AU2017, Forge DevCon, High Frequency Data  and Collaborative Services

I’m at Autodesk University (AU) 2017 this week getting ready to a marathon of keynote presentations, sessions, discussions, meetings. To survive this thing is not simple – I know it from many years of experience to attend this event. Skimming through the twitter, I found pro-tips from Al Dean of Develop3D. I can sing every single thing in Al’s note.

Tomorrow is Monday and I will attend Forge DevCon-  Autodesk developers conference. This year the conference is co-located together with AU2017. You probably remember my notes from previous DevCons – Autodesk Forge DevDay 2016.

My attention was caught by Autodesk Forge community blog – Forge DevCon Keynotes Released introducing a line of keynote with Autodesk executives. You can see some changes in titles -Scott Reese, Senior VP of Construction and Manufacturing and Brian Matthews, VP of cloud platforms. My special attention was caught by plan of Autodesk to release a set of highly collaborative services as part of Autodesk Forge.

Here is the passage from the announced keynote by Director of Forge Product Management – Brian Roepke:

[Brian] will also be detailing where Forge is headed over the coming year, including Autodesk’s plans to launch a set of “creation” services based on the new “High Frequency” technology they have developed to deliver browser-based, highly collaborative creation experiences (the same technology at the core of Autodesk’s next-generation AEC technology, Quantum). You’ll hear from partner LimbForge how they are automating the design and creation of prosthetic limbs, working closely with Autodesk to transform the high-frequency technology from a set of Autodesk internal web services into tools partners can use to deliver tailored design experiences through a browser on almost any device.

The first time I’ve heard about Autodesk high-frequency data technology in June 2016 at first DevCon event in San-Francisco. Check my blog here – Autodesk Forge and High Frequency Data.

From Autodesk standpoint, “frequency” applies to the changes. In a traditional desktop engineering applications data is residing inside of files. Autodesk developed these application for the last 30 years from early versions of AutoCAD. The data is in files. The only way to change it in the cloud is via upload and download. The new mechanism of “unbounded data” extract data from multiple file data sources and allows to update data on more granular level.

Last year, the technology of high-frequency data was planned to support Autodesk Fusion360 browser version. It looks like Autodesk is recognizing the demand of users to have collaborative applications and investing into future technologies capable to support communication and collaboration in distributed manufacturing and construction teams.

What is my conclusion? I look forward to learn more about future Autodesk Forge technologies. Autodesk is recognizing the need in collaborative experience. Manufacturing companies are distributed and future belongs to tools capable to organize real-time collaboration and collect information about product and people located everywhere in the world. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

PS. I’m very much interested to learn how to integrate OpenBOM real-time collaboration with Autodesk Forge API collaborative services in the future. If you want to learn more about OpenBOM, visit me at The Factory by Autodesk at AU2017. Booth 402e. More information is here.

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.