AU Class
AU Class
class - AU

Connecting the Dots with Point Clouds, the AEC Collection, BIM 360, and Construction Cloud

Share this class
Search for keywords in videos, presentation slides and handouts:

Description

Point clouds are more than just dots in space. They represent existing walls, doors, pipes, ground surfaces and so much more. They represent millions and millions of individual pieces of information. And because of this, their file size can be enormous and often difficult to work with. But it doesn't have to be that way. This class will demonstrate ways that you can take advantage of the new scan-to-mesh and publish features in ReCap Pro to share, view, comment, and collaborate on your point clouds. We'll also look at ways you can utilize point clouds in an efficient and effective manner by extracting only the relevant information for your design.

Key Learnings

  • Explore Scan to Mesh features and functionality
  • Publish, view & collaborate on point clouds in BIM 360/ACC
  • Learn about the BIM 360/ACC to ReCap Pro bi-directional capability
  • Optimize point clouds for better performance in design

Speakers

  • Avatar for Matt Wunch
    Matt Wunch
    Matt Wunch, a seasoned innovator in the AEC industry, boasts over 3 decades of experience. He's renowned for leveraging Autodesk solutions to transform design and construction processes. With expertise in drone operation, reality capture, coding, civil engineering, and architecture, Matt brings a multi-dimensional perspective to his work, devising innovative strategies for exceptional outcomes. He continues to push the boundaries of innovation, inspiring professionals to revolutionize their approaches to design and construction.
  • Avatar for Shawn Weekly
    Shawn Weekly
    Over 17 years of progressive experience in system architecture, software development, and innovation/thought leadership for national utility, telecommunications, health care, marketing and engineering companies. Over a decade of current experience in the electrical utility space doing software/system architecture, systems design, and volunteer consulting across a broad range of design technologies and related infrastructure. Deep believer in the idea that with good BIM data and high quality models reflecting that data, we can change the way we do our work for the better, regardless of our current industry. Strong background in the Autodesk design tool stack, Microsoft Technologies, Service Oriented Architectures, .NET and Internet/Intranet/Windows development.
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
Duration 33:50
Loaded: 0.49%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time 33:50
 
1x
  • Chapters
  • descriptions off, selected
  • en (Main), selected
Transcript

MATT WUNCH: Hey, good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you are in the world. Thank you for attending Connecting the Dots with Point Clouds, the AEC Collection and BIM 360 Autodesk Construction Cloud. My name is Matt Wunch, Senior Technical Specialist on the AEC side at Autodesk. And I have a co-presenter with me today, Shawn Weekly, Principal at Southern Company.

Let's take a look at our agenda, got to go over the introductions, talk about what's new in ReCap '22, scan to mesh, publish and view 3D images, cloud collaboration, storage. We're going to jump out of the presentation and do a little bit of a live demo to go over some of these things live so you get a feel for what is actually involved in these processes.

And then Shawn is going to take us home with how he's using ReCap at Southern Company and some of the things that they're doing with the files. So a little bit about me, former Autodesk Expert Elite prior to coming on board with Autodesk just over a year ago, got about 2 and 1/2 decades of experience as a CAD BIM Technology Manager dealing with Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, InfraWorks, installation development, templates, training, you name it, I've dealt with it in one way or another.

Some of you may recognize me from the part time technical support on the directly third party platform. If you've ever had any issues or submitted any tickets, you may have seen me there as well. Now I'm going to kick it over to Shawn to discuss a little bit about himself.

SHAWN WEEKLY: Sure, my name's Shawn Weekly. I'm a Principal, which kind of is a solutions architect at Southern Company, which is a large utility company in Birmingham, Alabama. I have about 20 years of experience in software and solution architecture and systems design, and about 15 of that, 14 and 1/2 in the utility industry. And we're really focused right now on digital transformation in our substation station design department.

MATT WUNCH: Thank you, Shawn. So the obligatory safe harbor statement, I don't believe we are going to be showing any sort of future developments, but just in case something does pop up, just sort of cover our bases there.

So what's new in ReCap '22?. We talked about the scan to mesh earlier. So that used to be available, I believe, a few years back. It was taken out, but it's now back again, so having the ability to take those plane clouds and create an editable mesh that you can use in any of your applications.

