Autodesk wants to keep up with the changing times, and it’s putting its future in drones. The company announced it’s investing in 3D Robotics (3DR) as part of the Autodesk Forge Fund, an initiative that invests in innovative solutions and services connected to the Forge Platform. Forge is the company’s set of cloud services designed to connect design, engineering, visualization, collaboration, production and operations workflows.
“Capturing site data today is costly, time-consuming and often dangerous. Drones can easily go where it’s inefficient or unsafe for field personnel, making it easier to accurately measure our world so we can better manage it,” said Chris Anderson, CEO of 3DR. “We’re delighted to expand our relationship with Autodesk and use of the Forge platform to deliver a complete solution for site capture that will help professional customers save time and money, and more importantly take humans out of harm’s way.”
This is not the first time 3DR and Autodesk have been connected. The companies announced a partnership earlier this year to develop Site Scan, a new aerial analytics platform designed to deliver data to the cloud for processing and analytics.
According to Autodesk, 3DR uses its Forge Platform to develop its aerial data capture and analytics platform. Using the Forge Reality Capture API, 3DR gives users the ability to convert drone-captured photos into engineering data.
In addition, the company announced updates to the Forge platform with new and expanded areas in the viewer, the model derivative API, the design automation API, authentication, the data-management API, the 3D print API, and the reality capture API.
“We are seeing Forge used to power the future of making things for a variety of applications ranging from part inspection to sub-sea surveying, from managing mines with drones to turning cost estimation into a competitive advantage, and building online design and manufacturing services and much, much more,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of products at Autodesk. “It is clear to us that there is an enormous demand for an easy-to-use and scalable platform to build all sorts of manufacturing and AEC applications. There are endless opportunities created by a combination of our web service APIs and entrepreneurial developer talent.”
