The landscape of automotive design is rapidly evolving, driven by the transition to electric architectures and the emergence of agile new competitors. This evolution places immense pressure on design studios to streamline their development processes. At Autodesk, our AI teams are dedicated to assisting these studios in unleashing their creative potential and achieving unprecedented levels of productivity. At this year's Automotive Innovation Forum, we gave a tech preview of Form Explorer, the first AI capability delivered within Alias software. With Form Explorer, automotive concept designers can effortlessly generate and refine 3D concepts within seconds, seamlessly transforming them into functional SubD surfaces. This creates the potential to expedite the creation of proportional exterior designs. This groundbreaking tool harnesses a fusion of AI capabilities exclusive to Autodesk, paving the way for a suite of innovative design interactions within Autodesk's arsenal of tools.

Designing a drone is more than just assembling parts—it’s about bringing together electronics, mechanics, and performance into one seamless system. In this session, we will explore how to create a fully functional mechatronic drone using the all-in-one capabilities of Autodesk Fusion software. You’ll learn how to integrate a complete 3D mechanical assembly, and run simulations to validate both thermal performance and structural integrity. Whether you’re an engineer, product designer, or educator, this session will show you how to take your ideas from circuit to sky with efficiency, precision, and confidence.

For years, manufacturing has focused on the idea of a skills gap—the belief that we need more people trained to perform traditional tasks. But what if that assumption is limiting progress? What if the real challenge is a productivity gap—the growing difference between what skilled people are capable of and what current systems allow them to do? In this session, Al Whatmough, CEO of Toolpath, will explore how artificial intelligence (AI) and automation can shift the role of humans on the shop floor. Instead of replacing people, the opportunity is to empower them, automate the mundane, elevate decision making, and redesign work around human strengths. This session will spark a lively discussion about the future of manufacturing work. What roles will evolve? What skills will truly matter? And how can we build tools, workflows, and cultures that help people do their best work? Join the conversation and help shape what comes next.

If there were ever a “required class” for Fusion at Autodesk University—this would be it. In this interactive session, we’ll demystify assemblies in Fusion by grounding you in the core concepts every user needs to build confidently: top-down vs. bottom-up design, internal vs. external components, and finally clear up the confusion between components and bodies. Then, we’ll take a deep dive into Fusion’s brand-new assembly experiences, a transformative shift in how everyone will interact with Fusion design. You’ll learn how these changes simplify best practices, improve collaboration, boost performance, and make Fusion more intuitive—especially for those transitioning from other CAD tools. Whether you're just starting with assemblies or are a seasoned pro, this session will leave you with a clear mental model and the insight into what’s coming to the product.

This session will explore a practical, classroom-tested workflow for integrating advanced electronics and mechanical design using Autodesk Fusion software. Using a mechatronics case study—a Raspberry Pi Pico-controlled NERF turret—you'll learn to streamline multidisciplinary design, enhance collaboration, and prevent integration challenges. See how Fusion can simplify electronics PCB and mechanical design integration, optimize prototyping, and support real-world educational outcomes. Gain practical methods for improving your electronics-mechanical workflow efficiency.

In this session, we will travel on the journey of how students and staff at NYU created Project Mjolnir: the world’s first open-source, adaptive mountain bike to enable those with disabilities to participate in the sport of adaptive mountain biking. We’ll look at how we help students develop industry skills through experience-based learning, the methodologies we use, and the outcomes we produce with a project that goes beyond the boundaries of the university. The team has built and ridden more than 20 adaptive mountain bikes in different parts of the world, enabling people with disabilities to experience the outdoors in ways they never thought they could. Incorporating design to accommodate off-the-shelf bicycle components, an adaptable frame design, and the ability to self-build the bike, we aim to drive down the cost to a third of current offerings—as well as empower and grow a community of adaptive bike builders through educational experience-based learning.

