Autodesk, Inc. (ADSK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the webinar Connect Design and make with Autodesk Informed Design. This event is brought to you by Engineering News Record and sponsored by Autodesk. I'm Adam Palant, Special Sections Manager at ENR and your moderator for today's webinar. Thank you for joining us. Now as the global population grows, so does demand for buildings, yet our current construction methods are unsustainable and unscalable, often leading us in the dark about whether our design are manufacturable. This is where Autodesk Informed Design -- I apologize, just lost it. Autodesk Informed Design steps in offering a solution that connects design and make from day 1. Today, we're excited to welcome an accomplished product manager with over 22 years of experience in the industry, Ryan McMahon. Ryan currently serves as General Manager for Autodesk to Informed Design solution and applies his extensive experience and knowledge to play a pivotal role in developing and launching the software. Now I'll be joining our presenter later in the webinar to answer any of your questions that comes in through this event. So don't forget to submit them in the Q&A section of the webinar console. And now I'm happy to hand things over to Ryan McMahon to kick off today's presentation. All yours, Ryan.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon, wherever you are. Thanks for making some time to learn about Autodesk and Informed Design today. All right. So at Autodesk, we believe the future of the AEC industry is industrialized. The industry will manufacture more of what goes into our buildings, and it will learn to take advantage of scale and improved productivity. And these changes will be as impactful as the industrial revolution. Let's start today by talking about the pressures that will bring about these particular changes. Globally, there's significant unmet demand for buildings. Currently, there's about -- there's a shortage of affordable housing and an accompanying global housing crisis. Population is expected to be $10 billion by 2050, and we'll need to build 96,000 buildings a day to meet this demand. And currently, means and methods generate high levels of waste and don't support sustainability. 35% of building project materials end up in a landfill and buildings are responsible for 40% of global CO2 emissions. And there's increasing pressure to take advantage on sustainability goals. And lastly, there are significant issues retaining and attracting talent in the workforce. The industry's workforce is aging in near retirement, and we risk losing the knowledge required to make our buildings. Attracting new talent has proven very difficult, and we need to upskill the new talent to train them for the skills of the future. Job evolution is accelerating requiring changes in the way that we work. In short, the way that we build -- design and build today is neither scalable nor sustainable. Autodesk believes the future of the building industry is industrialized. The only way that we will change the industry is by embracing repeatability and reuse. To become more efficient, we will need to manufacture building components and take advantage of scale, optimize processes, reduce waste and improve building quality and more. This implies that we are productizing building components and systems. Defining going products will include information on their allowable variation and full manufacturing detail. Products will be reused across many building projects. And lastly, architects will use more and more building products during the design process because they are known valid and increase certainty and free up more time to focus on project elements that are truly custom. Regardless of the tools used, this is the only pattern that improves productivity, reduces waste and improves quality and sustainability. So productization fundamentally transforms project certainty. We have the most opportunity to impact project results early in the project. But we have the least amount of information about these particular process -- or at this point in time, traditional workflows are missing detailed information early in the process, creating opportunities for errors, increasing risk and resulting in low certainty. With Informed Design and industrialized construction, we can flip this curve on its access. Design choices made using products yield known manufacturable results and have geometrically accurate representations within a project. This dramatically increases certainty early in the process and reduces overall project risk. The challenge of building design is -- there are also many challenges with the process of build -- of designing buildings. Today, many buildings start from scratch with little to no reuse across the projects. Architects are forced to make design choices without knowledge of whether a component can be made nor what it might cost. This isn't because they don't value this information. It's because architects don't have access to information required to make better decisions. We know that architects would like to know that their design choices are both valid and manufacturable, and this is the gap that Informed Design is addressing. The Informed Design process improves certainty and productization is the key concept that makes this possible. Fabricators and subcontractors will define their products, including all the ways they can be varied but remain manufacturable. These products are then published so that architects can discover and use them during design. Any design choices are valid and known manufacturable and this delivers value across the workflow, such as reducing risk, preventing errors, accelerating processes and improving quality. And with this change, there's a new role to define the building products. Someone needs to define the components that can be fabricated and all their allowable variation. This is informed by the materials, processes, equipment and skills the company has to ensure that choices are manufacturable. In manufacturing, this role would be called a product engineer, but there's no standard name in AEC today. This role could be performed by product detailers, and we've seen product manager and program manager used as titles. This will settle out into a defined role and title as the industry grows over time. And if you're working in this way, you'll benefit from using manufacturing capabilities like mechanical CAD, product data management, product life cycle management, process modeling and factory design. Today, we are introducing Autodesk Informed Design. This is a new solution that helps our customers design and make buildings with certainty to deliver faster with higher quality and reduced waste. In short, Informed Design unlocks industrialized construction for our customers. At its core, Informed Design connects Autodesk building design and manufacturing capabilities. The manufacturing level of detail is defined in Inventor and used to create all variations of a building component that can be placed into a Revit project. This allows using the right tool to be used for each activity. Manufacturing details are captured using Inventor and Revit is used to place lightweight instances of those products into a building project. Now we'll show you how the Informed Design Solution connects the workflow for our customers. As we showed before, productization unlocks this workflow. We start by defining and publishing products using mechanical CAD tools. And next, an architect discovers and customizes these products for their building projects. Lastly, we show how you can automatically create project documentation such as shop drawings, bills of materials and more. We'll show you the detailed workflow in the next few slides. Informed design delivers this connected workflow. Here's how we make that happen. A product engineer uses Autodesk Inventor to fine building products to define building product assemblies and includes the rules or product definition. They start by creating a parametric model for their component. Next, they define any BIM data related to this component so that it can be included later. Then they author the rules that define the extent of the product and any available options. Lastly, they published this product to ACC docs so that it can be discovered by an architect. Now we'll play a short video. [Presentation]

