Unlock the magic of creative design! It’s an ever-evolving journey where everything can transform from week to week. And embracing change is what makes this process so captivating. In such a dynamic landscape, keeping up with design evolution can be a thrilling challenge. Depending on the design phase, the tools we use to communicate our vision shift dramatically—from sketches and images in the early stages to 3D content, renderings, real-time VR experiences, and mesmerizing movies as the design matures. Capturing the decisions made, the requests for changes, and the actions taken is critical for the streamlining of this process. Join this class to discover the ultimate way to integrate Autodesk automotive products and learn how customizations can enhance the collection and sharing of design review feedback, all while meticulously tracking project evolution and history. Get ready to revolutionize your design workflow!

In the automotive design space, how do we get students engaged with Autodesk tools? How do we make them aware of all the wonderful careers available within that space? That was the original idea behind our first ever design contest, "The Power of Brand.” Over four months, students showcased their creativity by creating a new vehicle inspired by a nonautomotive brand. Autodesk’s Alias and VRED software brought their design proposals to life. This lecture will recap the contest’s journey as well as the students' insights into their use of those tools—tools commonly used by automotive design studios around the world. Join us for a discussion on education, skill development, and the future of automotive design careers.

Discover the latest advancements in Autodesk ALIAS and VRED 2026 that are set to transform your design and visualization workflows. This session will delve into the new features, with a particular focus on Live Referencing—a groundbreaking functionality that seamlessly connects ALIAS and VRED, enabling better collaboration across disciplines and departments. Live Referencing allows real-time updates and synchronization between ALIAS and VRED, ensuring that any changes made in ALIAS are instantly reflected in VRED. This dynamic interaction facilitates a more efficient design process, and reduces communication barriers, leading to quicker iterations and decision-making. By fostering seamless collaboration between designers, engineers, and visual artists, Live Referencing enhances consistency across departments, minimizes errors, and accelerates project completion.

This product briefing will showcase the latest advances in the Dynamo ecosystem, and dive into our new North Star and future vision that’s shaping where we head next. Come learn from Autodesk’s Dynamo product managers about where they’ve been focusing their efforts. This briefing will explore the growth and improvements in Dynamo this year, diving deeply into what has changed and why it matters. We’ll touch upon impactful customer use cases and shed light on Dynamo’s new direction. By strengthening the base, building a cloud-native future, and embracing AI, Dynamo will transform computational design. All these changes seek to dramatically shift the ability for you to have more impact with Dynamo, supercharging your workflows today and tomorrow. Come join us and explore our vision for the future of Dynamo and the steps we’ve both taken and will take to make it a reality.

In the spring of 2024, the legendary Jeff Smith connected Associate Professor Bush from Auburn University with an OEM partner to explore what it would look like to team a group of graduate industrial design students with a seasoned digital vehicle designer. Through this interaction emerged a five-week section in Alias AutoStudio software and a five-week section in VRED software, using the Auburn instructor's background in surface modeling with the OEM partner's background in SubD and mesh modeling. This proposal compares the CAD instruction methodology that has been implemented at Auburn University for the past three years with the experimental, collaborative approach with the OEM. We will highlight the changes in student outcomes, as well as the implications of knowing SubD/hybrid modeling moving into the design profession.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into design and engineering is revolutionizing the development process by accelerating development cycles. AI driven processes empower designers and engineers to create, evaluate, and optimize products with unparalleled efficiency: Better products faster.

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.

In this talk, we'll explore the transformative potential of generative AI (GenAI) in streamlining conceptual design processes. Our one-year collaborative journey with Kia Motors led to the development of a GenAI wheel concept design tool that bridges design inspiration to creation. Join the talk to discover how GenAI accompanies designers from establishing design directions to exploring design options, facilitating intuitive design workflows. Learn how to harness GenAI's capabilities to interpret designers' inspirations, generating limitless variants efficiently. We'll also discuss how we integrated design constraints into GenAI, providing designers with greater control. Join the conversation and explore the challenges and opportunities for GenAI to streamline your design workflows.

Discover how to implement Dynamo Player scripts within Alias software for automotive and industrial design, illustrated through examples like a subdivision car configurator. We'll explore the advantages of real-time slider adjustments that enhance creative flexibility and support precise, proportional modeling based on dimensional constraints. The session will also explore how to enable optional curve input while maintaining functional subdivision topology and providing instant annotational feedback directly in the viewport. Learn how to make beginner-friendly scripts that are ready for immediate use, yet adaptable enough to support your design intent. You will see how to use external spreadsheets as preset files to easily customize inputs.