Also the published view annotate and collaborate, this is really huge when it comes to being able to share those point clouds with users who don't necessarily need to have ReCap installed. You can do that through the cloud, and, of course, cloud storage, the integration of Autodesk Docs now.

So what are some of the new features of ReCap Photo? If you have a drone that is able to capture the RTK or the PPK data, so the real time kinematic or the post-process kinematic, from the drone photos, you can incorporate that into the processing. The specifying of ground control points really tie that mesh, that model, even tighter.

The cloud credit consumption has changed a little bit. So for every 50 photos, it now costs three cloud credits per 50. And if you've installed the latest updates for ReCap photo, you now have the ability to upload up to 2,000 files, whereas before, it was just 1,000 images.

ReCap Pro, you can now export panoramic images of those structured scans. So a structured scan is-- think of it as that stationary terrestrial laser scan. So you set up the scanner in one location, move it to another location, do another scan, that's a structured scan, versus something like a drone flight, where it is unstructured. So it's just creating those point clouds from the aerial images.

Project unit setting, setting the default units, historically, ReCap Pro has always been metric based. But you did have the ability to change that. With a new version of ReCap, you can set those default units to imperial if you like, right from the get go, and not even have to worry about making that switch from metric to imperial.

There have been some stability improvements when it comes to indexing, importing, and registry, registering scans, so making that process easier, less crashing the system, along with performance improvements of regions and project optimization. So if you have a project that has a lot of scan regions, or you delete points, ReCap will optimize those projects, remove those deleted points, any information associated with them, to really give you a better experience when it comes to performance.

So what is the scan to mesh? So basically take your point cloud, clip out any regions you don't want, any areas you don't want, and you could take that area and create a 3D mesh from it. Now, there's a couple of different options you can choose, and we'll go over this in that live demo in just a little bit, but resolution, so low, medium, high cloud credit consumption is based on the quality and the number of points.

So if you set your resolution to high and you've got a high point count, it's going to cost more credits. OBJ and RCA outputs are the two available outputs, and like we discussed earlier, Autodesk Drive and Autodesk Docs to store those files.

So publish, view, annotate, and collaborate, this is really, really cool, really huge improvement when it comes to point clouds and being able to share that information with users who don't necessarily need to have ReCap installed, so they can view all these files in the cloud, make markups, and it basically gets pushed back down to the desktop.

Cloud storage, again, Autodesk Drive, the integration with Autodesk Docs now and BIM 360 provides you unlimited storage. So point clouds, the aerial photos, everything associated with that, if you've ever had to deal with those files, you know that they can be huge. So we're talking gigs and gigs of data, storing those files in the cloud. You don't have to worry about running out of server space.

So let's hop over to that live demo. So looking at ReCap Pro here, so this is just one of those sample projects, that little Techshop that you all may be familiar with. It talked about that scan to mesh process. So I have this file already split out with different scan regions. As you can see as I hover over the different regions, they highlight. I'm just going to turn all of these off.

So what I'm left with is just this little shop table here. So let's say I wanted to mesh an editable mesh of just this object. So I've got my point cloud kind of filtered out, just the points that I want to see. Over on the left hand side here, there's this little cloud icon. And right next to it is mesh. Just hit that Start button. It's going to gather that data. And you can see, I can give it a name. I can specify a cloud location.

So I can upload this to Autodesk construction Cloud, the different qualities, so low, medium, and high, object, the OBJ file, the RCM, the mesh file, and how many cloud credits it's going to cost. And also you can see just approximately how much time it's going to take. And that's really all there is to this process.

Once you have your file in here, I've already got one called Shop Table, so I'm just going to call this one Shop Table 2. Once you have these settings checked off here, the ones that you want to create, just hit Submit, and it's going to upload that data to the cloud and approximately in an hour, that file will be ready to download.

Now you may be asking yourself, how did I go about isolating? So I want to take a look at that, because that's going to come into play a little bit later on. We start talking about optimizing the point clouds. So there's a really cool feature in here called plain. And let me click on this. It prompts us to pick some points.

And when we do, when we hit Enter, it isolates those points sort of on an average basis along the average of those points that were selected. So from here, I can take these points and add them to a new region. So I've got, like I said, I've already got some four walls, columns, floors. But this is a great way to go about sort of breaking down your point clouds into more editable files.