Product engineer using Inventor can author and publish a building product. Products are modeled in Inventor, including logic for all the allowable variations, available materials, drawings and more. Publishing products using Informed design is the first step in the workflow and makes them discoverable for other users. The model is uploaded and the user selects the parameters to be available for customization. Next, they define input constraints or rules needed for each parameter. Constraints can be simple min and max. They can include increments or even advanced logic between related parameters. This process also creates an input form that enforces the input rules, which you can see on the right. This is the form that architects will use for this product when they customize it and place unique instances in their building project. The author can then specify what output information and documents can be created for this product. For this product, we are selecting a low level of detail Revit representation, fabrication drawings, bills of materials and a neutral CAD output. The last part of publishing is selecting the project and folder in ACC to store the template. Architect using Revit discovers and customizes products to place them in a building project. First, they navigate to the product catalog in ACC docs. They customize the product to suit their particular needs and then place a unique Revit family into their building project based on the Inventor building product template. This is repeated for all products needed for a building project. The building project is then shared using the design and make platform. Now we'll show video showing this workflow. [Presentation]

Next, we'll show how an architect using Revit can discover, customized and place a product into their building project. Using the Informed Design add-in, the architect navigates to the ACC project and folder that includes the desired product template. Selecting this item, opens a form to view and customize the product within the bounds of the defined constraints. You can see that the form enforces the rules defined in Inventor. Once customization is complete, Informed Design creates a Revit family for that unique instance from the original Inventor product template. This Revit family is placed in the building project. These can also be edited in place should they need further adjustment. The last portion of the workflow is the production engineer automatically creating building project documentation or outputs for the products they will manufacture. They open the building project that was shared with them and select the products that they are responsible for fabricating from the building model. Next, they generate outputs for the building project, which will be written back to the ACC docs tenant they are connected to. And then they can begin fabrication. Here's the last video. [Presentation]

