Through the Interface

This is without a doubt the coolest office Autodesk has anywhere in the world. Pier 9, on San Francisco's waterfront, houses the Autodesk Consumer Group, including the Tinkercad and Instructables teams, as well as members of Autodesk Research and visiting artists-in-residence. And it has the most phenomenal workshops, kitted out with cutting-edge technology.

I'd been hoping to visit for some time but this was really my first real opportunity since its official opening back in September. I wandered across from our 1 Market office (which is also pretty cool, but relatively lacking in toys 😉 with Gaurav Sachdeva, a colleague visiting from Singapore. Gaurav also happens to be a keen photographer, so I took advantage of his presence to get a few snaps using something better than my mobile phone. The images in this post were all taken by Gaurav.

On arrival we were lucky enough to bump into Guillermo Melantoni, the Tinkercad Product Manager, who very kindly offered to give us a tour (access is restricted to people who've gone through training on the equipment available there: it's just too dangerous to have tourists such as myself wandering around unsupervised).

Before we entered the workshop we were able to see some cool creations, such as 3D printed vinyl…

… and an Arduino-controlled drum kit:

We had to don protective specs to enter the workshop area, of course.

I can well imagine this is the kind of facility that Tony Stark would have at his disposal.

The equipment available was truly impressive: assuming you've followed the training you can use a waterjet cutter or an 11-axis CNC machine.

A separate area contained the 3D printers, of which there were many.

With the results on display, too, of course.

All in all it was an inspiring visit: Pier 9 is an incredibly creative environment and I hope the people working there realise how lucky they are to be housed in such an exceptional space. I'm really looking forward to visiting again!