So for example, I'll just throw these on the Region 7. And you see I now have this Region 7 over here, which I can toggle on or off. And this is going to come into play when we start optimizing these point clouds, which we'll get into in just a bit. But before we do, I want to dig into publishing, viewing, annotating, and collaborating in the cloud.

So we can take this entire point cloud and publish this up to Autodesk, Autodesk Docs, or Autodesk Drive. And what you'll see with that is when it's done-- I'll just hop over here-- is we get that 3D view, so that those mirrorball type views that you would see in ReCap, we get those same views in Autodesk Docs here.

So looking at the point cloud in this 3D view, we can then do add annotations, dimensions, little markups, add images. So for example, if I Zoom in on this dustpan, I've got a note here. If I click on that, it says dustpan, and I want to upgrade that to this particular dustpan. So you can add images to that and collaborate with users back on the desktop side.

So looking back at ReCap here, I hop into my mirror ball, spin it around, and I believe I have annotations turned off, so I'm going to turn those on. So there's that same annotation, that same note, and that same graphic, so great way to share information back and forth with users, again, who don't necessarily need to have ReCap Pro installed. They can do that directly from the Autodesk Docs or construction cloud project.

Now sort of jumping back to the mesh thing real quick, I mentioned structured scans and unstructured scans earlier. So when we take a look at that shop table, so that shop table created a mesh from that, but what exactly does that look like? Over in ReCap photo, so there's that mesh of that shop table created from those points. And you see that there are some gaps in here.

So these gaps are because of where the scanner was set up. It wasn't able to capture all the different points at the different angles. So keep that in mind when you're creating your scans. The more scans you have, the more views, the more angles you have of that space, the better the output is going to be when it comes to creating that mesh.

So this is from a structured scan. So you've got those mirror balls, which are the individual terrestrial laser scan setups moved around the space. And what about an unstructured scan? What happens when you want to create a mesh file from something like a drone flight, for example.

So I've got a project here, which was this point cloud was created from a drone. And I've got a few or a couple of regions here. So I've clipped out, basically, all the surrounding ground and just want to keep this tower here. And I want to create a mesh of this. So what's going to happen? Because it's not a structured scan, it doesn't have those mirror balls.

Essentially what you're going to get in return is something that represents more like a clay model. So it doesn't have the underlying 360 photos associated with it. So it doesn't really know how to process the color. So in that case with the drone flights, those unstructured scans, we're going to get something that looks like, basically, a gray clay model of that point cloud.

So that's scan to mesh, as well as the published view annotate, being able to add those notes, being able to push that information back to ReCap pro and vise versa.

Let's take a look at optimizing the point clouds. So we talked about those scan regions. So why would you want to do the scan regions? You want to do the scan regions because that's going to help the point cloud performance when you pull it into other applications, so again, being able to isolate the floors, the walls, columns, things like that, remove some of that excess noise.

Maybe someone walked past the scanner, so you have a bunch of points from that, being able to isolate those files and then split each of those out to a unified point cloud. So what exactly is a unified point cloud? A unified point cloud is basically taking all of those scans, all those individual scan setups, the terrestrial scans, and just basically binding everything together, so creating a single file from multiple scans.

That's going to result in an overall smaller file size, especially when you take into consideration what we call decimating that point cloud, so basically removing some of the points from the point cloud. So what you want to try to do is find that sweet spot between the file size and the visual fidelity, and you'll see exactly what I mean in just a moment.

But so the example you're going to see is the starting file size is just over a gig. And it can consist of 13 different files altogether. But when I decimated that point cloud, it created a unified scan, that RCS file, it took that 1 gig file just by decimating it, setting the spacing to 25 millimeters, it took it from 1 gig just over 20 megs.

And at 50 millimeters decimation took it down to 4 and 1/2, and you can see 90 just under 1 and 1/2 megs. But what does that look like? What is that end result? So here is that undecimated point cloud. This happens to be in AutoCAD '22. So you can see the visual fidelity is really great. There's a lot of points there. But it's also just over a gig. And there are a lot of points.

So you're going to have to take that into consideration. AutoCAD, Revit, whatever application you pull this into, it's going to need to be able to process all these points as you spin the model around, as you slice it and look at it in different ways. But what if we were to decimate this by 25 millimeters? So here's that same point cloud just over 20 megs. The visual fidelity is still really, really good.