Production engineer can create product documentation automatically from the building project file. The building project file is opened using the Informed Design application. This browser-based application allows the user to find and inspect building product instances placed into a project. Creating documents is as easy as selecting the product instances and choosing the desired types from the available outputs and picking the ACC project and folder to write them to. Informed Design sends a list of the product instances and their parent template to the design and make platform to compute results. Data for each product instance is written to a folder for ease of discovery. Here's a detailed bill of materials for one instance of our balcony. And next, we'll show a shop drawing required for manufacturing or fabrication. The last item we will show is a CAD neutral format. The video show how Informed Design delivers a connected workflow using Autodesk's Informed Design or using Autodesk design to make platform. A product engineer defines a product template and publishes it to the platform. And architect and Revit can discover the product templates and create unique instances to include in their project. The building project is written back to the platform and a production engineer using a browser-based application can automatically create documentation required for fabrication. And this is how Informed Design helps our customers design and make with certainty. As I stated previously, the future of AEC is industrialized. The first step is adoption and productization for building components. This allows the industry to begin to take advantage of scale, optimize processes, reduce waste and improve sustainability. We are already seeing many customers adopt this methodology. Autodesk Informed Design is the next step allowing customers to bring manufacturing information to the beginning of the design process and enabling designing with guardrails. The future will include robust tools to assist the design process and help explore building design options to better identify products and to verify design choices. These capabilities are the path to transforming the industry. Green NODE Canopy is a Seattle-based company, tackling the housing environmental crisis. They design their buildings using predefined kit of parts to design quickly, accurately and to know their designs are valid. Ben and Abby partnered to use an early access version of Informed Design for their project delivery processes. We've shared a link to the full video, but you can see their sentiment about the value of Informed Design here. Ben shared that "designing with constraints didn't curb his creativity, instead providing choices that he knew would work." And Abby shared that "when our architecture team knows their choices are manufacturable and fit into the building, it saves her time and improves quality of her projects." And what's great about this feedback is that it proves the value of connecting design and make to inform the building design process and improve certainty. Informed Design delivers real value to our customers. It helps them design building projects with certainty, yielding design choices that are known valid that reduce project risk. Using building projects ensures that all requested components are manufacturable to start with and allows fabricators to optimize their processes, reduce waste and improve quality. And this method accelerates processes. Products have been pre-engineered, automation generates required documentation and there are significantly fewer errors. Autodesk believes IC is critical to changing AEC. We're excited to provide capabilities that help our customers adopt these methods and Informed Design advances these capabilities pretty dramatically by helping customers deliver project faster with improved quality and with lower waste. And now I'll hand it back to Adam for questions.

I apologize, yes. Thank you, Ryan. That was a great presentation. [Operator Instructions] So let's get to our first question. And I'll start with one. Ryan, how does Autodesk Informed Design benefit manufacturers?

There's actually a ton of benefits to manufacturers. One is the way that the industry works today, they wind up engineering a product for each project they're engaged with. And by defining a product that will be used across many different projects, they can amortize that investment and do a better job and increase overall quality for what they're making to serve all of its projects. It also helps them better understand what they're going to make, what their processes are. It helps them reduce waste. And it helps them generally improve margins, too, if you are -- have better quality and less waste. And are delivering across many projects that generally helps them operate a better business as well.

Outstanding. Here's a good one that came in. If you create a configuration, is it created once in docs? Or is it created multiple times based from the customers' project?

Very insightful question. The product authoring component in Inventor is intended to be a template that can generate multiple different instances that are required for the particular project. What I mean by that is I can generate any variation and create a Revit family instance and put it into a to a building project. When you put that in the building project, it has a link to the source template, that can create anything. And the customization that was used so that you can generate all your additional information from that automatically. So in this way, the unique instances are captured and associated with the building project, but the sorts template used to create everything persists and is always available.

Excellent. So after configuration in Revit, does the Inventor model -- the configuration Revit -- does the Inventor -- I'm sorry, things keep popping around. I'm going skip that one and I can get back. To what extent is a component for example of Balcony predesign, for example, what if the architect wants a single not paired corner post?

So the intent is to have the product predefined. We would like the supplier to say, hey, I make balconies, they look like this. If an architect wants a balcony with different features than the product they selected, we would encourage the fabricator to author 2 different kinds of products that support the architect's needs. If the fabricator currently doesn't make a product that is reflected by the architect's request, they can engage the architect and to find a product going forward that would get reduced or they can use traditional needs and methods to deliver balconies of that type.

