Trends in today’s economics are making design more important to the world than ever before. These are challenges Autodesk students and users face daily.  Autodesk gives them the technologies they need to address those challenges and take advantage of the opportunities they offer.  These challenges will not be solved in a single generation alone.

Challenges designers, architects, engineers, digital artists and STUDENTS face every day are:

• Climate Change and the Rising Cost of Energy: These trends are affecting the overall health of the planet and global cost of energy, giving rise to the sustainable design movement.
• Globalization: The digital life has enabled rapid globalization; now everyone can collaborate and compete with everyone else, increasing commoditization and the need for great design as a competitive differentiator.
• Infrastructure Boom: Globalization has helped to create a $40 trillion global infrastructure boom; this includes developed nations repairing and rebuilding, and emerging economies building, their infrastructures.
• The Digital Life: Keeping everything digital, and presenting it in that format, is becoming expected everywhere.

Education Industry Challenges

• Shortages in the quantity and quality of engineering graduates
• Universities have trouble attracting and retaining engineering students
• Postsecondary education has become a competitive global market
• Pressure to stay relevant drives institutions to change academic culture
• Industry is requiring a more well-rounded graduate – it is no longer about just the technical skills. Students must possess ‘soft skills’.

Here’s how Autodesk addresses these trends:

Collaborating with customers, educators, sustainability leaders, and policy makers shapes a more sustainable future, and accelerates industry segments such as clean technology.

• Providing learning resources to help students build their software skills
• Providing opportunities for students to practice their skills on real-world projects with Academic Software Discounts.
• Partnering with organizations that engage students outside the classroom with Student Software Discounts.
• Helping to build excitement around design and engineering careers

Autodesk creates software that will enable the artists and designers of tomorrow tell their stories. To create these stories students need to learn visual problem solving skills to bring their vision to life and craft a believable narrative around their ideas. This is what artists and designers do every day and the Autodesk 3D professional toolset gives them the tools to bring their imagination to life.

The Autodesk Industry Careers Framework for Games and Animation supports the Education Suite for Entertainment Creation. It introduces students to professional tools and expectations of a creative career in digital entertainment and visualization. Created BY industry professionals partnered with educators, featuring 3ds Max, Maya and MotionBuilder 2011.

The students of today will create a world we can only dream of at moment and we need to make sure they have the opportunity to explore the tools that can bring their stories to life in the decades to come.

Author: Amy Gritzinger