&D center for Autodesk’s manufacturing group. This continuity is critical to maintaining customer calm during this transition and to moving the product forward.

• CFdesign has interfaces to many CAD tools; Mr. Reese said that continuing this multi-CAD support is key to the future success of CFdesign. There have been no repercussions from other CAD vendors since everyone, as Mr. Reese put it, “is staying focused on helping customers solve problems”.

• We talked a lot about where Autodesk could take CFdesign, integrating it with Algor, for example. The roadmap for CFdesign (and, it appears, how it will fit into the broader simulation portfolio) is still being determined. But Autodesk is very clear on one thing: it wants customer to simulate plastics flow using Moldflow, structures in Algor and heat transfer in CFdesign to truly test out “digital prototyping” and bring simulation as close as technologically possible to a real-world performance test.

• When Autodesk acquired Moldflow and Algor, one of the first changes visible to customers was a simplified product and price list. Mr. Reese did not comment on plans for CFdesign, other than to say that Autodesk is “doing business as usual for now. We’re spending time with CFdesign customers to learn what the need.” I believe that Blue Ridge Numerics packaging and pricing is significantly more straightforward than in either of the earlier cases, so don’t foresee a radical redo.

• One of the thing I have never really understood about Autodesk’s simulation team (which apparently resides in the Manufacturing group) is how it feeds into Autodesk’s other business lines. CFD, for example, has significant application in AEC as architects and planners need to determine wind loads on building, smokestack dispersal patterns and the like. CFdesign had a previous relationship with Autodesk’s Revit which Mr. Reese says will be maintained. In fact, he sees growing interest among architects; it remains to be seen how that will fit into the R&D plans.

• Autodesk is known for delivering high-quality tools to a mass audience. How does that jibe with creating cutting-edge technology for CAE specialists? Mr. Reese reiterated what Autodesk has said before: Autodesk intends to continue to serve specialist analysts with world-class tools but also wants to bring designers to a simulation workflow, such as with Project Krypton (where Moldfow indicators in Inventor show show manufacturability, material environmental impact, and cost). Designers and analysts have different needs and addressing both audiences with same product is, according to Mr. Reese, short-sighted. He says that Autodesk “intend[s] to address each type of user independently; Krypton and the cloud will make simulation more accessible to a broader audience. But the meshing and solver technology in CFdesign will also continue to be developed for a specialist audience.”

With the addition of Moldflow, Algor and now CFdesign, Autodesk has become a simulation one-stop-shop for many buyers. Mr. Reese sees the competitive landscape a little differently from many CAE suppliers I’ve spoken with: “We’re focused on digital prototyping, which isn’t all CAR. We are creating the most robust set of tools in CAE by following our customers’ lead. They were asking us to solve fluids problems, which led us to the CFdesign acquisition. If they ask us to invest in other areas, we may do that as well. Customers are embracing and making digital prototyping core to their processes, whether that means CAD, electrical systems design or CAE. This is resonating well with customers, who like our scalable, flexible approach.”

Mr. Reese also pointed to Autodesk’s trials of simulation (Moldflow, to date) in the cloud as significant differentiators from its simulation competitors. Of course, most of the big CAE vendors have had a hosted simulation offering for a number of years with less-than stunning uptake, but Autodesk sees its target audience differently. Rather than offering as-needed “extra” CPU power to meet peak demand, Autodesk aims to create a cloud offering for smaller companies that have no internal HPC centers. Autodesk sees its cloud offering as a critical component of its CAE strategy, one that will “make CAE much more visible and approachable because compute power will no longer be a bottleneck. When users can simulate a design as often as they like, then they’ll see the benefit.” Autodesk’s Project Cumulus is still collecting data about usage, numbers of compute cycles and so on to help Autodesk hone the value proposition of its cloud offering; no pricing or commercial release date yet.

What I think I like most about the way Autodesk is assembling its CAE offering is the sense that 1+1+1 is far more than 3. It seems that Autodesk is creating a world-class R&D team, assembling talent from many disciplines to create solvers, meshing, post-processing, compute and the rest of the key technologies that make up CAE and figuring out how to deliver it to a broad spectrum of users. This last, the delivery aspect, is critical and I’m looking forward to learning more about that as plans and roadmaps settle.