Excellent. So what parts of the current design and building process does this displace?

Actually, I don't think it displaces anything, it might reorganize things a little bit. In the traditional process, we don't get to detailing until after all the design decisions are made and just before we're getting ready to do bidding or quoting or fabrication. By defining a product first and using that to define the process -- the products that go into early on, you can -- you don't have to do the detailing later. It's been implemented in advance and because you can use that template to generate artifacts automatically. It accelerates that part of the process. So if it -- we don't really think it displaces anything, but it probably makes that detailing process significantly faster and more reliable in its results.

Excellent. Another one came in. If this documentation is created on the fly, who is responsible for the creative documentation? Autodesk or the manufacturer that supplies the template?

The manufacturer is responsible for the template. So they author the rules, and they are responsible for that representation of what they know how to make. When we take that template and create a bill of materials or shop drawing, we write it back into the building project in ACC. So from that point on, that record -- the artifacts that we created are captured with that particular project. And so it is managed by the customer on ACC docs at that point.

Here's one, how the product revisions dealt with -- I think that's the one [indiscernible] is that one? [indiscernible] No sorry, you guys do a great job.

Yes. I got [indiscernible] Maybe I started my project and the fabricator published a Rev A, and I do my design work with it. I put a bunch of balconies in the project that are Rev A and then the fabricator says, Oh, no, we want Rev B or republish Rev B and make it available. So within Revit, we will highlight that a new version is available and show you all of the elements in the building project that are using that particular template and tell you that something new is available. So it's up to you to choose, hey, am I far enough along in the project that I'm committed to Rev A or am I early enough that I have the opportunity to switch to Rev B and make sure that, that works for my particular design. So we're aware that different versions will be released over time and provide the functionality for the architect to be, one, notify that is available, two, make a choice about whether or not they want to incorporate that into their design.

Excellent. Thanks. And so -- are products discoverable in a library or do models need to be requested directly from the manufacturer?

Great question. Our initial instance of Autodesk Informed Design works on ACC and so we're operating in the context of a single ACC tenant. So you publish your templates into that tenant project and a folder. And then as long as the architect has access there, they can discover those particular templates from that folder. In the near term, we're looking at how do we make those templates publicly discoverable. And we're exploring the options for how we would make that discoverable. So an architect could say, Hey, show me all the manufacturers of this stairwell, this balcony, this awning, this bathroom pod and incorporate or explore many different options for their particular project. We think there's a bunch of ways to change the way the industry works by making that catalog items publicly discoverable.

That is excellent. Do we know which manufacturer author this right now?

We are seeing -- one, we launched on the seventh, so we're less than 2 weeks into it. So we're looking for projects. We're looking for customers that are working in a vertically integrated manner. We did -- we ran a beta program for the better part of last year, and we probably had 43 different companies go through this exercising all portions of the solution. We don't currently have anybody who is making their products publicly discoverable due to the nature of our solution today, but we'll get there pretty quickly.

A good one here. This approach seems to advocate product specialization very early in the process. So how does this work during an open bid cycle?

So we're looking at the different delivery methodologies -- project delivery methodologies. And one of the things that we're exploring is can and an architect put stairs or walls or something in their project and then identify by multiple suppliers and map their product to those suppliers to see if they resolve that can they make and engage that way. So we think that there's an opportunity to engage that as a project delivery methodology. But in order to do that, we do need this publicly discoverable catalog component that we just talked about, and then we probably need a way to say, "Hey, look, there's a Revit family in the building project, let's map it to the product template by supplier, A, B and C, and then test them to see if they were." That is a capability that we are working on as a team actively today.

Outstanding. So can we -- can you compare and contrast Informed Design capabilities for commercial versus residential construction?

What's interesting, we've talked to hundreds of companies over the past several years. And we've been looking for does this lend itself to one industry or one segment of a class of building versus another and we find that the pattern is pretty generalized and it works pretty much across the board. So the issue becomes that the parties involved needed to find what are the components that they want to apply productization to and then what are the projects that they are contributing them to. As long as you can productize the methodology seems to apply pretty generally across the industry.

