AU2016 – Product Innovation Keynote

The second day AU2016 keynote was focusing on news and updates about Autodesk product lines. Amar Hanspal, Senior VP of Products reviewed existing and emerging product lines. If you feel disoriented in variety of recent changes about Autodesk new product names, keep in mind the following 3 product lines – Fusion360, BIM360 and SHOTGUN.

All manufacturing products are somehow branded and can be found behind Fusion360 name. If you look for Autodesk PLM, you should be looking for Fusion Lifecycle, which is a latest brand name for PLM technology. It is not clear how Fusion360 umbrella will influence the scope of Autodesk PLM development, but watch here for updates.

What is common behind all products is Autodesk vision for Common Data Environment

I wanted to share few updates came from Product Innovation keynote about Fusion360 delivered by Stephen Hooper of Autodesk.

Fusion360 Web Access

Until today, Fusion360 required desktop installation on PC or Mac. Autodesk announced “web access”, which can hint that Fusion360 will be natively available via browser. No live demo was done during the keynote, but video slides demonstrated Fusion360 running on iPad. The latest brings the question about browser support. Will Fusion360 become available on mobile browser? I hope Autodesk will provide more information later.

Access to PCB design

Electronics is an essential part of many products today. To combine both mechanical and electronic design together is a challenge for many organizations. Autodesk presented an enhancement to Fusion360 to access PCB design. It is related to acquisition of Eagle PCB design tool earlier this year.

What is my conclusion? Autodesk vision to establish single environment on top of data management platform can bring lot of advantages. Common data environment is core element of the strategy brings lot of benefits. At the same time, the amount of technologies and productions coming under the same data management umbrella will introduce Fusion360 to potential data management challenges. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Want to learn more about PLM? Check out my new PLM Book website.

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of openBoM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.