State of Design and Make 2025 – Autodesk AI

Having had time to digest the latest Autodesk State of Design and Make Report for 2025, it’s time to discuss some of the insights offered by this year’s statistics and opportunities brought about, by the findings. At first glance, the reports sees quite a few areas with downward trends, but that isn’t to say all the new is negative and with the current economic landscape, it’s not unprecedented.

I have chosen for this article to focus in on some of the feedback around AI and have taken some of the information shared around insight 4 of the report: ‘The AI hype cycle meets reality’, starting with the below article.

So as stated, AI possibly isn’t as ready to challenge our business landscapes as much now, as we has previously thought. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t be keeping an eye on what’s happening. If you haven’t been watching until now, where better to start than to take account of where things stand at present and assess some of the tools that are available to us right now within the Autodesk portfolio of products. I have chosen a few example that are available now in the Product Design and Manufacturing Collection.

Starting with AutoCAD, Autodesk have released a new mark up feature which makes use of machine learning and cloud computing, to assist the drawing markup process. This tool is helpful but also could well be a prelude to things to come. For now, this tool is able to bring in and directly overlay markups from a PDF or image, into our AutoCAD drawing space.. but who’s to say there isn’t a future where tools like this actually affect the markups automatically.

In Fusion, there are two AI features, one of which is actually long established and has been used in many successful projects already; Generative Design. Generative Design in Fusion allows users to explore multiple AI generated design alternatives, based on specific constraints goals and manufacturing methods.

The newer feature to be added to Fusion in the form of AI enhancements is the drawing automation tool. This tool helps users create automated 2D drawings from a 3D model in Autodesk Fusion. A tool like this can help businesses generate consistent drawing results without any manpower, leaving more time for designers to model, rather than product documentation.

Autodesk have stated their commitment to investing in AI technology and the particular areas of interest for that investment are focused around three main areas; Analysis, Augmentation and Automation. So, although the initial few examples shown today are not quite life changing at this stage (however, still very impressive), we are super excited about what the future of AI in design and manufacturing holds.