Autodesk Connects Civil3D to Forma, Creates Unified Coordinate System

Construction Technology Autodesk Connects Civil3D to Forma, Creates Unified Coordinate System Construction tech giant reveals new AI workflows in addition to long-sought site and civil capabilities at Autodesk University Conference in Las Vegas Autodesk announced Sept. 14 that Civil 3D—the San Francisco-based construction technology giant's flagship design software for roads, bridges and other civil infrastructure—has become the second design tool, after Revit, to be connected to its Forma industry cloud. Engineers and architects can now bring Civil 3D data into Forma, the data layer that allows project information to move through the various stages of design and construction while connected to several Autodesk design and construction planning tools. The company also announced it has added a unified geolocation and coordinate system as an underpinning data layer in its civil design tools. The new coordinate system will run through Civil3D, Forma and its related civil design and construction products including Revit. A new parametric civil design product, Forma Street Design, is being added for designing streets in the new connected workflow. "We finally created a unified coordinate system, which is something Esri really wanted from us," Autodesk CEO and President Andrew Anagnost said at a press conference at the Autodesk University trade show in Las Vegas. "[At Autodesk] the coordinate system didn't really translate well across various products, which was a very annoying thing to a lot of people, and it was annoying to Esri as well. One coordinate system now propagates across everything—that's a new handoff that's going to happen [with Esri] because now we have the unified coordinate system." The handoff of data from design to construction for civil construction is as simple as connecting a building to a city or municipality's water or electrical systems—or as involved as designing a new road or bridge—and now has one coordinate system. "Today, too much of that information is fragmented across different files, different products, in some cases, not even Autodesk products," Theo Agelopoulos, the company's vice president of AEC design and engineering strategy, said in a pre-event video press conference. "That's the problem we're really trying to address with Autodesk Forma," Agelopoulos said. "So we're expanding Forma across more of the AEC lifecycle, more industries, so that information can move through the project and create what we call project intelligence." Designers can bring Civil 3D data into Forma as a starting point for planning and then design, said Autodesk Vice President for AEC Solutions Amy Bunszel in her final keynote as leader of the combined design and construction divisions. The 23-year company veteran, who has led both its manufacturing and AEC groups, announced in August she will be retiring once Autodesk completes a search for her replacement. Looking for quick answers on construction and engineering topics? Try Ask ENR, our new smart AI search tool. Ask ENR → Bunszel added that Autodesk is expanding its below-ground sensing and modeling capabilities with Fugro ground data and modeling that is coming to Forma, including Fugro GeoDin, and is sharable with Esri's ArcGIS. She said geospatial context will expand in the next two years as the strategic partnership with Fugro expands. More Agentic AI Artificial intelligence remains a focus, although the Autodesk agents and other AI tools mentioned over the first two days of the conference remain in various stages of development through 2027. Autodesk Assistant was displayed answering natural-language queries about site design and orientation. A generative capability in Forma Site Design, Building Layout Explorer, was shown iterating and comparing multi-family construction project apartment layouts against client requirements. AI-powered workflows in Revit were shown automating documentation. Autodesk's Informed Design Group presented an AI that can source and automate the layout of a small home in Australia with defined assemblies for everything from walls to water heaters and piping assemblies. The AI could connect design documents to suppliers able to manufacture the kit of parts. Agents doing tasks such as designing flange connectors not detailed in a drawing can be connected via model context protocol to other agents that can help with such decisions already being used by Autodesk customers. Anagnost said that the focus on refining AI workflows will benefit designers and construction professionals and will necessarily make construction project processes change. "These agents will get so smart that the whole concept of a request for information gets erased over time," Anagnost said. "When we talk about convergence, we're actually talking about the time between a design and make decision or a design and make trade-off going to zero or near zero, and in that world, you actually catch an RFI before an RFI is ever created."