Autodesk introduces free Sustainability Resources for Engineering Students, Educators

Autodesk, a leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, has unveiled Autodesk Sustainability Workshop, an online portal of educational content providing mechanical engineering students and teachers with the resources they need to practice sustainable design. The Workshop features lessons that illustrate the principles and practice of sustainable design, such as Whole Systems Design and Lightweighting. The tools and resources on the Workshop are free* of charge and available to anyone interested in learning about sustainable design.

“Sustainable design is a profound and business-altering factor in today’s global economy, crosscutting almost every industry that today’s students are graduating into,” said Joe Astroth, Ph.D., Autodesk chief education officer. “Our challenge is to train new engineers to think differently, and more broadly, about their special responsibility as drivers of sustainable behavior. As a result, our engineering schools are training grounds enabling future engineers to learn the practice of Digital Prototyping and make better-informed decisions about the environmental performance of their designs, radically influencing the future of our world.”

Featuring online videos, presentations, tips, tools and tutorials, the Workshop applies the principles of sustainability to real-world design and engineering challenges, such as optimizing a design for more efficient use of energy, water and materials. In addition, educators and students can download free* Digital Prototyping software from the Autodesk Education Community, to explore and test the concepts and lessons learned through the Workshop.

The Autodesk Sustainability Workshop is part of the company’s ongoing effort to help millions of architects, designers and engineers worldwide radically transform the built world by making sustainability easy and accessible. Equipping mechanical engineering students with the knowledge, principles and practice of sustainability helps them to create a better world through better design and engineering.

“The development of the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop has been exciting on many levels. Thinking back five years ago, or even one year ago, mechanical engineering students didn’t have good resources available to think about sustainable design practices,” said Jeremy Faludi, a lecturer for the Joint Program in Design at Stanford University and collaborator on the Workshop. “This Workshop provides students with inspiration, technical depth on implementation, and innovative sustainable design strategies. I’m looking forward to collaborating further with Autodesk, as well as students, to continue developing new sustainable design tools and resources as this industry focus continues to grow.”

Since its launch in 2006, the Autodesk Education Community has grown to more than 1.3 million members in 145 countries. Autodesk continues to collaborate with faculty and education organizations to provide curricula, tools and resources to better prepare students for careers in architecture, engineering and digital arts. This unique perspective helps to drive change in the fields of design and engineering education, encouraging student engagement and creating a better learning experience in the classroom.

“The Autodesk Sustainability Workshop is about applying existing design tools and techniques to enable sustainable design and covering a gap left by most engineering curriculum,” said Paul Burgeson, a student in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, and an early adopter of the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop. “Examples of real applications, tutorials on the techniques used in those applications and new ways of thinking for designing sustainability are presented to give students the tools they need to design the next generation of products.”