What’s New in Autodesk Forma – April 2024 Update

Hey! It’s the season of new launches at Autodesk, but of course, for us here at Forma, every week is launch week, and this last quarter has been as busy as ever. 

This last quarter we released 33 updates  

It feels like we’re really getting into the flow of things. I’ve been talking to devs around the office, and the consensus seems to be that our initial Forma launch jitters are subsiding. The teams are finding time to lift their eyes and focus from what’s directly in front of them and towards the horizon again. And if that’s not a sign of spring, then I don’t know what is! 

Since you’re here, let’s talk about what’s what from Forma since last recap! Oh, and if you want a deeper dive into it, sign up for our upcoming quarterly webinar, where Daria and I will be covering all the latest updates on April 23rd at 17:00CET/ 8:00am PST.  

The main themes of this last quarter could be summarized like this:

• The new tech preview of the Embodied Carbon Analysis for Forma supports Autodesk’s Total Carbon for Architects offering. Empowering architects to make informed decisions during all phases of design. 
• The beginning of integrated 3D sketch capabilities in Forma, we’ve started merging our design tools into one sweet suite. 
• More trust in analyses: By empowering architects with better visualization of analyses and their assumptions, your clients will feel even more confident in your design. 
• Labels and measurement tools in Forma, leave a note in your project and let everyone know. Draw and describe is a great exercise for both kindergarten children, and us architects.  
• Easier access for collaborators and a growing set of APIs to play with if you’re looking to get involved with Forma. 

Embodied carbon predictions when it matters. 

Did you know that the built environment is responsible for as much as 42% of the world’s annual global carbon emissions? Of these as much as 15% of these are embodied carbon, meaning the materials we put in our buildings. So, if what gets measured gets managed, this is one to measure for sure! 

We’ve released a tech preview of an embodied carbon analysis in Forma; now at the stage of design you’re at in Forma you likely haven’t developed the project enough to precisely account for what kinds of materials, structure and so on you’re going to decide on. But you’ll likely have a direction or idea of what it’s going to be. So based on this information only, and the designed conceptual massing, Forma leverages a machine learning model to estimate the embodied carbon of your design.  

How the team is expanding our 3D modelling capabilities in Forma. 

Designing software is a lot different than designing architecture. Since joining the tech world, understanding what makes a good MVP (minimum viable product) and what that means for future capabilities really bent my mind. To bring great capabilities to users, a software team will first make the smallest possible feature to prove that it works. Once that little piece of software works, the flood gates may open.  

Bringing the new 3D constraints feature out from the 3D sketch sub mode and directly into Formas’ main design mode is one of these MVPs. So, for now give your constraints setbacks, extrusions and anything else, and let’s see how this unravels! 

‘Trust me bro’ no more. Show, tell and explain what estimations and limitations your analyses have. 

Our analysis suite is perhaps the strongest contribution Forma brings to the AEC Collection at Autodesk currently. It’s a piece of the missing puzzle for all of us architects. By bringing data and proof of your design intent, you increase buy in from everyone involved. Analysis that both you and your client can trust is one of the keys to bringing good design to life.  

This quarter the team have made several upgrades to not only how you can filter and represent your analyses, but also compare and filter them down into higher levels of detail. For example, you can now filter your noise results by time of day, because as you may suspect, noise at night is worse than noise during the day. 

Labeling, measurements and more collaboration in Forma. 

I used to joke that moving from school to architecture school means replacing the papers of notes with doodling in the margin, with drawings that have notes in the margins. No set of drawings are complete without labels, measurements and notes. And Forma has recently introduced updates such as a neat measurement tool and a nifty Labels feature.  

This isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it’s a recognizable and immediately understandable feature that have been oft requested so I’m glad to see them come to Forma. Mark up your drawings before sharing with your collaborators, so they get more context on what’s what when they see your model.  

Oh, and now those project invite links last for 30 days, up from seven, and people can request access to projects if they’re not invited, should save us all a lot of time. 

Build with us; new HTTP APIs may be coming your way, developers! 

This last one is for the digital builders out there. We’re continuing to invest in the ecosystem around Forma, with things like an alpha release of HTTP APIs, where everything can break at any time, more and better documentation of the APIs, and developer accelerators all over the world it seems.  

Build with us. That’s the message that the product team wants me to shout out in the world, build with us!

Talk to anyone that has worked with our teams on building extensions, these guys really want to collaborate with you, and will share access to alpha features of stuff they’re working on just to see how they should expand on it with you. 

Who knew programmers could be so social? 

These are the main trends from this past quarter 

To keep up to date with the latest and greatest as they come out, I recommend following us on LinkedIn , keeping an eye on changes.autodeskforma.com or just checking out the great in-product guidance that the teams provide for their new features. 

Hope to see you in our quarterly product updates webinar April 23^rd at 17:00CET/ 8:00am PST, and if not, catch you next time!  

– Jesper