At Avnet, our mission is to accelerate the adoption and seamless supply of new technologies. We understand the challenges engineers face when bringing innovative designs to life, and we’re here to help. Our latest app is designed to empower engineers by providing direct access to critical resources, streamlining the design process, and optimizing the supply chain. This session will be an engaged demonstration of Autodesk Fusion Electronics and Avnet’s App to solve for the most-challenging obsolescence problems within your electronics supply chain.

Assembly design is on the edge of a transformative leap. This session will introduce a groundbreaking approach that harnesses agentic artificial intelligence (AI) to redefine how we conceive, simulate, and build complex assemblies. We’ll explore early-stage research and prototypes demonstrating how intelligent agents can collaboratively generate geometry, streamline workflows, model dynamic systems, and adapt designs in real time based on performance feedback. If you work with systems design, simulation, or multidisciplinary workflows, this session will challenge your assumptions and offer a glimpse into the future of AI-augmented engineering. Prepare to rethink what’s possible!

Autodesk Fusion software is one of the most powerful design and engineering tools available. It enables industrial designers, mechanical engineers, and product design engineers to design, analyze, and even manufacture ideas quickly and easily. Because of this, the Fusion userbase is growing faster than ever. Thankfully, there are plenty of learning resources to help those new users get started. However, it can be challenging to find advanced content that shows users how to "level up" from an intermediate or even an advanced level. In this technical session, you'll learn the most-effective techniques to take your product design and engineering skills to the next level and beyond. You'll learn how to get the most out of Fusion so you can design the best products possible and get them to market before the competition. If you're interested in becoming a Fusion design and engineering expert, or you simply want to make consumer product design less time-consuming, this class is for you!

Meet "The Brænch"—an organic 3-meter-high steel structure fabricated with advanced 3D printing technology. This class showcases how our cross-disciplinary team used Fusion to unlock novel design workflows and create unique architectural elements that are 3 times cheaper than if they were die cast. We'll demonstrate why architects should consider adding Fusion to their toolbox for generative design, optimization, and FEA simulation to move beyond certain limitations of Rhino/Grasshopper. Through detailed examples, we'll present an integrated workflow improving material efficiency and structural performance in large-scale metal components. The class targets architects first approaching manufacturing, practically demonstrating how to align design with fabrication requirements, opening possibilities for applications such as façade components and structural elements while leveraging additive manufacturing to tackle material transportation, construction cost, and supply chain challenges.

Discover how Autodesk and Microsoft are revolutionizing everyday design and review workflows in Fusion by leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to transform their customers' workflows. Autodesk has become a frontier firm by adopting this innovative, best-in-class AI technology, setting new standards in the industry. Stephen Hooper, VP of Design & Manufacturing Product Development at Autodesk, and Kathleen Mitford, Corporate Vice President, Global Industry Product Marketing at Microsoft, will share how their teams are: - Automating time-consuming design tasks to reduce manual effort, allowing teams to focus on higher-value work. - Simplifying product reviews to speed up collaboration and approvals. - Enabling teams to tell stronger stories through clearer, more compelling outputs. This interactive session also provides attendees the opportunity to ask Stephen and Kathleen questions about their pioneering partnership and the AI-enabled solutions they’re bringing to market.

University College London at Here East, a new manufacturing center in east London opened in 2018, hosts a new master’s degree in design for manufacture uniquely within a school of architecture. Equipped with industrial robots, computer numerical control (CNC) milling and turning machines for fabrication and structural frames, large-scale metrology, and climate chambers for testing, UCL at Here East strives to cultivate an environment with students at the interface between a design studio and the point of industrial production. How might the well-established methods for manufacturing in automotive and aerospace be used in construction? This session will present an educator’s approach of “model-make-measure,” showing how the course connects students with the properties of materials used to construct buildings and the fabrication processes these materials undergo existing as nominal digital design intent. Examples will show how this approach has suggested novel design outcomes and ways of working, offering skills transferrable to the construction industry.

