At the 2007 Greenbuild Expo,Autodesk Inc.and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) presented an update on their ongoing collaboration to expand the use of technology to facilitate adoption of sustainable design and green building. Autodesk also showcased a technology concept for a new sustainability analysis dashboard that could be used in combination with the Revit platform for building information modeling (BIM) to provide architects, engineers and designers with real-time graphical feedback about the impact of their design decisions on the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating of a project.

Autodesk’s proposed sustainability dashboard concept, showcased during the opening plenary session of 2007 Greenbuild Expo, could facilitate sustainable design and LEED certification by, for example, enabling architects and designers to continually calculate such factors as use of energy and municipal water, storm water runoff, recycled material content, carbon footprint, daylighting and potential LEED rating. The dashboard could also be used to track LEED points through the design process to help achieve additional points that would increase the overall LEED score. The dashboard was presented by Autodesk and the USGBC as a technology concept, but it is not a commercially available product.

At the USGBC’s Formal Education Committee’s Educator Summit, Autodesk also launched the first version of the new Autodesk Sustainable Design Curriculum. Now available for free to post secondary educators worldwide through the Autodesk Student Engineering & Design Community Faculty Lounge, the Autodesk curriculum will enable educators to promote sustainable design practices and integrate BIM techniques and technology into the classroom and studio.