New trends in design and make technology promise to reinvent industry workflows over the next year.
As we approach 2025, the industries that design and make our world are poised for continued transformation. Rapid advancements in technology are helping reinvent workflows across architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO), design and manufacturing (D&M), and media and entertainment (M&E).
From innovations in AI to improving data practices, we’ll see certain trends redefine how innovators create and build over the next year and beyond. Below, we check in with Autodesk leaders on what designers and builders should expect to see in 2025.
Amy Bunszel, EVP, Architecture, Engineering and Construction Solutions: Over the next year, we’ll see practical uses of AI continue to make big strides—as in the productivity-enhancing, day-to-day applications of AI that solve real-world problems in AECO. The industry is eager for these AI capabilities, as Autodesk’s 2024 State of Design and Make report showed 44% of AECO professionals cited improving productivity as a top use for AI.
And as architects, engineers, builders, facility managers, and owners transition to more cloud-connected workflows, they’ll have access to granular data to enable new ways of working that directly impact project productivity and sustainability. For example, AI-powered solutions such as the ML Deluge tool for InfoDrainage enable designers to predict flood maps quickly and accurately and Autodesk Assistant in Autodesk Construction Cloud (now in beta) more readily surfaces the information they need to get the job done.
Diana Colella, EVP, Entertainment & Media Solutions: We anticipate media & entertainment professionals will continue to discover new ways to harness AI to streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and offer deeper insights through data analysis. This past year we added new AI capabilities to enhance many of our existing creative tools including denoising in Arnold, updates to Flame, ML Deformer in Maya, and the addition of Motion Prediction to Wonder Studio. These capabilities are all in service of increasing productivity and enabling more room for creative iteration. In 2025, we will continue to deliver more AI capabilities that help accelerate artists’ workflows, giving them back more time to be creative.
Jeff Kinder, EVP, Product Development and Manufacturing Solutions: I believe we’ll see AI automate mundane tasks more and more across all industries, but certainly in design and manufacturing. In the next year, I think we’ll see AI surface even more in design to accelerate the creative process.
AI tools can help designers and makers improve day-to-day productivity by automating repetitive tasks.
Diana: As the amount of production data needed to design and make movies, videogames, and streaming content continues to rise, so does the need for better tools to manage data, facilitate collaboration, and streamline processes. Autodesk’s top priority is to help our customers generate profitable content by tackling these challenges head on with Autodesk Flow, our industry cloud for media and entertainment.
For example, in 2024, we introduced Generative Scheduling to Flow Production Tracking which uses AI to help customers optimize schedule planning as well as a series of cloud services including Flow Retopology and Flow Wedging. In the future, we will continue to connect more workflows together, such as animation with editorial, unlocking new capabilities like “animating in context” where animators can see the shots they are working on in the context of the editorial timeline.
Jeff: With disconnected, disparate products, organizations can only achieve incremental productivity gains. To see breakthrough productivity gains, data must flow seamlessly and be connected end-to-end. The productivity increases will be a welcome accelerant in and of themselves, but they’re also the fuel for building more AI-powered automation tools.
Amy: The built environment generates a staggering amount of greenhouse gas emissions, but the right technology enables AECO teams to be more proactive at achieving sustainability goals at the start of a project. Over the next year, continued digital transformation across the industry will enable firms to better leverage their project data and new tools that improve project sustainability outcomes. For example, Embodied Carbon Analysis in Autodesk Forma (beta) empowers designers to understand and measure the carbon footprint of their material and design choices from day one of planning. This means that embodied carbon can be considered in the earliest phases of design instead of at the end when design and planning are nearly completed. And solutions like Autodesk Informed Design, which enables productization for buildings via industrialized construction, will help the industry deliver projects more quickly, at a higher quality, and with less waste.
Jeff: Technology can have huge impact. For example, increasing the use of simulation in the design and manufacturing processes can reduce waste, cost, and time to market. What’s more, reimagining supply chains, focusing on more regional options, presents a more sustainable solution.
Joe Speicher, Chief Sustainability Officer: Across the globe, nations are preparing to submit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction plans to the United Nations by February 2025. These plans will set the tone for decarbonization for the next 10 years and have major impacts on policy and legislation across the globe. Today, companies are responding to policies in the EU, Singapore, California and elsewhere to meet more stringent emissions targets. Additionally, companies are also feeling pressure from customers, investors, and employees to prioritize sustainability now, not later.
Technology is the only way to effectively reduce GHG emissions, especially for key industries that Autodesk serves. What gets measured gets managed, and measuring trusted data is critical for tracking environmental sustainability goals and for mandatory and voluntary ESG reporting. Traditionally, the AEC industry has been very siloed, so measuring and reducing emissions is incredibly challenging. By leveraging technology and our industry cloud platforms across the project delivery lifecycle, companies can keep sustainable outcomes at the forefront—from design to completion.
Technology can help teams integrate sustainability into their projects from the start.
Amy: My recommendation to our customers and others across design and make industries is to begin with a small pilot and understand the outcomes that your organization is looking to achieve from that pilot. The real objective in implementing changes should be learning what works and what doesn’t for your organization, versus focusing solely on success. Running smaller pilots also helps isolate risks, so that not every team is brought in on changes or new ways of working until results are more proven.
Jeff: You just have to do it. Take the risk! Our research shows that customers who embrace digital transformation are more productive and more resilient than companies who hesitate or wait.
Amy: I expect to see continued adoption of technologies that support innovation and collaboration across the full building information modeling (BIM) lifecycle, including digital twins, such as Autodesk Tandem, to equip the industry with real-time and data-driven insights, and immersive design review workspaces, such as Autodesk Workshop XR, that provide teams with a new way to interact with their designs and collaborate with stakeholders to reduce errors before construction begins.
Joe: Advanced technologies like AI, digital twins, and generative design are enabling architects and engineers to anticipate and adapt to the challenges of climate change, creating infrastructure that withstands extreme weather and environmental impact.
It’s important for the private sector to remember that financial success and societal benefit are not at odds—increasingly, these are correlated: the better companies do around sustainability or diversity measures, the better they do in the marketplace. More and more, companies are beginning to recognize this, and the ones that do not will be left behind.
Jeff: I believe we’ll see a fork in the AI road. The fascinating and novel capabilities we’ve become accustomed to thinking about as defining AI, such as natural language prompts yielding fantastic images, essays, and code, will continue to advance. At the same time, very practical, somewhat mundane AI capabilities will emerge. And these advancements will save us immense amounts of time. Soon, busy-work tasks that used to take hours, or even days, will be completed with a simple click of a button. And we’ll get that time back to do the creative work that humans excel at, while the computer focuses on computing.