Fusion Lifecycle software can be deployed faster than any other PLM (product lifecycle management) tool on the market. This was tested for a company that wanted to take its ventilator project to production in the shortest time possible due to the COVID-19 ventilator shortage. A prototype of the ventilator was completed using Fusion 360 software. Now it is time to take it into mass production using Items and BOMs, ECO, and NPI Workspace of Fusion Lifecycle.

This class will try to give an introduction to the new features within Fusion 360 software regarding electronics cooling simulation. A real model can be simplified in Fusion 360, and then taken through the whole workflow of setting it up, running simulations, and analyzing results. The class will also capitalize on the other capabilities from Fusion 360, to combine the design optimization with Fusion Mechanical simulation and Generative Design in Fusion 360.

In this class, we’ll cover four topics of automotive manufacturing: mold simulation and CAM, factory planning, automated manufacturing, and emerging design and manufacturing technology. We’ll begin with the challenges that automotive tooling companies face, and how the use of new technology and increased machine utilization can address the needs of more-complex and accurate tooling. From there we’ll move to factory planning and ways in which to address the challenges that drive change in manufacturing facilities; the problems that arise because of change; and the use of a unified digital model to manage this. We’ll then look at how manufacturing productivity can be increased using intelligent automation, and how it can improve consistency and component reliability. And we’ll finish discussing the use of emerging technology like generative design and additive and hybrid manufacturing, as manufacturers look to improve performance and efficiency of vehicles to meet sustainability and regulatory requirements.

Last year we did a class (“How to Use Fusion 360 and Inventor for Effective Designs”) where we linked Fusion 360 files with Inventor using Desktop Connector. The most requested addition to that was to link those files into Vault software, so this year we’ll go through some of the different configurations for how we can load and manage these Fusion 360 files in Vault. Some of the things we will look at include creating the connection and adding the files, as well as managing the files; and we’ll also discuss version and revisions of the files in Vault.

Choosing which software tool to use isn't always easy. Understanding which tool is best for the job is critical when developing new designs. Additionally, not understanding how tools work together can cause unnecessary rework, project delays, and unsatisfactory design performance. This instructional demonstration will help you understand how Inventor software, Fusion 360 software, and AutoCAD software work as independent design tools as well as in connected workflows.

Drawing templates, when used to create drawings in Fusion 360 software, can both accelerate the time it takes to complete your mechanical engineering documentation, and ensure your drawings consistently represent your business and project standards. We will start by creating a new title block, with fields that can be automatically populated with information from the design, project, and your profile. We will add this to a new template, then walk through other options for customizing the template for your specific office and business needs. We will then show the power of "placeholder" elements in your template, and demonstrate how they can help remove much of the tedium of creating a new drawing from scratch.

Fusion 360 software is a cloud-powered CAD, CAM, and CAE tool, and it is the primary software for the instruction of degree apprentices at the AMRC Training Centre, part of the University of Sheffield. With rising student numbers, it was becoming increasingly difficult to provide detailed and timely feedback to students as they learned the basics of Fusion 360. In this session, Joe Palmer will present a bespoke feedback tool that has been coded in Python and implemented using the Fusion 360 API. This tool provides instantaneous feedback to students about the quality of their CAD models by assessing key model metrics. These metrics enable a complete picture of model quality to be determined by the script without any input from course tutors. This has empowered tutors to spend more time on valuable activities within the classroom. We will discuss a background of the Fusion 360 API, the tool's development process, and details of the scoring algorithm. We will also present a road map for future development.

In this class, we'll use the case study of designing a lab power supply. This is a common tool in electronics and by working through its design, we'll highlight how the electronics workspace, e-cooling simulation, and mechanical modeling can all be capitalized on to simplify and expedite the production of this product. As we go through the case study, we'll clearly demonstrate the benefits of having all of these tools in one application—namely, faster product development with fewer rework cycles.