Scheduled for completion in 2014, the Arts Center is a 3.3 billion USD project. It is expected to become Kaohsiung’s new icon, evolving the reputation of this major port city.

The Arts Center’s artistic design is by Francine Houben, Founding Architect and Creative Director of Mecanoo, and Chinese Architect Luo Xing Hua. The design was inspired by lush banyan trees in Wei-Wu-Ying Park. The Arts Center will be shaped like a sound wave, with a floating appearance that seamlessly integrates with the surrounding landscape. The 141,000 sqm complex will feature 6,000 seats across the concert hall, lyric theater, playhouse, recital hall, public library and orchestra rehearsal room.

Chien Kuo Construction Co. is building the project with the help of Autodesk Building Information Modeling (BIM) solutions. Mark Lee, Vice President of Engineering Regulation Division at Chien Kuo Construction, said, “The competition for civil engineering projects in Taiwan is now of an international caliber. Faced with complex architecture designs like those of the Wei-Wu-Ying Arts Center, traditional 2D diagrams alone are not effective. We’ve adopted Autodesk BIM solutions to digitally simulate 3D models and 4D construction processes. We’re able to better detect collisions in advance, and we can visually communicate the construction schedule. This has helped to provide a new level of collaboration, as well as resource and time-savings.”

Chien Kuo Construction is an Autodesk Subscription customer using the following Autodesk BIM solutions: Autodesk Revit Architecture software, Autodesk Revit MEP software, Autodesk Navisworks software products, Autodesk 3ds Max Design software and Autodesk Design Review software, as well as Autodesk 360 cloud services.

Ryan Li, Project Manager of Chien Kuo Construction’s BIM Division, added, “Using Autodesk BIM solutions enables us to show changes in both 2D and 3D, providing a more accurate reference for construction engineers. As a result, we’ve seen construction time shortened to about a third of what it used to be. Autodesk 360 cloud services also help accelerate our operations. While traditional computers may take an entire day to render a model, we’re doing it in a couple of hours with Autodesk 360.”

Chien Kuo Construction plans to fully implement BIM on all its projects by the end of the year. “BIM is still fairly new in the construction and engineering industry. At present, Chien Kuo Construction has applied the solutions mostly for pre-construction plan management and simulation testing, but 3D modeling should play a critical role in maintenance as well. We aim to actively promote the latter application of BIM,” Mark Lee concluded.

Source:http://www.azobuild.com/news.aspx?newsID=16103

Autodesk has launched a new cloud based version of its 3D engineering software suite that allows designers to collaborate on 3D product designs.

The company said that its Fusion 360 product is the world’s first “comprehensive cloud-based 3D modelling offering” that enables access from any location at any time from web browsers and mobile devices.

The cloud-based software supports an open design environment, allowing designers to incorporate and modify CAD data from virtually any source.

“Data is at the centre of the product design process, and the cloud frees that data to be accessible anywhere, anytime,” said Robert Kross, senior vice president, Design, Lifecycle and Simulation at Autodesk. “Autodesk Fusion 360 will give designers and engineers the first powerful, easy-to-use and complete cloud-based design solution.”

Autodesk Fusion 360 is based on the Autodesk 360 cloud-based platform and adds to Autodesk’s cloud portfolio for manufacturers, which includes Autodesk PLM 360, a cloud-based product lifecycle management offering, and Autodesk Simulation 360, a comprehensive set of simulation tools delivered securely in the cloud.

The tool is geared toward small business professionals and spans pans all aspects of industrial and mechanical design, with “anytime, anywhere access” to data as well as collaborative and social development capabilities.

The tool also includes a new user interface that can be edited depending on the role and the user’s expertise. It provides built-in guidance to speed learning by novice users and the ability to turn off guidance and access more complex functions for design experts.

The software will available on a term basis making it affordable to businesses of all sizes, said the company. It said that this delivery model would provide maximum flexibility and eliminate the high upfront costs of software license purchases, as well as the annual expense of software updates and upgrades.

The cloud-based design tool is expected to be generally available next year.

Source:http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/saas/5070/autodesk-reveals-cloud-based-3d-cad-platform

Autodesk Inc, a Nasdaq-listed company that develops architectural, engineering and entertainment software, is aiming at having between 100 million and 120 million users for its consumer applications (apps) globally in the next couple of years, according to Phil Bernstein, vice-president (building industry strategy and relations).

Autodesk currently has 12 million professional users, and 70 apps for the consumer segment, including games, drawing programmes and very-light-weight engineering applications, with a total user base of 85 million. Over the past 17 years, all winners of the Academy Award for ‘Best Visual Effects in Film’ used Autodesk solutions.

“We have started working on the consumer part of the industry since the last three years with an idea to democratise our technology even further. It is not a business that we are looking to generate a lot of revenues from but to raise awareness about the company. It, however, has grown much faster that we thought,” he told Business Standard on the sidelines of the international conference on green buildings held recently in Hyderabad.

The three-decade-old company, with global revenues of $2.2 billion, and cash and equivalents of $1.6 billion in FY12, had in July 2012 announced its intent to acquire social-video service Socialcam Inc for about $60 million to expand in the consumer markets.

Bernstein said that one of the things that the company was working towards now was to move many of its traditional desktop-based software apps to the cloud and make them more widely available.

“Our portfolio has almost 200 pieces of software. Right now, we are moving some apps (collaboration and analysis tools) onto the cloud. Our long-term strategy is to move everything. This, however, is not a trivial process. It requires redesigning, rethinking and rewriting,” he added.

According to Bernstein, a practicing architect for 20 years prior to joining Autodesk, and also a professor with the Yale School of Architecture, the company currently has 20 products that are used regularly in construction, mostly around understanding drawing, which it calls building information modelling and collaboration.

Stating that the adoption levels of Autodesk’s solutions in the emerging markets, including India, are not as strongly as the company would have liked, he said the company believed that the only solution for the scale of the construction industry that is going to happen in the next 20 years in the emerging markets was to improve construction methodologies.

“The current growth that we are talking about now is about the 12 million houses and the 35 airports that are going to be built in India. My own opinion is that the Indian market is the one that is most likely to be in a leadership position in the rest of the emerging markets,” Bernstein said.

Source:http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/autodesk-eyes-120-million-users-for-consumer-apps/195638/on