A Season of Momentum
The second quarter of 2025 has been an exciting period of innovation and collaboration across the AOUSD community. From groundbreaking technical releases to industry showcases and creative partnerships, our members continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with OpenUSD. Here’s a look at how AOUSD members have been making waves across industries and advancing the future of 3D interoperability.
Trimble
Bridging Physical & Digital
Announced May 11, 2025
Trimble took a significant step in expanding OpenUSD’s reach into surveying and geospatial applications with their article “Connect the Physical World to the Digital World with OpenUSD” published in The American Surveyor magazine on May 11, 2025. Written by Sean Snyders and Nathan Patton, this piece explains how OpenUSD’s interoperability underpins industry‑scale digital twins, from SketchUp’s new USDZ export to joint Trimble‑NVIDIA wind‑simulation workflows, while AOUSD working groups advance shared geometry and material standards.
AOUSD takeaway: Trimble’s work shows that open, interoperable data is no longer a “nice to have” it’s the backbone of modern infrastructure projects.
NVIDIA
AI Factories, Super-charged by OpenUSD
Announced at COMPUTEX 2025
NVIDIA made significant announcements at COMPUTEX 2025 that showcased the expanding role of OpenUSD in AI factory design and operations. The enhanced NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for AI factory digital twins now supports OpenUSD schemas, bringing new tools to simulate critical aspects of data center design including power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. This advancement enables engineering teams to design and test entire AI factories in realistic virtual environments, helping identify potential issues early in the development process.
The initiative includes partnerships with industry leaders Delta Electronics, Jacobs, and Siemens, joining existing collaborations with Cadence, Schneider Electric with ETAP, and Vertiv. Perhaps most notably, NVIDIA introduced the SimReady Standardization Workflow, a comprehensive framework for mapping the essential processes, roles, documentation, and technologies required to implement SimReady assets and capabilities.
- Preview the Blueprint on build.nvidia.com
- Dive into the SimReady docs on OmniDocs
AOUSD takeaway: Digital-first facilities are becoming the norm, and OpenUSD is the common language that brings every vendor to the same table.
Tech Soft 3D
30+ CAD Formats → USD, in One SDK
Announced May 20, 2025
Tech Soft 3D achieved a major milestone in May with the release of an experimental USD writer as part of their HOOPS Exchange software development toolkit (SDK). This breakthrough enables software developers to programmatically convert over 30 different CAD file formats to USD, including industry standards like STEP, IGS, SOLIDWORKS, CATIA, NX, JT, Inventor, and Creo.
This development represents a significant step toward making OpenUSD more accessible to the broader engineering and manufacturing communities, removing traditional barriers between CAD workflows and modern 3D content pipelines.
AOUSD takeaway: Toolmakers are meeting creators where they are, removing friction from the pipeline and giving legacy data a second life in OpenUSD.
Pickford
1. Cannes Next Showcase
Announced May 18, 2025
Pickford demonstrated OpenUSD’s growing influence in entertainment and interactive media through two notable initiatives in Q2. First, they hosted a screening at Cannes Next, the technology stream of the prestigious Cannes International Film Festival, on May 18th, showcasing their innovative approach to content creation.
2. “Whispers” Interactive Thriller
Announced June 3, 2025
Building on this momentum, Pickford announced a partnership with three-time Emmy winner Bernie Su to develop “Whispers,” an AI-driven interactive thriller where audiences collaborate in real-time to catch a killer, actively shaping the story as it unfolds. This project exemplifies how OpenUSD-enabled technologies are opening new frontiers in audience engagement and interactive storytelling.
AOUSD takeaway: Storytelling is becoming a participatory sport, and USD is proving it can carry both cinematic quality and real-time branching logic.
Bright Machines
Design for Automated Assembly (DFAA) Blog Launch
Announced May 22, 2025
Bright Machines contributed to the knowledge base with their blog post “Design for Automated Assembly: Building the Future of Electronics Manufacturing,” scheduled for publication on May 22, 2025. The post explores Design for Automated Assembly (DFAA) using Omniverse, emphasizing the value of open standards and the importance of being part of the AOUSD community.
AOUSD takeaway: When digital threads run on openUSD, hardware evolves at software speed, exactly what fast-moving electronics demand.
Spatial
Vision Pro-Native Collaboration Platform
Announced June 24, 2025
Spatial rolled out Analogue 2, the first end-to-end, no-code design platform built natively for Apple Vision Pro. Teams can review, iterate, and finalize high-fidelity projects together—in full 3D context, in real time, from anywhere. Crucially, Analogue 2 ships with native OpenUSD support, slotting straight into existing 3D pipelines and sidestepping the file-conversion headaches that have long slowed immersive production.
AOUSD takeaway: As spatial computing goes mainstream, OpenUSD is the glue that keeps multi-device workflows seamless—and Spatial’s early bet on the standard shows how fast the ecosystem is maturing.
The Power of Collaborative Innovation
These Q2 highlights demonstrate the breadth and depth of innovation happening across the AOUSD ecosystem. From surveying and geospatial applications to AI factory digital twins, from CAD integration to interactive entertainment, our members are proving that OpenUSD is truly a universal technology for 3D content interoperability.
What makes these achievements particularly significant is how they represent the collaborative spirit that drives AOUSD forward. Each innovation builds upon the foundation of open standards, creating opportunities for other members to leverage these advances in their own work. This virtuous cycle of innovation and collaboration is exactly what AOUSD was designed to foster.
As we move into the second half of 2025, we’re excited to see how these Q2 developments will inspire new applications, partnerships, and breakthroughs across our community.
The diverse expertise our members bring continues to strengthen the OpenUSD ecosystem and expand its real-world impact.
If your company is interested in joining the Alliance for OpenUSD, sign up to become a member. Follow AOUSD on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube, and get support from our community of artists, designers, and developers in our forum.