It's a much, much smaller file, which will result in better performance within the application. There's 50 millimeters, and there's 90, which is pretty much unusable at that point. But just kind of flipping back, you can see that progression of the decimation from 1 gig 20 megs to 4 and 1/2, so again, trying to find that sweet spot. And I've always found the 25 millimeters to be that ideal spot between the file size and the visual fidelity.

So how can you actually use these files? so you can take the point clouds, once you've decimated them, cleaned them up. Again, maybe you have individual RCS files for the floor, the walls, the piping, the equipment. Being able to toggle those on and off in Revit will make it that much easier to model up existing conditions based on those point clouds.

Likewise in Inventor, the same process applies, being able to isolate the different point clouds, seeing just what you need to see to model what's important to you for that particular project. And then in AutoCAD, what we're looking at here is just a little slice of that Techshop that we just saw a few moments ago. But there's a command called Section Lines in AutoCAD.

And essentially what this does is will attempt to draw some polylines or lines, depending on whatever settings you use, basically interpolating between the points of that point cloud and trying to get the best output. Now the really cool thing about this is you can view the results in a preview mode, so you can make changes if the output is not exactly what you were hoping it would be.

So you don't actually have to get out of that command, delete things, restart it and go through the whole process over again. You just simply just keep cycling through until you find exactly what you're looking for. And for this particular portion of the point cloud, this is the end result, so really, really fast way, really easy way of modeling up some of those existing conditions, so in this case, inside face of walls.

You may be looking at this and saying, what's the deal? Why are there why are there gaps here? This process kind of failed on me. Not really, because you take a look at the point cloud, we can see that there are gaps here. So depending on the settings and the overall size of those gaps, you may be able to compensate for some of that.

But basically, this command did what it's supposed to do. So based on this particular point cloud and these gaps and the settings that were chosen here, that's the output. So you slice up that wall a little bit better, maybe there is a door opening here or garage door bay here or something like that. So you may want to take those things into consideration as well with regards to how you slice that point cloud.

But the end result is something that can save you a ton of time, especially with a larger point cloud. And we can take a look at point clouds in InfraWorks. So this is a portion of New York City. And this is a point cloud pulled off of local state agency website. And from this point cloud, you can generate the terrain quickly and easily just based on those points.

So you get a relatively accurate depiction of the existing conditions without actually having to go out there and laser scan or wait for survey data. If you can access this from, like I said, a state agency website, you can easily pull that information into InfraWorks.

And then likewise in Civil 3D, we can create the ground servers, that ground terrain based on the point cloud. This point cloud you see here is actually classified, so that brown those brown points indicate the ground plane.

So what do you get from that? When the process is all done, you get a really well defined surface from that point cloud with really just a few clicks of the mouse, so again saving you time, saving you effort, which overall, will save you money because you don't have to sit there and do all of this stuff manually.

Just let the power of the cloud processing handle the point clouds, and you're good to go on your way. And with that, I am going to kick it over to Shawn to hear how he and Southern Company are utilizing point clouds in their daily work. Shawn.

SHAWN WEEKLY: Thank you, Matt. So Southern Company, I think I mentioned before, we're a pretty large utility company. You can go to the next slide. And what we're doing is-- currently, what we have today is it takes just too long to get to a substation model in Inventor. We want to use 3D laser scanning with that full photogrammetry and be able to process all that in ReCap and still have a useful model.

So in this next slide, we're going to show a video here. Today what we do-- excuse me. Today what we do is we literally go out, and we take a bunch of pictures, we roll out 2D drawings on our desk, and we try to do estimates and do basic functionality, engineering stuff, off of those pictures and off of the 2D drawings. And that just doesn't make sense for us.

So we've done a scan here of a pretty large transmission substation. I want to say we started off here with a scan that was somewhere in the 800 million point range, and it was like 60 gigabytes. We decimated this down to 20 millimeters and came up with a scan that still, as Matt was saying earlier, the visual fidelity here is still really good. We can still tell what we've got. We can see the structures. We can see the equipment.

We've got all the bubble scans. And I think there was 100 scans in this particular location. And what we've discovered is, it only takes us two days or so to scan a substation of this level of equipment. So we have two days to scan. It's roughly a one to one correlation between the actual scanning and the processing of the scan in the office, give or take a day.

