OMG, Autodesk DID Discover AI

Like learning of Columbus discovering America in 1492 only to find out Leif Erikson had found it centuries before, we find that Autodesk had AI with its Design Graph technology in 2016, a dog’s life before ChatGPT kicked off the current AI frenzy.

It was in this 2016 post that Autodesk puts forth all the benefits of ML (machine learning) with Design Graph, a shape-based search.

What was Design Graph and How Did it Work?

If you were designing a vehicle, like a motorcycle, and you needed a part, like a gearbox, Design Graph would search through your company’s cloud-based design library (then called A360) for such a gearbox using a search based on name, shape, category and other properties.

While a search based on textual metadata is old hat, a shape-based search would have been a game changer. Many have tried but as of yet, none have come up with a good one.

“We created Design Graph to enable designers to focus more on solving design problems rather than the mechanics of representing their design,” said Mike Haley in 2016, then Sr. Director of Machine Intelligence at Autodesk. “Design Graph can save valuable time, eliminate redundant work and reduce costly errors.”

Clearly, Design Graph was a product ahead of its time, never emerging from the Lab, never to see the light of day. Was it the odd name? Was it ahead of its time? Did it not work as promised? Did Autodesk lose interest? Was CAD just in a geeky niche the rest of the world could ignore? Was it a combination, all of the above?

Whatever it was, Design Graph did not catch on.

In a recent interview on engineering.com, Mike Haley, the Leif Erikson of this story, politely reminds us of our failure to credit Autodesk with AI implementation. Clearly, Autodesk Labs, had landed on the promising technology of the future, but from the nerdy niche of design software, rather than in the mainstream of software (Microsoft and Google, with billions to spend, turning a big light on for all the moths (example: Microsoft’s $13B investment in OpenAI) whereas Autodesk, 8 years ago, had the punch but never got a shot at big time. I picture Mike Haley as Marlon Brando, whose Terry Malloy character in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront saying “I coulda been a contender, instead of being locked in a 7-way CAD race.”

Somehow that does not have the same ring to it.

*The seven CAD contenders are Autodesk, Bentley, Nemetschek, Trimble , Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Siemens.

Comments

[RobiNZ]

Put it on the 'too early, abandoned too soon' shelf next to Autodesk Architectural Studio...

[Ralph Grabowski]

Dassault is also claiming it was already using AI a decade ago.
I haven't figured out yet the reason for the marketing angle to the "We've been using AI all along" trope.

[Ralph Grabowski]

3D shape search is old technology that far pre-dates whatever Autodesk came up with. Here is an overview from 2005:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001044850400140X