Autodesk is pushing AEC toward connected cloud workflows and AI. The bigger opportunity isn’t automation. It’s software that cares more about the design than the commands. Reliability, data control, and firms that can’t go all-in on the cloud are still open questions.
Autodesk is making one of its biggest changes to architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) software in years. And I don’t think AI is the biggest story.
The real story is the move away from individual applications and files toward a connected environment where project data, design tools, and AI work together. Right behind that is something I’ve wanted for a long time. Software that focuses on what designers are trying to do instead of the commands they have to run to do it.
At Autodesk University 2026, Autodesk laid out a future where Forma is the center of AEC. Civil 3D is joining as a Forma Connected Client. More Revit workflows will move into Forma over time. AI will pick up more of the repetitive work in design, documentation, and coordination. If Autodesk delivers, that’s not a list of features. It’s a different way of working.
One thing to keep straight: a lot of what Autodesk announced is planned, in beta, or in preview. Not much of it is something you can put on a production project today.
I’ve been around Autodesk technology for more than three decades, 25 of those years working at Autodesk. I watched the industry go from manual drafting to computer-aided design (CAD), from 2D drawings to intelligent models, from local files to cloud collaboration. Every one of those shifts made things better. Every one of them also brought problems nobody mentioned on stage.
Amy Bunszel’s September 15 article lays out where Autodesk is headed with Forma and AI. On paper, a lot of it is encouraging. Less duplicated work. Project information that actually moves between disciplines. More time designing and less time wrangling the software. That’s the pitch, anyway.
But engineering firms still need references they can trust, control over their own project data, compatibility with the workflows they have today, and a way to meet strict client and government security requirements. Some projects can’t go into a typical cloud environment or touch an externally hosted AI service. Period.
So the measure of Autodesk’s vision isn’t how many applications connect to Forma or how many AI features ship. It’s whether design work gets more reliable, whether we waste less effort, and whether firms get real choices about how and where they work.
Civil 3D is joining Autodesk Forma
This one’s big for civil engineering. Civil 3D will become a Forma Connected Client, so Civil 3D, Revit, and Forma can share project information through reference based interoperability.
Civil engineers already spend a surprising amount of time managing references and keeping data coordinated between drawings and applications. Survey data, surfaces, alignments, corridors, pipe networks, utilities, xrefs. All of it has to work together. Add architects and structural engineers and it gets messy fast.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately digging into Civil 3D drawing dependencies. Broken references, circular references, and the performance problems they cause. The technology is powerful, but keeping all those relationships straight is real work. Autodesk wants teams to use the same project information across applications without rebuilding or converting it every time.
Good goal. The details are what I care about. References have to stay reliable. Changes have to be predictable. Users have to know where their data is coming from. If you’ve ever burned an afternoon chasing a Civil 3D reference problem, you know exactly why.
Autodesk says Civil 3D is still a critical product and it will keep investing in it. Forma is meant to connect and extend those workflows, not replace Civil 3D overnight. That’s the right thing to say. I’ll judge it by what shows up in future Civil 3D releases, not by the FAQ.
Forma Street Design puts the design ahead of the commands
Forma Street Design is a new tool for early transportation and urban street planning. Designers can evaluate lane configurations, intersections, and vehicle turning movements in a real world context.
What got me is the approach. For decades, CAD has made us think in commands, tools, dialogs, and interfaces. We spend years learning to operate the software. Sometimes we spend more time figuring out how to make it do something than thinking about the design.
From what Autodesk has shown, Forma Street Design flips that. The experience is built around the street, not the CAD commands and the mechanics of making geometry. You explore alternatives, adjust intersections, check vehicle movements, and see the results in context. It’s about design decisions, not operating CAD.
I’ve believed for a long time that design software should work this way. Engineers should be solving problems and testing ideas, not memorizing commands or clicking through dialog after dialog. The software should understand what we’re trying to do and help us get there.
Autodesk also plans for those designs to move into Civil 3D for detailed engineering without recreating the work. That matters. Early planning happens in one set of tools, detailed engineering happens in another, and somewhere in between someone rebuilds the geometry or guesses at the original design intent.
If Forma Street Design can carry that intent and the useful design data into Civil 3D, that’s a lot of saved time. But it isn’t in beta yet. Right now there’s a waitlist and a customer video on Autodesk’s site. I want to see it on real engineering projects before I get too excited.
A common geolocation engine. Finally?
