INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Autodesk Government
Juliana M. Slye
Director,
Autodesk Government
Q: What is Autodesk and what has been the company’s primary focus since its founding in 1982?
A: With seven million users, Autodesk is the world’s leading software and services company for the manufacturing, building, infrastructure, media and entertainment and wireless data services fields. Autodesk’s solutions enable users to create, manage and share their data and digital assets more effectively, helping customers turn ideas into increased productivity, streamlined project efficiency and improved mission effectiveness. While Autodesk solutions have been used in all areas of the public sector for nearly 25 years, we recently launched Autodesk Government, an organization within Autodesk that is dedicated to serving federal and state/local government customers. Autodesk Government delivers software solutions to support critical roles that include emergency response management, physical infrastructure design and protection, mission rehearsal, simulation and training, and asset tracking.
Q: What is Autodesk’s background, especially when it comes to providing services for military training?
A: When you consider that Autodesk’s commercial customers include architectural design firms, Hollywood movie studios, and leading automobile manufacturers, it’s easy to see how Autodesk is ideally suited to provide the military with precise and visually accurate real-world simulations. In fact, Autodesk 3ds Max is the number one tool used by the military training community to build highly realistic virtual objects and characters for use in simulations. We are also a leading software provider to the gaming industry. Autodesk products are also used by over 95 percent of the world’s game creators, which makes us the natural leader for Serious Games initiatives. But it’s not about creating visually compelling content for the most realistic simulations. The military needs virtual urban environments that deliver precision, visual accuracy, and realistic physical properties that can be leveraged for pre-planning and mission rehearsals. For example, buildings need to give trainees a realistic response when a load-bearing wall is hit by an RPG. Autodesk makes this very real training scenario possible by using such tools as physics-based models and incorporating data such as actual computeraided design (CAD) drawings.
Q: What services and products are you specifically targeting to the military user?
A: In the defense sector, our diverse product and solution portfolio, including Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk Map 3D and 3ds Max, are widely used in weapons systems manufacturing, tele-maintenance, command and control, intelligence support, battle theatre visualization, base installation development, and of course, military training and simulation. We’ve seen significant growth in each of these disciplines, and we’re continuing to focus the development of our portfolio of products and technology on supporting the key needs of federal and military users in these areas.
Q: Could you discuss Autodesk Training and Simulation solutions and what capabilities they offer your clients?
A: Autodesk Training and Simulation solutions contain the industry-leading production tools to model, create, and visually represent real-world situations and immersive learning environments. Our COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) offerings enable military users to visualize terrain, buildings and other physical assets with precision accuracy. Where we differ from common simulation offerings for the military is our fidelity in urban construction, and the flexibility of deployment. Autodesk builds its simulations and training environments with actual real-world data, such as 2-D terrain maps (electro-optical, aerial photographs, etc.), architectural drawings and locations of utilities. Autodesk products and solutions can export to either a real-time gaming engine or existing military simulator, thereby rapidly supporting multiple diverse 3-D urban training environments in which tactical operations can be rehearsed and planned prior to any engagement.
Q: What is the Autodesk Government iMOUT Solution and how does it leverage COTS gaming tools to deliver complete inside-outside-under visualization for realworld urban buildings and cities?
A: Autodesk recently launched the Autodesk Government iMOUT (Intelligent Military Operations in Urban Terrain) solution, the next-generation of training and simulation technology that answers the military’s call for an integrated and complete urbanoperations training system for all operational phases. The first solution of its kind, iMOUT pulls together precise manufacturing, building, geospatial and infrastructure data into a 3-D virtual environment to create an innovative and precise simulation tool—without the need for heavy, expensive virtual reality goggles. The iMOUT simulation can then be exported to numerous traditional simulation run-times or COTS gaming engines. In addition to precision accuracy, iMOUT simulations enable users to see the whole urban terrain environment— inside buildings, outside views and underground, which would capture such detail as the utility substructure. Because Autodesk can work with existing data and workflows, iMOUT’s unique approach has proven to dramatically reduce the time in which to create the simulation. Already, the widespread capabilities captured in an iMOUT solution have proven usefulness to a wide variety of government users and emergency responders. ♦