Construction technology vendor Autodesk promised more investment in artificial intelligence workflows and data sharing at its annual Autodesk University user conference in San Diego. The company also detailed a future where granular data will flow from Autodesk authoring applications such as Revit, AutoCAD and Civil3D onto cloud platforms such as Autodesk Docs and Forma and also from partner companies such as geospatial information systems provider Esri.

Autodesk announced October 15 that Forma is now connected to Revit using Autodesk Docs via a translation connector. Amy Bunszel, Autodesk’s executive vice president of AEC, said that Docs is being set up as the company's AECO data repository where all project data can be connected, organized, and secured in a proprietary cloud-hosted database that can be accessed via Autodesk APIs and partner applications. She also said the company is now running a private beta for an API that gives access to Revit geometry, the actual parametric data of a design, free of files. Bunszel said project team members can access Revit model data via API, not requiring a file exchange such as in an RVT or IFC file, in the beta.