How many manufacturers have modeled their products in the Informed -- sorry, just jumped on me again. I said these questions keep coming in. I can't even keep up with them. Let me try and find that question again. Was a good one. How many manufacturers have modeled their products in Informed Design so far?

Our early numbers are on the order of somewhere north of 100. I mean we're less than 2 weeks into it. We're already seeing a lot of people jump on and see what's possible. There's a lot of early interest.

That's great, so actually, I wonder how can customers access Autodesk Informed Design?

Great question. Informed Design is an entitlement and it's part of the AEC collection, and it's part of the product design and manufacturing collection. As you saw in the videos, you are using Inventor and we create an add-in that you use with an Inventor for publishing. And we have an add-in for Revit that we use for customizing and placing and then all of our project documentation -- sorry, project data lives on ACC docs. So you need to have docs and you need to have one of the collections to have access to Autodesk Informed Design.

Nice, nice. Is there an option to add metadata from the manufacturer that will be discoverable in Revit model?

I'm not sure, I understand the question -- an option to add...

Well I think they're saying to carbon data, NRM data and descriptions.

Well, so we are writing -- we're trying to format the data so that it's extensible and you can add whatever data you want. In Inventor, you could specify an additional parameter that you want to use for downstream processes. So we're imagining that. But we're also looking at if you can generate a bill of materials, you know all the materials that go -- that are associated with any customized version of that product. Can you then know what the cost of those materials are if you know what the materials are, can you then begin to compute carbon or other data from it as well. These are extensions of our product that we will -- we've -- we think that there's a ton of value to them, and we want to build them, but we need to prove that the general pattern works first before we start incorporating that data into the overall workflow. But super important to be able to make that extensible and to capture that additional data to drive our workflows.

So this one may be a little specific. How does IND relate to structural steel and steel detailing?

We work pretty closely with both of those teams within the company here. And our general feeling is that they have built pretty verticalized solutions to help our customers solve their problems, and we're exploring how we could work with them, how could they use those particular tools to author a product to make it available for their parts of the process. And then what is the role of the -- creating the automated documentation downstream. We need to dig in a little bit more with those teams to flesh out what a more complete solution looks like. But we've been engaged with them since the very beginning to make sure that we're working on something that's generalizable.

Here's a good one. After configuration rather, does the Inventor model, IPT or IAM also come back to engineer for fabrication output?

If you want it. You can specify that as one of the outputs that you would like to create automatically. And then whatever you customize it will generate that specific IPT or IAM for your use downstream.

Nice. How complex can the configuration rules be structured. If there are any -- else rules or cascading IT rules?

The capabilities we built, our visual rules on is an open source project called Blockly from Google, and Autodesk has employed that -- those capabilities and other products here at Autodesk to make it easy to write that logic without needing to write any software to do it. It's really very, very powerful. There's a ton of different logic and conditions that can be applied. We have not found a case that could not be represented by the logic available in Blockly to describe the rules for particular product.

Okay. Another one. Could a supplier use product designs that were created by other suppliers and are available publicly on Autodesk's platform?

I don't see why not. They would need to have -- be able to publish that particular product as an Inventor file today and then describe the rules that you want to -- as the constraints to that particular product. But it existed somewhere else and you wanted to reuse it in this particular workflow. There's no material reason why you wouldn't be able to do it. So that also kind of begs the question of what about other mechanical CAD tools authoring and participating in this ecosystem. We think that there's a broad range of tools that we could integrate too, so it's not just Inventor, it might be Fusion. It might be SolidWorks, it might be something else going forward because we're trying to really unlock the workflow and so we are exploring how can we expand that productization authoring environment to include more sources for the product templates.

Very nice. Another good one. How do I know what parameters or metadata to pass along so that the model gets into the correct Revit category or correct Revit parameter?

So in the -- we just showed it briefly in the very first video. There is an add-in in Inventor for specifying the Revit data that you want to associate with your Inventor -- with your Inventor model. And it includes the categories and families and a whole bunch of other things, coordinate systems, void bodies, we're working towards a whole bunch of other capabilities that are commonly missing when you export Revit data -- when you export Revit data from Inventor. So we're -- we are improving that pretty dramatically.

