Companies that use Autodesk

L'Oréal Boeing Sodexo JLL GE NVIDIA Macy's Equinix EssilorLuxottica Veolia

We dug into our own data to find which companies are using Autodesk. We also asked a few engineers and project managers from these companies to share us any interesting use cases they're using Autodesk for.

L'Oréal

Beauty & Personal Care · New York, NY · Maybelline, essie, Garnier, L'Oréal Paris

L'Oréal is the world's largest beauty company, with brands like Maybelline, Garnier, essie, Lancôme, and L'Oréal Paris sold across more than 150 countries. They have around 95,000 employees and reach billions of shoppers through drugstores, department stores, and beauty boutiques.

The thing L'Oréal uses Autodesk for is designing what their products look like on a store shelf. Before a new lipstick or nail polish hits a Walmart or a Sephora, someone has to figure out the actual physical display, including the wall it sits against, the kiosk in the middle of the aisle, the little shop-within-a-shop tucked into a department store. That work happens in 3D modeling tools like Autodesk's 3ds Max.

The designers building these displays are creating the global blueprint that every country then uses. So when L'Oréal launches a new Maybelline mascara, the team in New York renders the display in 3D, locks in the look, and ships those guidelines out to teams in dozens of countries who produce local versions of the same display.

It's a surprisingly high-stakes job. A bad display means a product gets lost on a crowded shelf, and a great one can make a shopper stop and pick something up. L'Oréal treats the 3D rendering work as the bridge between a brand idea on a designer's screen and the physical thing a customer actually walks up to.

The same approach runs across their brands. Whether it's essie nail polish in a small kiosk or a full Maybelline shop-in-shop inside a bigger retailer, the displays start as 3D models before anyone builds a single prototype.

Boeing

Aerospace & Defense · Arlington, VA · Commercial airplanes, defense, space

Boeing is the American aerospace giant that builds commercial jets like the 737 and 787, along with defense and space products. They have around 130,000 employees and sell to airlines, militaries, and space agencies in more than 150 countries.

The most interesting thing Boeing uses Autodesk for is managing the digital blueprints of their actual factories and office buildings. They have a dedicated team responsible for the 3D models and drawings of their entire real estate portfolio, including the giant Puget Sound aircraft plants in Washington state.

This work runs on Autodesk Revit and AutoCAD, with everything stored in Autodesk Construction Cloud. When an outside architect or contractor finishes a project on a Boeing facility, the drawings and 3D models they hand back become the official record of what was built. Boeing has a whole governance process around making sure those files meet their internal standards before they get accepted into the master archive.

The reason this matters is scale. Boeing isn't designing one building, they're keeping accurate digital records of dozens of massive industrial sites where airplanes are assembled. If the model of a factory floor is wrong, the next contractor who shows up to renovate or expand it has bad information to work from. So Boeing treats the model as the single source of truth and is moving older drawings off legacy storage into the cloud.

Sodexo

Facilities Services · Issy-les-Moulineaux, France · Food service, facilities management

Sodexo is a French company that runs the everyday operations inside other people's buildings. They handle food service, cleaning, and facilities management for big clients like universities, hospitals, and corporate offices, with around 426,000 employees serving 80 million people a day.

The interesting thing Sodexo uses Autodesk for is something called space design, which is essentially helping their corporate clients understand and manage their office buildings. Sodexo takes old 2D floor plans, often messy DWG or PDF files handed over after a renovation, and rebuilds them as detailed 3D models in Revit.

The work involves taking paper or digital plans of an office, cleaning them up, and turning them into a coordinated 3D model that includes the architecture along with the electrical systems running through the walls, both the high-voltage power and the low-voltage data and communication wiring. The result is a model that's accurate enough to actually plan around, not just a pretty picture.

Once the model exists, it has to stay current. Every time a wall moves or a circuit changes, the Revit file gets updated so it always reflects what's really in the building. That ongoing maintenance is a big part of the job.

Sodexo also uses Autodesk on the construction side of their business. When they manage renovation projects on a client's campus, the people running those projects rely on AutoCAD and other Autodesk tools to coordinate with contractors and read drawings on incoming jobs. So the same software shows up at two ends of Sodexo's world: building the digital twin of a finished office, and managing the physical construction work that changes those buildings in the first place.

JLL

Real Estate · Chicago, IL · Project management, design, facilities

JLL is a global real estate services firm. They help big companies design, build, and manage their offices, data centers, retail branches, and labs, with around 102,000 employees serving clients all over the world.

The most interesting thing JLL uses Autodesk for is acting as the owner's representative on data center construction projects for hyperscale clients, the kind of giant facilities that power cloud computing for the world's biggest tech companies.