That gives us roughly a week to get a full as built condition survey of our substation. And obviously because we've got this point cloud, and because we've got ReCap, we can actually do the annotations and markups and measurements, which is so much better than what we had before with just some JPEGS and 2D drawings.

We can physically measure and see how big is our span here. We can physically measure and see where our equipments are at. And we can go all the way down into where we're checking clearances on our equipment. We can check clearances on our voltage, high voltage lines in comparison to our fencing and whatnot.

Here I'm going to zoom in to this. I think that's a regulator. Just full disclosure, I'm a technical guy. I'm not an electrical engineer. So most of this equipment, I have no idea what it is. But we can look at this, what I think is a regulator, and I can make sure that the clearance from that foundation is good, assuming this was, perhaps, an old Brownfield or something that we want to do some retrofit work at to see if I have a piece of equipment of this size, do I have enough clearance to put a bigger piece of equipment in there?

But I have my annotations. This is in ReCap currently. And then I'm going to go into my actual real views and look. And I was extraordinarily impressed with the visual aspect and the clarity of the pictures that we get from our scanners. The digital cameras we send the engineers to the field with today, they don't even come close to the fidelity that we have here.

And as I'm rolling around, you can kind of see our scanner there, the picture on the tripod. That just shows you the equipment that we're using. But this is, as I said, this is a really large 500 KV station outside of a hydro plant. And we clipped out all the stuff that doesn't matter to us here.

And then we can jump in between scans. And once again, this is still in ReCap, so we can jump around. And if you have ReCap on your disk, you can obviously look and use the scan in the real view. From the real view, we can still see the annotations. So I can see, that's the diameter of that piece of equipment. I still get all of that goodness, and all of my annotations follow me.

And this is just something, like I was saying before, with some JPEGS and some 2D AutoCAD drawings, we just didn't get this before. And so this takes us so much farther into something that's useful to us. There's just simply no reason not to go.

So some of the other annotations that we'd like to put in there, you can jump to an annotation. So I've kind of highlighted some of the particular information on a piece of equipment that would be of importance to my field users and stuff that they would like to do, so they can zoom in there and use it.

Now here in a second, we're going to go back out of here. And I believe that we're going to go ahead and publish this out. And I'm going to publish it up to my Autodesk cloud drive. And it obviously takes a little bit longer than what we're going to show here. There's some camera magic in this video that goes on. But I'm going to push it up to Autodesk drive, because this really is the killer feature for utilities.

It's the fact that I can publish this out to the web, and in a few minutes after it processes through and uses BIM-- excuse me, the Desktop Connector for BIM 360, it pushes out to Autodesk drive as well. After a few minutes of processing, I have this available for my field folks to use, which is extraordinary.

I'm going to go ahead and show you here the mesh. The initial mesh I tried to push with the decimated cloud here was going to cost me 20 cloud credits, which almost made me have a stroke, because I don't have nearly the cloud credits that Matt does. But once we decimated it down to the 20 millimeters, it only cost me $1.

So I'm going to go ahead and push that out and get my RCM and my OBJ. I will save that again to my drive and then make that useful for future stuff, like putting it in Navisworks or InfraWorks to do some analysis that way.

So here I am, and the important thing to node here is that we are in a browser at this point. I'm in an internet browser. I could be somebody in the field on an iPad or whatnot, and they can pull up this information and use it in hand. And this is huge for us.

So all of those annotations that we made in ReCap, I can jump straight back over to them and see them, once again, still in a browser. I can still get my information. I still have the same visual acuity that I had before. This is all beautiful stuff for us. And it's useful to me right now. It's not something that I have to call an engineer and have them create a model for me or whatnot. It's just here, available to me for use.

And this is just something that we haven't had before. So here's that clearance check in between our regulator or old style transformer here to make sure that we get clearance. And as we roll around, we can see all my bubble scans and everything's still available to me.

Then I'm going to jump over here to this scan, and that's a gas circuit breaker that we're going to look at. And I'm going to simulate kind of what we envision a field user would do. So in this case, maybe we're saying, we've got this breaker. We're going to do a breaker replacement, or we're going to replace this set of equipment here.

And so I'm going to say, all right, I'm a field guy. I want to replace this stuff. So I'm just going to highlight it here. And once again, I'm still using my browser here. So I'm just going to double click on my annotation, and I'm going to say, I want to do something here. And then we can add some information here. Obviously this is just a demo. But I'm going to go ahead and pull in a picture from my machine.

