Dive Brief:

• Trane Technologies is making data center reference kits available in Autodesk’s Revit building information management and Forma site design platforms, effective immediately, the companies announced.
• Trane and Autodesk teamed up in late 2024 to integrate Trane’s TRACE building systems engineering platform into Autodesk Revit to support engineering and design activities for a wide range of commercial building types.
• “Making Trane’s Data Center Reference Kits available in Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Forma brings thermal strategy into the workflows where key design decisions are made,” Oakley Roberts, Trane’s president of data centers, said in a statement. “By addressing thermal strategy early, we can unlock new levels of performance and sustainability.”

Dive Insight:

Integrating the TRACE platform into Revit marked “a significant step forward in our mission to drive reduction of building emissions through optimization of the thermal management systems as part of the building design process,” Roberts, whose title was then vice president of innovation and product management, said in November 2024, when the partnership between the two companies was introduced. 

The companies said their initial collaboration would improve mechanical, electrical and plumbing design efficiency for Trane customers; improve coordination between architects and engineers; and lay the groundwork for AI-assisted design by removing manual steps and increasing accuracy throughout the process.

“Our strategic work with Trane Technologies underscores our commitment to addressing the critical workflow gaps faced by engineers today, while leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance the extensibility of Autodesk's platforms,” Autodesk vice president of AEC industry strategy Nicolas Mangon said at the time.

Company representatives used similar language to describe the more recent data center reference kits collaboration.

“By leveraging Forma and Revit workflows alongside Trane’s data center reference designs and energy modeling capabilities, project teams can collaborate earlier, make more informed decisions, and help deliver more sustainable, high-performance facilities faster,” Mangon said last week.

A reference design is a comprehensive solution blueprint for a specific technology, product or system that includes detailed schematics, layout files and documentation for designers and engineers to use throughout the development process, Trane says. The reference kits now available in Autodesk include Trane’s recently expanded thermal management reference designs for large-scale AI data centers running workloads on NVIDIA’s cutting-edge Vera Rubin chips.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this year that Vera Rubin server racks would be far simpler in design than racks holding previous chip generations, with a corresponding decrease in cooling system complexity. 

The racks themselves can be cooled entirely with non-water liquid coolant, while hot water — around 113 degrees Fahrenheit — manages heat rejection in the “white space” surrounding the racks. Huang said this design potentially eliminates the need for the heavy-duty chillers that have become fixtures in successive generations of data centers.