Here's what that means in plain terms. When one of these data centers gets built, the actual design and construction is done by outside architects, engineers, and contractors. JLL's job is to sit on the client's side of the table and make sure everyone else is doing it right. That entire back-and-forth happens inside Autodesk Construction Cloud, which is the shared workspace where every drawing and 3D model gets uploaded, reviewed, and approved.

JLL reviews each model that comes in, then runs clash detection in Revit and Navisworks to catch problems like a pipe about to run through a structural beam. If something is off, they flag it and send it back. If it passes, they sign off and it becomes part of the official design record.

They also push the model further than just a quality check. JLL writes small automation scripts in Python and Dynamo to speed up repetitive modeling work, and they pull data straight out of the model to figure out how much material the project needs and when each phase should start. The same Revit file that shows the building also tells the team how much steel to order.

So Autodesk is essentially the desk JLL works from on these data center jobs. It's where they catch mistakes before they get poured in concrete, and where they turn a 3D model into the numbers and schedules that keep the project on track.

GE

Industrial Machinery · Boston, MA · Energy infrastructure, grid systems, nuclear

GE is a long-running American industrial company that's now focused on energy. They build the giant equipment that powers the grid, including high-voltage substations, generators, and small modular nuclear reactors, and they sell to utilities and energy companies in around 80 countries with about 100,000 employees.

The most interesting thing GE uses Autodesk for is designing high-voltage electrical substations in 3D. A substation is the unglamorous-looking facility you've probably driven past, full of transformers, switchgear, and steel structures, that takes electricity from a power plant or wind farm and steps it up or down so it can travel along the grid.

GE designs these substations entirely in Autodesk Revit, which most people associate with buildings but GE has adapted for electrical infrastructure. A modeler builds the whole site in 3D: the equipment, the cable trenches running underground, the lightning protection rods overhead, the grounding grid, and the structural steel that holds everything in place. Then they generate the 2D drawings the construction crew actually builds from straight out of that model.

The reason this matters is that substations are dangerous and expensive to get wrong. If a circuit breaker is six inches too close to a steel beam, you have a clearance violation and a safety hazard. By building the whole thing in Revit and running clash detection in Navisworks before construction starts, GE catches those problems on a screen instead of in the field.

NVIDIA

Computer Hardware · Santa Clara, CA · GPUs, AI computing, Omniverse

NVIDIA is the chip company behind the AI boom. They design the GPUs, the specialized processors, that train large language models and run things like ChatGPT, and they sell them to cloud providers, car companies, and researchers everywhere. They have around 46,000 employees and have become one of the most valuable companies in the world.

The most interesting thing NVIDIA uses Autodesk for is preparing 3D models of their own products, like GPUs and servers, so those models can be used in marketing visuals, simulations, and digital twins.

Here's the situation. NVIDIA's hardware engineers design every chip, board, and server in mechanical CAD tools, mostly Creo and SolidWorks. Those CAD files are extremely detailed and built for manufacturing, which means they have thousands of tiny parts and are way too heavy for anything except making the actual product. So NVIDIA has a team of artists who take those engineering files and rebuild them in Autodesk Maya, which is the tool used by film studios and game makers to create 3D scenes.

The artists clean up the geometry, swap engineering materials for visual ones that look right under stage lighting, and reorganize everything so it's light enough to render in real time. The output is a 3D version of an NVIDIA product that can show up in a keynote demo, a product launch video, or a virtual factory simulation, all without anyone having to remodel it from scratch each time.

This work feeds directly into NVIDIA Omniverse, which is their own platform for building digital twins and simulations. So Maya sits at the front of the pipeline, taking raw engineering data and turning it into clean assets that NVIDIA and its customers can drop into virtual worlds to plan factories, train robots, or just make a really good marketing video.

Macy's

Retail · New York, NY · Department stores, branded events

Macy's is the iconic American department store chain, with around 640 locations selling clothes, beauty products, and home goods to millions of shoppers. They have around 80,000 employees and a 160-year history that includes some of the most-watched live events in the country.

The most interesting thing Macy's uses Autodesk for has nothing to do with selling sweaters. They use it to design the floats for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Behind every Snoopy balloon and giant turkey float you see rolling down the streets of New York is a small team of design engineers building those structures in Autodesk Inventor. They start with concept sketches from the creative team, then turn them into detailed 3D models that account for the metal frame, the moving parts, and the weight distribution. The model has to be accurate enough that fabricators can build the real thing in a New Jersey warehouse and trust that it will hold up under hours of being towed through Manhattan.

The work is harder than it sounds because a parade float is essentially a custom-built vehicle that has to be safe, stable, and visually spectacular all at once. The engineers run weight and structural calculations on the model, pick the right mix of steel, aluminum, and wood, and produce the technical drawings the fabrication crew works from. They also generate the files that drive the CNC machines cutting out parts on the shop floor.

