Generative Design - Student Version

[Aadithya01]

Hey Guys ,

We are running an Autodesk Authorized Training Center here at India. And part of job contains training students at our center. 

I showed the Generative Design capabilties to some of my students and they were astonished to see it's capabilities .. I would like to ask if there are any student versions available for Generative Design so that my students will be able to explore our new design technology. 

Looking forward for your reply. 

[michael_smell · Accepted solution]

Hi @Aadithya01 - 

Thanks for reaching out on this topic. As you have found, today, we do not have a path to get students access to the generative design technology, short of purchasing a commercial license. We understand the desire for students to start working with this technology and we are actively working on a strategy to expand access for this scenario. I cannot promise a short term solution, but please stayed tuned as we are hoping to address this in the future. 

Thanks, 

Mike Smell - Product Manager, Fusion 360 - Generative Design and Simulation

[Anonymous]

would definitely like to see a student version as well

[Aadithya01]

Hi @michael_smell

Thanks a lot for your reply. Looking forward to see the student version in future. . 

[lucasliraAU]

I believe to be an extremely important resource for the development of research and applications for the development of new products with the use of this tool within the academic scenario.

[thomasspieg]

Hello, if Autodesk doesn't want to lose students and educators it must soon give access to Fusion Ultimate Generative Design. Unfortunately, I'm seeing many students deciding to use Rhino and Grasshopper bc Autodesk does not support this workflows for academia, yet. How long will it take? Most US colleges start soon new courses and studios. Thank you, TS

[TrippyLighting]

@thomasspieg The functionality offered by Rhino/Grasshopper is totally different from what Autodesk calls Generative Design, which is really better called Generative Engineering. Did you do any research before making your post ?

[thomasspieg]

Unfortunately, we have no educational access to test and compare Fusion 360's Generative Design for peer-reviewed publications but we do have testing experience with Autodesk REVIT-Robot Structure and Dynamo nodes (mostly alpha and beta versions) for generative design and engineering optimization workflows.  

When is Autodesk ready to give educational licenses for the Fusion 360 Generative Design Installer?

[MikeSmell_ADSK]

Hi @thomasspieg - 

Thanks for reaching out on this topic. As I posted earlier this in this thread, we do not have a solution in place to deploy Generative Design to students. Please note, this is not our long-term intent and we do want to make sure that we have an proper process in place to deploy Generative Design to students. I can not comment on a timeline at this time, but I can assure you that we are actively working on a strategy for solving this. I would ask for your patience while we continue to develop the product and our deployment strategies. 

Thanks, 

Mike Smell

Product Manager, Fusion 360 - Generative Design and Simulation

[lichtzeichenanlage]

I'm not a student, just a hobbyist interesting in technology (that might be based on my development background). Isn't a offline version a solution? Which calculation times would it mean? 

[mavigogun]

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@lichtzeichenanlage wrote:

I'm not a student, just a hobbyist interesting in technology (that might be based on my development background). Isn't a offline version a solution? Which calculation times would it mean? 

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It sure seems Autodesk is intent on retaining GD as a service.   While I'd very much prefer to run a process locally, I, too, wonder if that is viable, time wise- just how much processing power do the Amazon servers provide?   Does 5 minutes on their server farm equate to hours or days on my machine?

Allowing students/hobbyists to pay for the service would be great- but I can understand retaining GD capacity as a subscription hook.     Aside from "we're looking into it" or "we're working on it", I'd just like to know what Autodesk intends.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

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@mavigogun wrote:

It sure seems Autodesk is intent on retaining GD as a service.  

That's true. But for other parts of the application that are cloud based they do offer offline alternatives (rendering, parts of simulation)

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@mavigogun wrote:

 I, too, wonder if that is viable, time wise- just how much processing power do the Amazon servers provide?   Does 5 minutes on their server farm equate to hours or days on my machine?

Allowing students/hobbyists to pay for the service would be great- but I can understand retaining GD capacity as a subscription hook.     Aside from "we're looking into it" or "we're working on it", I'd just like to know what Autodesk intends.

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That's nothing you can tell by looking at a black box. Look at this 6 year old demonstration from googles servers. The video is just 4 minutes long, but you get a sense of what scalability means. And they can do more today.

I never worked with Amazon services, but unless they're competitors I guess they're comparable. 

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@mavigogun wrote:

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Allowing students/hobbyists to pay for the service would be great- but I can understand retaining GD capacity as a subscription hook.     Aside from "we're looking into it" or "we're working on it", I'd just like to know what Autodesk intends.

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My understanding is, that they have a "max coin limit" and that's fine if they offer offline alternatives. So people can decide to spend money (and GD costs a lot) or to spend time. Even today's approach to limit the result (like resolution for renderings) is a totally valid for me.  

[HughesTooling]

Saw this post about what would be needed to run Generative design.

And if you're prepared to pay then you could pay for one month of Fusion then for the cloud credits to run the simulations.

Mark

[mavigogun]

All things considered, Autodesk has made the tech relatively accessible; it was represented to me that at 25 Cloud Credits for processing a batch of candidates, the price was, essentially, at cost.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

25 Credits a batch? I thought per candidate. Any hinds about complexity of the design. Should matter, right?

[mavigogun]

Ya, I reckon design complexity should matter- but what do I know, really?  (I was just speculating on running the process locally!    Well, maybe in another 10 years, if Moore's Law applies.)   I don't recall any mention of it made at the workshop I attended.   25 credits for 10 (?) iterators, 100 to download the chosen product.

[MikeSmell_ADSK]

Hi folks, 

Just to clarify some comments from above. 

A generative design study costs 25 cloud credits. For a given study, complexity can vary. Specifically, you can have multiple load cases, multiple materials, multiple manufacturing constraints and the general number of obstacles and preserves can vary. This means that the number of outcomes can vary for a given study. Regardless of the number of outcomes for a single study, the cost per study is still 25 cloud credits. 

Downloading a generative design outcome is 100 cloud credits. 

I hope this clarifies things on this front. 

Thanks, 

Mike Smell - Product Manager - Generative Design and Simulation

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Thanks for clarifying the details. The first part would not scare me , because I appreciate the value of the effort. The second part - the one with $100 - is the killer. At least for a hobbyist like me.

[Aadithya01]

Hi @michael_smell @MikeSmell_ADSK  , 

Is there any new information for the student access of Autodesk generative design ?