And I want to say, I want to replace these three things with those three things, and that's the picture, a thumbnail of some Inventor models that we have. And I want to save it. And so I'm done being a field person at this point. And then once I'm done with my field work, then we're going to go back into ReCap here in just a second and see, after I admire my model here a little bit more, because I really just can't get enough of all this the Visual accuracy that we get here versus what we had.

Back over here, I'm back in ReCap. And that annotation that I made follows me back into ReCap. And so as I'm sitting in my office, or as I'm another engineer sitting in my office, I can see this stuff is here available to me.

And so really this has closed the gap on so many of our engineering processes here at Southern Company that I can't imagine that we would not continue to do this, especially considering that we can get a scan with this level of accuracy in roughly five days. So with that, I'm going to pass it back to Matt. Matt can close us out.

MATT WUNCH: Awesome stuff there, Shawn. I love the comment you made about decimating the point cloud and how it costs 20 cloud credits for the undecimated, and then when you broke it down to 20 millimeter decimation, only cost you one, so another great another great reason to decimate those point clouds.

Most likely, you're not going to need all of those points, so really just kind of strip it down to what you do need, again, finding that sweet spot between point cloud size, visual fidelity, as well as the number of cloud credits that are going to be required for that process, so excellent stuff, and I think your presentation, your portion, was much more impactful than mine, just because it's more real world, versus what I showed with the little dustpan image there.

You're showing something real world that you guys are actually working on, versus that sample model that comes with ReCap. So thank you so much for that, Shawn, really appreciate it. Thank you all for attending. Hope you found this useful and helpful. Love to hear some of the use cases that you are all doing with this. And with that, we'll see you at the live Q&A. Thank you.

______
icon-svg-close-thick

Cookie preferences

Your privacy is important to us and so is an optimal experience. To help us customize information and build applications, we collect data about your use of this site.

May we collect and use your data?

Learn more about the Third Party Services we use and our Privacy Statement.

Strictly necessary – required for our site to work and to provide services to you

These cookies allow us to record your preferences or login information, respond to your requests or fulfill items in your shopping cart.

Improve your experience – allows us to show you what is relevant to you

These cookies enable us to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we use to deliver information and experiences tailored to you. If you do not allow these cookies, some or all of these services may not be available for you.

Customize your advertising – permits us to offer targeted advertising to you

These cookies collect data about you based on your activities and interests in order to show you relevant ads and to track effectiveness. By collecting this data, the ads you see will be more tailored to your interests. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

icon-svg-close-thick

THIRD PARTY SERVICES

Learn more about the Third-Party Services we use in each category, and how we use the data we collect from you online.

icon-svg-hide-thick

icon-svg-show-thick

Strictly necessary – required for our site to work and to provide services to you

Qualtrics
We use Qualtrics to let you give us feedback via surveys or online forms. You may be randomly selected to participate in a survey, or you can actively decide to give us feedback. We collect data to better understand what actions you took before filling out a survey. This helps us troubleshoot issues you may have experienced. Qualtrics Privacy Policy
Akamai mPulse
We use Akamai mPulse to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Akamai mPulse Privacy Policy
Digital River
We use Digital River to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Digital River Privacy Policy
Dynatrace
We use Dynatrace to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Dynatrace Privacy Policy
Khoros
We use Khoros to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Khoros Privacy Policy
Launch Darkly
We use Launch Darkly to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Launch Darkly Privacy Policy
New Relic
We use New Relic to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. New Relic Privacy Policy
Salesforce Live Agent
We use Salesforce Live Agent to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Salesforce Live Agent Privacy Policy
Wistia
We use Wistia to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Wistia Privacy Policy
Tealium
We use Tealium to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Tealium Privacy Policy
Upsellit
We use Upsellit to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Upsellit Privacy Policy
CJ Affiliates
We use CJ Affiliates to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. CJ Affiliates Privacy Policy
Commission Factory
We use Commission Factory to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Commission Factory Privacy Policy
Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary)
We use Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary) to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Google Analytics (Strictly Necessary) Privacy Policy
Typepad Stats
We use Typepad Stats to collect data about your behaviour on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our platform to provide the most relevant content. This allows us to enhance your overall user experience. Typepad Stats Privacy Policy
Geo Targetly
We use Geo Targetly to direct website visitors to the most appropriate web page and/or serve tailored content based on their location. Geo Targetly uses the IP address of a website visitor to determine the approximate location of the visitor’s device. This helps ensure that the visitor views content in their (most likely) local language.Geo Targetly Privacy Policy
SpeedCurve
We use SpeedCurve to monitor and measure the performance of your website experience by measuring web page load times as well as the responsiveness of subsequent elements such as images, scripts, and text.SpeedCurve Privacy Policy
Qualified
Qualified is the Autodesk Live Chat agent platform. This platform provides services to allow our customers to communicate in real-time with Autodesk support. We may collect unique ID for specific browser sessions during a chat. Qualified Privacy Policy