The same team handles the props and structures for Macy's other big moments too: the 4th of July fireworks displays, the annual Flower Show, and various holiday activations in stores. Whenever Macy's needs to build a one-of-a-kind physical object that thousands of people will see in person or on TV, the design starts as an Inventor file.

Equinix

IT Services · Redwood City, CA · Data centers, interconnection

Equinix is the company that runs the buildings the internet lives in. They operate over 260 data centers around the world, and pretty much every major cloud provider, network, and big enterprise has equipment plugged in at one of them. They have around 14,000 employees and are one of the largest data center operators on the planet.

The most interesting thing Equinix uses Autodesk for is running their entire global construction pipeline through a shared digital workspace. They build over 75 data centers a year, and every one of those projects, no matter where it's happening in the world, lives inside Autodesk Construction Cloud and BIM 360.

Here's why that matters. When you're building this many data centers at once across three continents, the hard part isn't designing one of them, it's making sure all of them follow the same standards and that the people in charge can actually see what's happening. Equinix has a small dedicated team whose job is essentially to be the librarians of all that construction data, setting up each project the same way, controlling who can access which files, and making sure the drawings and 3D models get organized consistently.

The 3D models themselves are built in Autodesk Revit by the architects and engineering firms Equinix hires, and those models become the source of truth for the whole project. Anyone working on the build, whether they're in London, Dallas, or Singapore, pulls the same files from the same place. When something needs to change, the change gets tracked.

The reason Equinix invests so heavily in this setup is speed. Cloud providers are demanding new data center capacity faster than ever, and Equinix can't afford to have each project reinvent its own filing system or use a different version of the design. By standardizing on Autodesk's tools across the whole portfolio, they can spin up a new project quickly and report on the status of all 75-plus builds from one central view.

EssilorLuxottica

Manufacturing · Paris, France · Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, lenses

EssilorLuxottica is the world's largest eyewear company. They make the lenses, frames, and sunglasses behind brands you've definitely heard of, including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, and the prescription lenses inside many of the glasses sold by your eye doctor. They have around 200,000 employees and operate stores like LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut.

The most interesting thing EssilorLuxottica uses Autodesk for is designing the glasses themselves. When a designer dreams up a new pair of Ray-Bans or a new Persol frame, that frame gets built as a 3D model in Autodesk Inventor before it's ever made.

The work happens at their design studios in Italy, where designers and engineers turn rough sketches into detailed 3D models that account for the metal hinges, the curve of the lens, the temple arms, and how every tiny piece fits together. They run finite element analysis on those models, basically a digital stress test, to make sure the frame won't snap when someone pushes them up the bridge of their nose for the thousandth time.

What makes this interesting is the scale. EssilorLuxottica isn't designing one pair of glasses, they're designing thousands of frames a year across dozens of brands and licenses. Inventor is where the design language of a brand gets translated into something that can actually be machined, molded, and assembled in a factory.

The company also uses Autodesk for their newer wearable tech ambitions, including the smart glasses they make with Meta. Building a frame that has to hold a battery, speakers, and a camera while still looking like a pair of Ray-Bans is a much harder mechanical problem than designing regular eyewear, and that work happens in the same 3D modeling tools.

Veolia

Environmental Services · Paris, France · Water, waste, energy management

Veolia is the French environmental services giant that handles water, waste, and energy for cities and industrial customers around the world. They run drinking water systems for tens of millions of people, treat sewage, manage hazardous waste, and operate energy plants for hospitals, factories, and entire municipalities. They have around 220,000 employees globally.

The most interesting thing Veolia uses Autodesk for is designing the water treatment plants themselves, which are essentially industrial factories full of pumps, pipes, tanks, and chemicals that take dirty water in one end and produce clean water at the other.

A modern treatment plant is a huge engineering challenge because the water has to travel through a precise sequence of processes, like filtration, chemical dosing, biological treatment, and disinfection, with hundreds of pipes connecting all the equipment together. Veolia builds these plants in 3D using Autodesk Plant 3D and Revit, which lets them lay out every pipe, valve, and piece of equipment in a digital model before they pour any concrete.

The 3D modeling approach catches an enormous number of problems early. By running clash detection in Navisworks, the engineers can see if a pipe is going to run straight through a structural beam or if there isn't enough room to actually install a pump. They also use the model to generate the isometric drawings the welders work from and to extract bills of materials so the procurement team knows exactly what to order.

Veolia also uses Autodesk Construction Cloud to manage the construction phase, including a major water project currently being built in Tampa. The cloud platform keeps the design models, drawings, RFIs, and submittals in one place so the field engineers, contractors, and the client can all work from the same up-to-date information.