This year—2024—was a significant year for VRED software, marked by numerous enhancements and new features. We started with a comprehensive UI redesign, reflecting Autodesk's guidelines for a modern, intuitive experience. And we introduced improvements, such as multiselection property editing and searchable preferences, boosting speed and efficiency. We launched many new features, balancing technical precision and artistic freedom, providing a platform for visually compelling and accurate designs. In line with industry advancements, VRED integrated open standards, including IFC, USD for data exchange, and MaterialX and MDL for seamless material exchange across applications. VRED also introduced OpenVDB for volumetric data processing from simulation applications, and OpenXR for a wider range of hardware support, including hand and marker tracking capabilities. In this presentation, we'll guide you through the changes from 2024 to 2025, providing an overview of the key updates shaping VRED 2025.

This will be a live demonstration of Alias 2025 software—showcasing the latest features in Alias 2025 and providing a sneak preview of new technologies under development. See firsthand how Alias is still an evolving and powerful surface modeling package for designers.

The class will show you an automotive interior design workflow. It will show how fast you can get to a physical prototype of an interior part. The workflow starts with quick concept modeling using Alias software. After that, we hand out the model to Autodesk Fusion 360 software for additional steps like physical model making and manufacturing cost evaluation. This early phase concept workflow can massively speed up your decision-making process for interior parts.

The Studio Wind Tunnel Project will bring simulation insight and guidance to the automotive design community. With seamless integration into existing design pipelines, fully automated virtual wind-tunnel analysis will enable studios to assess performance criteria, visualize airflow, and make informed design decisions at any stage of development. Designed to provide reliable and consistent insight, the Studio Wind Tunnel Project solves traditional challenges associated with vehicle aerodynamic simulation.

The digital creation process has made physical models rare. Today, iterative work around form finding, feature line definition, or design definition convergence has to happen digitally on 2D screens. Imagine if you could connect virtual reality (VR) full-scale visualization in VRED software with 3D modeling workflows in Alias software through custom tools that allow designers to sketch tape lines in VR, giving instant feedback to the 3D modeler in Alias—and use ShotGrid software to capture the sketched tape lines to feed downstream digital-modeling activities. Discover how Autodesk Consulting can help you improve collaborative workflows in your studio, going beyond out-of-the-box product capabilities.

In this class we will go over some of the new features in Alias software that can help in procedural modeling techniques, and tools that you can create with scripts to be driven through Dynamo software. Dynamo is a visual programming platform that you can use to create custom algorithms to process data and generate geometry. Since version 2019, we have had an integration of Dynamo in our Alias line of products (Concept, Surface, and AutoStudio). With the latest release of 2021, we have included Dynamo player, which enables anyone to run scripts and capitalize on the power of these tools to improve workflows and processes to save time and effort.

In this class, we’ll take a look at the road map for Alias software.

This class will look at how Alias software and VRED software enable the design and visualization of heavy machinery and equipment.

The purpose of this discussion is to help shape the future design of Alias software. We will discuss the potential impact of innovations in design and technologies. You will have a chance to impact change that could increase productivity within Alias software workflows. We will detail problems in current product offerings, and discuss how new technologies and designs could help. We will also discuss how tablets and other modern devices and technologies could impact the future of making things within Alias software. Come willing to participate in this collaborative discussion. How will you and other users be involved in influencing the future interface of Alias software? This session features Alias Automotive, Alias SpeedForm, and Maya.

Misused, misunderstood, and misaligned. Alias software’s Blend Curves have many characteristics that are not understood by even some of the best Alias software users, let alone users new to the software. Learn how they really work, what the little icons at the Blend points mean, and how to use them. Are you really getting the continuity that you think you are, or is the Blend Curve actually misaligned to the surface you just attached it to? Our focus will be on single-span Blend Curves that are used to create transition surfaces. We will compare the Blend Curve tool to the new Freeform Curve Blend tool. Fully understand the capabilities and nuances of the Freeform Blend Curve tool. This class applies to all surface work, from concept through production class “A” for any design—whether it’s product development or automotive. This session features Alias AutoStudio, Alias Automotive, and Alias Surface.