For 30 years, the Autodesk University (AU) annual conference has brought together innovators in architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media and entertainment to share ideas, advance industry practices and explore opportunities for the future.
Autodesk is a multinational software company that pioneered computer-aided design, and its platforms are ubiquitous in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
“Almost every designer at Haskell is in an Autodesk product every day,” said Leah Royalty, Innovation Strategist with Dysruptek, Haskell’s innovation and venture capital arm. “At this conference, you gain a lot of insight on what’s to come in the following year and access information for big trends happening throughout the industry.”
Royalty was one of the presenters offering insight at AU 2023, held in mid-November in Las Vegas, when she joined Valentin Noves, Chief Executive Officer of e-verse, a Miami-based software development company, to lead a class on Steel Harmony, a plugin for Autodesk’s Revit platform.
Each year, Dysruptek stages a Shark Tank-like innovation contest called The Big Pitch, open to all Haskell team members with ideas to improve Haskell workflows. Steel Harmony, the brainchild of Structural Design Associate Haidyn Owens and Structural Engineer Ryan Duchanois, won the 2022 event, earning them a cash award and Dysruptek’s funding and support in developing their idea.
Haskell owns and operates Haskell Steel, a steel fabrication shop in Jacksonville, Florida. On a visit to the shop, Owens and Duchanois noticed a large stockpile – more than $1 million in value – of unallocated steel in the shop yard with no plan to stop the accumulation. These pieces were purchased for a project but rendered useless by change orders.
As structural specialists and frequent steel users, they recognized an opportunity to design using these already-purchased members. They reasoned that if they and their colleagues had access to this information during design, it could help lower project costs and shorten overall project duration.
The engineers proposed a Revit plugin to read the model and match any piece of steel in Revit
with any piece that could be replaced with the unallocated inventory. It would be augmented by having the plugin search the computer model of a facility during design, identify high-cost sections, and notify the user of a recommended replacement.
Haskell worked with e-verse to help build this workflow.
“In the presentation, Valentin went through the back-end development of the plug-in,” Royalty said. “I was able to narrate the story of how the technology came to creation, from Big Pitch to now, and Dysruptek’s facilitation of getting ideas moving after they are pitched. The presentation went really well, and people from other companies were very interested in what we have developed. It was exciting to get to share this story with AU.”
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