Can you use model states in Inventor and have those as options within Revit?

We don't use them as options within Revit. What we wind up doing is you will define the model state that is effectively an LOD 200 in Inventor. And that model state is used to create the lighter weight representation that we put in your Revit project. You clearly don't want to include all of your fabrication level of detail in your Revit project for 2 reasons. One is, it makes your Revit project significantly heavier weight data-wise and makes them unwieldy. The other is it's your intellectual property, and you want to protect it. So by using model states to define a lower level of detailed representation to drop in Inventor, we wind up serving both of those particular needs.

Excellent, excellent. Is there a fee for the authored artifacts?

Not today. Not today. Some of these are really smart out there. The business model will be that we do want to charge for the outputs. We don't want to charge anybody to author product. And we don't want to charge anybody to discover, customize and place our product into their building project because those create a disincentive for using this particular methodology. However, when the project is mature enough and you're ready to take the next steps with it, we think that it's rational to say, hey, if we're making manual detailing go away, where drawing might take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to create you're paying that person -- I don't know, $40 an hour. If we can deliver that to you for a very low cost and in 30 seconds, we think that we can save a lot of money. So ultimately, we will have -- we will charge a token rate for outputs. We are still in the process of determining what that token rate would be, but we won't turn on any charge for at least a year.

Outstanding. Are you working with manufacturers like BlueScope who can afford to provide R&D versus smaller manufacturers?

We are working with whomever is interested at this point. So we've worked with some very, very large companies in EMEA, and we work with some small companies. Green NODE Canopy is smaller based out in Seattle and everything in between. I think there's an incentive in each one of these companies understands that the efficiencies that they gain through productization pay back in space for their business, the ROI on it is very, very strong.

Wonderful. On materials, do materials also like glass go in to make like calculation of Revit?

I don't know the specific details on that. I know when I've spoken with the team, the materials were important to come across. And I believe -- I mean I know it was spec in at one point, I just don't -- I don't recall if that was actually delivered with the initial implementation.

Can rules be added in that deal with the interfaces between the product and adjacent structure. For example, a balcony connection will be different depending on whether it is connection to a steel or concrete frame?

A very insightful question. The certain next phase in complexity where this wholesale system is the -- interconnects between disparate systems or adjacent systems. That's a really tough nut to crack. The way that we are suggesting -- addressing that kind of challenge today is if the balcony attaches to different kinds of structures that be an option that's part of the balcony you would specify what you're meeting to and you would adjust the mounting system accordingly, but you would need to know what you're mounting it to, to make that particular. So in that way, you need to know something about the building, but they didn't need to know something about the product and you can make the appropriate product selections there. At some point in the future, we want the connectors between products and adjacent products to be intelligent to say, if I'm connecting to this type of thing that, that data can be fed back into the product models who would automatically know, oh, I'm connecting to this. Let me change my attributes accordingly.

I'm curious what role does the general contractor play in the industrialized construction process?

We think the role is the same. They're still responsible for coordination, getting everybody together, execution, delivery on that. We think that we provide them the opportunity for it to have better visibility into the overall projects and what's going on. The better their data is that they have, the easier it is for them to manage and manage risk. The more things that you put in a project that are certain, the things that are adjacent to them also increased uncertainty because you have one thing that is known good and the thing on the other side might not be good, but you only have to make one adjustment rather than both sides adjusting and maybe not well synchronized. So we think the role is the same. We just think that we're giving them a pretty powerful tool to improve their efficiencies on.

How does all -- I just lost another one. Are we going to -- sorry, there are so many questions coming -- how does Autodesk -- I got a lot to -- Informed Design fit into Forma and Autodesk design and make platform.