This won’t get the AI headlines, but it got mine. Autodesk is building a shared geolocation engine and workflows across Forma, Revit, and Civil 3D.
If you’ve ever fought survey coordinates, coordinate systems, drawing units, or a model that lands in the wrong place, you know this has been a headache forever. Even attaching an xref gets complicated when applications or drawings read units differently.
I’ve been chasing differences in how Civil 3D versions handle unitless drawings and reference scaling. A drawing that attaches correctly in one version can land differently in another. Now multiply that across several design applications. A common geolocation foundation could help. To be fair, coordinate system consistency and insertion unit behavior aren’t the same problem, so this won’t fix everything.
Autodesk also announced deeper integration with Fugro GeoDin and GroundIQ and with Esri ArcGIS, which brings more geospatial and subsurface data into project workflows. For civil work, reliable real world context isn’t optional.
What I want to see is how it handles existing drawings, coordinate transformations, legacy projects, and all the weird stuff we hit in production. The promise sounds good. The details decide whether it’s useful.
Autodesk is being pretty clear about Revit’s future
Autodesk says that over time more of the work done in Revit today will happen directly in Forma. Design, analysis, coordination, and documentation.
The FAQ in Autodesk’s article asks whether Forma will replace Revit. The answer is yes, over time, with more Revit workflows moving into Forma. That’s a big statement, and I appreciate that they just said it.
Autodesk says there won’t be a sudden transition and it will keep investing in Revit to give customers a practical path. What that path means for existing projects, families, add-ins, and training is the part I want spelled out. But the direction isn’t hard to read anymore. Forma is meant to be the primary connected environment for AEC, with the desktop applications plugged into it.
We’ve been here before. AutoCAD didn’t end drafting overnight. Building information modeling (BIM) didn’t end 2D drawings. Cloud collaboration definitely hasn’t ended file management. These transitions take years, and old and new workflows live side by side the whole time.
If you’re a Revit user, a BIM manager, or the person making long term technology decisions for your firm, start planning for it now.
AI that actually helps with the work
And of course there was AI. Autodesk says AI in Revit will help complete room elements, optimize annotations, and automate documentation across multiple views. Forma Site Design will use Autodesk Assistant to answer questions about project sites, and Building Layout Explorer will generate and compare multifamily layouts against a client’s unit mix.
The one I keep coming back to is Drawing Compliance Review, planned for early 2027. It’s meant to check drawing packages against building codes, design standards, and owner requirements.
Think about that as a CAD manager. Most engineering firms have CAD standards covering layers, naming, annotation, drawing organization, and documentation. Checking compliance eats time. Some of it can be automated today. A lot of it still takes experienced people looking at drawings.
If AI can reliably flag issues before drawings go out the door, that’s worth a lot. Reliably is the key word. I’ve spent enough time troubleshooting CAD software and digging through crash reports to know automation has to be predictable. A checker that throws false positives or misses real problems is just one more thing to manage.
AI should help people make better decisions, not make questionable ones for them. Autodesk says professional review stays part of these workflows. Good.
Moving beyond files
Forma Data Management deserves more attention than it’s getting. To be clear, it isn’t brand new. It’s what Autodesk Docs became when Autodesk folded its construction cloud into Forma. The new part is what’s being built on top of it.
For decades we’ve organized engineering projects around files. DWGs, RVTs, PDFs, spreadsheets, and everything else that goes into delivering a project.
We build folder structures, set naming standards, manage references, and try to keep it all coordinated. Then we spend a surprising amount of time fixing things when those relationships break.
Autodesk is moving toward project information that’s connected and less tied to individual files. Tracking changes, understanding how information relates, managing approvals, and making data available across workflows. There are new tools for searching drawings, comparing revisions, managing access, and tracking issues.
Today a lot of the CAD and BIM manager’s job is managing applications, files, configurations, and standards. As project data gets more connected, the job shifts toward managing information relationships, interoperability, automation, and data quality, with AI as one more tool in the kit.
That’s a real change in what it means to run a CAD or BIM environment.
Connecting construction to the design process
Autodesk also announced construction improvements in Forma. Bidding workflows, model coordination, AI generated project insights, and automated field reporting. The Daily Log Agent turns spoken field updates into structured daily reports. There are also AI agents for document search, submittal reviews, and bid processing.
Some of this is existing functionality moving under the Forma name. Forma Bid, for example, is BuildingConnected bidding brought into Forma, and it’s in beta. That’s not a knock. You just want to know what’s new and what’s rebranded.
