Autodesk announces new data integration for design and operations

At the Autodesk University 2026 conference in Las Vegas, Autodesk announced new initiatives to connect data across the design, construction, manufacturing, and operational phases of a project lifecycle. The company is expanding its design and creation platform into the operational domain by utilizing Autodesk Tandem as an integrated operations platform.

Through new integrations between Autodesk Forma, Tandem, FlexSim, and MaintainX, the company aims to link design and manufacturing data with real-time operational data from physical environments. This allows users to verify the impact of changes before they are implemented and support stable asset operation through predictive maintenance. For example, Tandem can detect abnormal asset behavior and trigger maintenance workflows via MaintainX before a failure occurs.

Additionally, the integration of Tandem and FlexSim enables direct process simulation on the digital twin. This allows organizations, such as airports, to model scenarios like passenger flow at security checkpoints to test layout changes before physical implementation. Autodesk is also using AI to link Forma and Tandem, helping to build comprehensive digital twins by aggregating BIM and manufacturing data.