Great question. As we are pushing -- delivering Forma, one of the major intents of Forma is to get to outcome-based design. You're trying to achieve these particular objectives and to deliver tools that help you get to those objectives faster, more efficiently. Informed Design complements that pretty dramatically because imagine in Forma, I have a conceptual building and I have spaces in it. What if I could say, hey, in this particular space, that's a one-bedroom apartment. I need a utility wall, I need a kitchen, I need a bathroom, and I need a bedroom and you can automatically fit those components into that particular space. That's one way that it could support Forma. It also, given that we can get to the details, get to materials and potentially carbon and other things, that information could get surfaced early on in the design process. So if you're solving -- if your outcome is to solve for cost and or carbon, we can provide some of the information back that helps drive that solution early on. So we think that it complements Forma. At some point, it may become an embedded capability within Forma that it's just part of how Forma gets delivered.

Will Autodesk Informed Design be available globally?

I think that we are -- our commercial launch is in all the regions that support -- that have ACC and that support Flex given that it's a token-based business model. We're not charging anything for it, but you have to have some tokens available. So that's kind of the boundaries that we have for where we can make it available. And I think that we're looking at how do we expand that over time. Part of that is what's available in the Autodesk business systems, but we're looking at how we can expand the breadth of delivery as aggressively as possible.

Will there be an existing Inventor library that we can use as basis in the meantime while we create our own?

I think that we have some sample content just to kind of give you an idea of what complexity looks like and what are some of the rules. But our intent is not to develop a robust set of building products that are available. We want to create examples that are relatable to people and the things that they are commonly making, but they are really intended as really just a reference, but not as a -- we certainly wouldn't want anybody designing with them.

Declare something up because it came in twice as a question. Is this a AI or something similar?

This is not AI. That's a great question. I think that this becomes a very interesting complement to AI. AI, when we talk about AI, we talk about synthetic creativity, synthetic solutions. And we are not synthetic at all because someone is defining what a product is and it's allowable variations. What we think that's interesting is, can AI combine products, could AI look at the LEGO set and say, "hey, I know how to make this kind of building or that kind of building" based on the components available to it. We think that is a very powerful way to explore how AI can leverage these particular capabilities. But no, we are not AI, but we think that there is a ton of value to tie on to it. The other part that's interesting is when AI generates a particular solution for a building, how do you know that it's good. If you can map the building that was designed with products that are known good from a supplier, now you have the opportunity to verify or validate that design to make sure that it is good or not, and that's another way that we think that we make AI more trustworthy.

Okay. So basically, what is the unique or different about Autodesk Informed Design compared to others in the market?

Great question. We don't really see anything like us out in the marketplace. I know that sounds kind of weird. We see customers that have identified this workflow and built their own solutions. Quite frankly, they got tired of waiting for the market to build commercial available solutions for them to use. So they built their own and it works for their particular types of buildings. It works for their particular supply chain and their processes. And that's pretty significant technical lift and capital expense to get there. What we're trying to do is make that more available for everybody else. And the thing that we do that is unique that makes it difficult to replicate is because we have capabilities, risk capabilities in both AEC and manufacturing and connecting these together in a novel way, that's the thing that we think is pretty unique in the ecosystem that it would be difficult to find a commercially available competitive solution.

Somebody is going back to something you said earlier. Are you saying that you make LEGO blocks and use them?

It's a metaphor, right? We see those volumetric modules and they're stacking. They look like LEGO blocks. The LEGO is a metaphor for what is the -- what are the kits -- what are the products that you want to make to go into a building. My LEGOs might include a bathroom pod, a utility wall, stairs, interior walls, facade system. And that's the LEGO kit that I choose to work with for this particular building. What we're making it possible for people to say, "Hey, I'm making a brick that will be used in the kit by somebody else."

I like that. That at least that clears that up. It looks like that was the end of our questions time. Please, everybody join me once again, thanking Ryan McMahon as well as today's sponsor Autodesk. And if you have any additional questions or comments, you didn't ask yet, please don't hesitate to click the e-mail us button on your console, and we will share them with our presenters so they can respond you directly. If you didn't have a chance to fill out earlier, you will be redirected shortly to the post-event survey. We look forward to hearing you how to make our programs work better for you. Please visit enr.com/webinar for the archive of this presentation to share with your colleagues as well as information about our upcoming events. Thanks again for trusting us for your time. Have a great day.