Autodesk Joins Open Design Alliance to Fast Track Improvements to Interoperability

Today, we’re pleased to share that Autodesk is becoming a member of the Open Design Alliance (ODA), a nonprofit technology consortium specializing in providing support and access to design file formats. This decision demonstrates our commitment to take meaningful steps towards improving our customers’ experience in the AEC space.

In one of my recent posts responding to some of the constructive criticism we’ve received from our architecture customers, we promised to do a better job of listening to our customers, engage in an open dialogue, and do better where we’ve fallen short. One of the areas highlighted was progress with our products on international data exchange standards, specifically the need to better support IFC, an open file format increasingly used by our AEC customers. With Autodesk’s membership in the ODA, we will accelerate our progress toward supporting this need. Those of you who know the history between Autodesk and the ODA will understand the importance we put on getting this functionality to our customers at an accelerated pace.

ODA’s IFC toolkit provides complete and flexible IFC interoperability for any desktop or web-based application. The toolkit, along with ODA’s commitment to supporting new IFC standards, means we can readily integrate new versions as they become ratified, ensuring more consistent data flow and a faster, more streamlined experience.

“ODA welcomes Autodesk as its newest member,” said Neil Peterson, ODA President. “Our tools will allow Autodesk to provide long-term support for IFC, and we look forward to working closely together to ensure the highest standards of quality are maintained.”

We know our customers use a variety of tools to achieve their goals. Our additional investments in adherence to IFC will address bottlenecks for data exchange between Autodesk and non-Autodesk products. We are committed to creating an environment where collaboration is efficient and seamless, and, looking ahead, envision a future that frees our customers from exchanging cumbersome files and embraces workflows that transfer just the data needed to achieve the desired outcome. In this future, new forms of collaboration and new ways of creating value are the norm and will extend the value of design data further downstream.

Our decision to join ODA is one of the many steps we are taking to continue fostering an open community and strengthen our partnerships across the industry. Customers can further this effort by joining the Autodesk product research community, which enables engagement with Autodesk development teams across all products and is open to everyone – whether or not you are an Autodesk customer. We hope you join and participate because your feedback is important to us. More importantly, we’re eager to shape the future of collaboration and interoperability with you.