The goal is to keep information connected as projects move from design into construction. Makes sense. We’ve all watched important information get lost between phases, or watched a construction team find a problem that should have been caught months earlier.
Keeping project context and decisions available the whole way through could cut a lot of that waste.
The cloud has real advantages, but not every project can go there
I get the benefits of cloud computing. The cloud has far more compute than any CAD workstation or laptop, plus the ability to manage large datasets, complex references, and project information across teams and offices. Some of what cloud and AI make possible just isn’t practical on a desktop.
I see real potential there. Better management of design dependencies. More horsepower for analysis. AI that helps us make sense of complex project data.
But not every customer or project can move to a cloud hosted environment or use an externally hosted AI service. Autodesk needs to plan for that.
Plenty of engineering and design firms work on government projects or under contracts with specific security, data residency, and privacy requirements. In the U.S., firms on certain Department of Defense contracts may be subject to Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) requirements for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Other agencies and private clients have their own rules about where project information can be stored, processed, and shared. For certain CUI workloads, cloud providers may also need to meet specific federal security requirements.
Cloud and AI aren’t automatically off the table. The work is proving that a specific service, environment, and workflow meets the requirements. That means security assessments, contract approvals, and controls over how project information is handled.
And here’s the thing. We don’t write those requirements. Our government and private clients do.
Autodesk can ship new cloud and AI features every year. Government security frameworks, procurement policies, and contract language move at a much slower pace. A firm may not be allowed to use a technology on a project even when the benefits are obvious. The same firm might use Forma and AI on one project and have to keep the next one locked down.
So here’s what I’d ask Autodesk. Will there be cloud environments that meet the requirements of regulated customers? Options for private hosting, local processing, or AI that doesn’t send sensitive project data to an outside service? Will Civil 3D and Revit keep the capabilities we need when cloud connectivity isn’t allowed, without requiring a connection to Forma?
And the big one. Will customers who can’t adopt the latest cloud features still get meaningful improvements in their desktop design tools?
This isn’t just an IT security question. For some firms it decides whether they can adopt Autodesk’s future workflows at all.
I don’t want Autodesk to slow down. Keep pushing. But customers whose projects can’t move at the same pace need a practical path, and that path has to be part of the product strategy. Not something we’re left to work around.
What I really want to see next
I like where Autodesk is going, especially connecting Civil 3D, Forma, Revit, and geospatial data. But I spend a lot of my time in the reality of production software, and that’s where the real test happens.
I want to see these connected workflows on large projects, with complicated references, older drawings, and teams spread across multiple offices. I want to know what happens when someone changes a referenced design, works offline, opens a project in a different version, or has to recover from a problem.
How do firms manage their existing CAD standards? How does data get validated? What happens when the cloud service goes down? How much control do firms keep over their own information?
None of that is a reason to avoid new technology. Those are the questions that need good answers before firms can adopt it with confidence.
Another big shift in how we design
I started with AutoCAD when CAD was still replacing manual drafting in a lot of offices. Since then I’ve watched intelligent objects, 3D modeling, BIM, reality capture, cloud collaboration, and automation change how people design and build. AI and connected project data are the next push.
But here’s what really interests me. For decades we’ve bent the way we work to fit the software. We learned commands, memorized shortcuts, clicked through dialogs, and built complicated workflows for what should be simple design tasks.
Tools like Forma Street Design suggest we might finally be going the other direction, with software adapting to how people actually design. The focus is the road, the building, the infrastructure. Not the commands it takes to draw them.
I don’t think the biggest payoff comes from asking an AI assistant to draw something. It comes from cutting the repetitive work of managing information, coordinating changes, checking standards, and moving data between applications. That’s where a huge amount of time disappears today.
If Autodesk can make that work more reliable and less tedious, engineers and designers get more time for what they’re actually there to do. Design and solve problems.
Progress also means giving the customers who can’t move at the same pace real choices that work within their requirements.
After more than 30 years around Autodesk technology, I’m still excited about what’s next. I just want that future to work for everyone who depends on these tools, including the firms that can’t always use the latest cloud or AI features.
And I have plenty of questions, as usual.
Cheers,
Shaan
Source and image credits
Amy Bunszel, “How Autodesk Forma and AI are advancing a more connected future for AEC,” Autodesk News, September 15, 2026. adsknews.autodesk.com
All images courtesy of Autodesk, from the article above. Copyright 2026 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.