icon-svg-hide-thick

icon-svg-show-thick

Improve your experience – allows us to show you what is relevant to you

Google Optimize
We use Google Optimize to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Google Optimize Privacy Policy
ClickTale
We use ClickTale to better understand where you may encounter difficulties with our sites. We use session recording to help us see how you interact with our sites, including any elements on our pages. Your Personally Identifiable Information is masked and is not collected. ClickTale Privacy Policy
OneSignal
We use OneSignal to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by OneSignal. Ads are based on both OneSignal data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that OneSignal has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to OneSignal to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. OneSignal Privacy Policy
Optimizely
We use Optimizely to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Optimizely Privacy Policy
Amplitude
We use Amplitude to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Amplitude Privacy Policy
Snowplow
We use Snowplow to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Snowplow Privacy Policy
UserVoice
We use UserVoice to collect data about your behaviour on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our platform to provide the most relevant content. This allows us to enhance your overall user experience. UserVoice Privacy Policy
Clearbit
Clearbit allows real-time data enrichment to provide a personalized and relevant experience to our customers. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID.Clearbit Privacy Policy
YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing platform which allows users to view and share embedded videos on our websites. YouTube provides viewership metrics on video performance. YouTube Privacy Policy

icon-svg-hide-thick

icon-svg-show-thick

Customize your advertising – permits us to offer targeted advertising to you

Adobe Analytics
We use Adobe Analytics to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, and your Autodesk ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Adobe Analytics Privacy Policy
Google Analytics (Web Analytics)
We use Google Analytics (Web Analytics) to collect data about your behavior on our sites. This may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. We use this data to measure our site performance and evaluate the ease of your online experience, so we can enhance our features. We also use advanced analytics methods to optimize your experience with email, customer support, and sales. Google Analytics (Web Analytics) Privacy Policy
AdWords
We use AdWords to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by AdWords. Ads are based on both AdWords data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that AdWords has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to AdWords to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. AdWords Privacy Policy
Marketo
We use Marketo to send you more timely and relevant email content. To do this, we collect data about your online behavior and your interaction with the emails we send. Data collected may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, email open rates, links clicked, and others. We may combine this data with data collected from other sources to offer you improved sales or customer service experiences, as well as more relevant content based on advanced analytics processing. Marketo Privacy Policy
Doubleclick
We use Doubleclick to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Doubleclick. Ads are based on both Doubleclick data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Doubleclick has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Doubleclick to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Doubleclick Privacy Policy
HubSpot
We use HubSpot to send you more timely and relevant email content. To do this, we collect data about your online behavior and your interaction with the emails we send. Data collected may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, email open rates, links clicked, and others. HubSpot Privacy Policy
Twitter
We use Twitter to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Twitter. Ads are based on both Twitter data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Twitter has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Twitter to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Twitter Privacy Policy
Facebook
We use Facebook to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Facebook. Ads are based on both Facebook data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Facebook has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Facebook to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Facebook Privacy Policy
LinkedIn
We use LinkedIn to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by LinkedIn. Ads are based on both LinkedIn data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that LinkedIn has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to LinkedIn to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. LinkedIn Privacy Policy
Yahoo! Japan
We use Yahoo! Japan to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Yahoo! Japan. Ads are based on both Yahoo! Japan data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Yahoo! Japan has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Yahoo! Japan to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Yahoo! Japan Privacy Policy
Naver
We use Naver to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Naver. Ads are based on both Naver data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Naver has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Naver to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Naver Privacy Policy
Quantcast
We use Quantcast to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Quantcast. Ads are based on both Quantcast data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Quantcast has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Quantcast to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Quantcast Privacy Policy
Call Tracking
We use Call Tracking to provide customized phone numbers for our campaigns. This gives you faster access to our agents and helps us more accurately evaluate our performance. We may collect data about your behavior on our sites based on the phone number provided. Call Tracking Privacy Policy
Wunderkind
We use Wunderkind to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Wunderkind. Ads are based on both Wunderkind data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Wunderkind has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Wunderkind to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Wunderkind Privacy Policy
