A “connected brain” at the centre of each project brings together data and decisions across Autodesk’s industry clouds
Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost has opened AU26 with a company-wide pitch built around “project intelligence”. His argument is that AI has widened what can be imagined faster than money, labour, and resources allow companies to deliver. Autodesk’s answer is a “connected brain” at the centre of each project, bringing together data and decisions across its industry clouds – Forma, Fusion, and Flow.
Autodesk presents the capacity gain at three levels. Individuals become more productive and creative, companies more profitable and competitive, and project teams able to take on more work with fewer resources. Whether customers receive that economic benefit, or pay Autodesk more to access it, is left unanswered.
A standalone Autodesk Assistant
The main product announcement is the next generation of Autodesk Assistant, a standalone, agent-first experience spanning Autodesk products and projects. It does not replace the Assistant already embedded in individual applications. Users describe what they want to accomplish, and Assistant uses the project context to call the relevant Autodesk tools and, where supported, customer and partner agents
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The aim is to remove the need for users to know which product or tool to open first. Autodesk adds that Assistant does not reduce the expertise required, a reassurance repeated across its AU26 announcements.
Autodesk claims an advantage from specialised Design and Make data, current project information, and more than four decades of industry experience. This, it says, gives Assistant enough understanding of geometry, engineering intent, product information, and project decisions to act on the work rather than merely respond to a prompt.
We cover Autodesk Assistant in more detail here
AEC
For AEC, Anagnost points to the more detailed Forma announcements. Civil 3D becomes the newest Forma Connected Client, AI across Forma and Revit is aimed at exploring more options and cutting repetitive work, and a growing collection of construction agents targets manual review.
The claim is that useful project knowledge sits beyond the model and needs to survive each handover. Forma is the cloud in which Autodesk intends to connect it.
Learn more about Autodesk’s AEC announcements here.