ADC Media
We use ADC Media to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by ADC Media. Ads are based on both ADC Media data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that ADC Media has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to ADC Media to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. ADC Media Privacy Policy
AgrantSEM
We use AgrantSEM to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by AgrantSEM. Ads are based on both AgrantSEM data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that AgrantSEM has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to AgrantSEM to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. AgrantSEM Privacy Policy
Bidtellect
We use Bidtellect to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Bidtellect. Ads are based on both Bidtellect data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Bidtellect has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Bidtellect to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Bidtellect Privacy Policy
Bing
We use Bing to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Bing. Ads are based on both Bing data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Bing has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Bing to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Bing Privacy Policy
G2Crowd
We use G2Crowd to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by G2Crowd. Ads are based on both G2Crowd data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that G2Crowd has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to G2Crowd to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. G2Crowd Privacy Policy
NMPI Display
We use NMPI Display to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by NMPI Display. Ads are based on both NMPI Display data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that NMPI Display has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to NMPI Display to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. NMPI Display Privacy Policy
VK
We use VK to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by VK. Ads are based on both VK data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that VK has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to VK to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. VK Privacy Policy
Adobe Target
We use Adobe Target to test new features on our sites and customize your experience of these features. To do this, we collect behavioral data while you’re on our sites. This data may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, your IP address or device ID, your Autodesk ID, and others. You may experience a different version of our sites based on feature testing, or view personalized content based on your visitor attributes. Adobe Target Privacy Policy
Google Analytics (Advertising)
We use Google Analytics (Advertising) to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Google Analytics (Advertising). Ads are based on both Google Analytics (Advertising) data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Google Analytics (Advertising) has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Google Analytics (Advertising) to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Google Analytics (Advertising) Privacy Policy
Trendkite
We use Trendkite to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Trendkite. Ads are based on both Trendkite data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Trendkite has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Trendkite to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Trendkite Privacy Policy
Hotjar
We use Hotjar to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Hotjar. Ads are based on both Hotjar data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Hotjar has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Hotjar to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Hotjar Privacy Policy
6 Sense
We use 6 Sense to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by 6 Sense. Ads are based on both 6 Sense data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that 6 Sense has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to 6 Sense to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. 6 Sense Privacy Policy
Terminus
We use Terminus to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by Terminus. Ads are based on both Terminus data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that Terminus has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to Terminus to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. Terminus Privacy Policy
StackAdapt
We use StackAdapt to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by StackAdapt. Ads are based on both StackAdapt data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that StackAdapt has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to StackAdapt to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. StackAdapt Privacy Policy
The Trade Desk
We use The Trade Desk to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by The Trade Desk. Ads are based on both The Trade Desk data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that The Trade Desk has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to The Trade Desk to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. The Trade Desk Privacy Policy
RollWorks
We use RollWorks to deploy digital advertising on sites supported by RollWorks. Ads are based on both RollWorks data and behavioral data that we collect while you’re on our sites. The data we collect may include pages you’ve visited, trials you’ve initiated, videos you’ve played, purchases you’ve made, and your IP address or device ID. This information may be combined with data that RollWorks has collected from you. We use the data that we provide to RollWorks to better customize your digital advertising experience and present you with more relevant ads. RollWorks Privacy Policy

Are you sure you want a less customized experience?

We can access your data only if you select "yes" for the categories on the previous screen. This lets us tailor our marketing so that it's more relevant for you. You can change your settings at any time by visiting our privacy statement

Your experience. Your choice.

We care about your privacy. The data we collect helps us understand how you use our products, what information you might be interested in, and what we can improve to make your engagement with Autodesk more rewarding.

May we collect and use your data to tailor your experience?

Explore the benefits of a customized experience by managing your privacy settings for this site or visit our Privacy Statement to learn more about your options.