APS (Forge)

  • I'm currently up in the mountains with my family, enjoying the annual school closure for the kids' "ski week". I recognise we're especially lucky, this year, given that a) Swiss ski resorts are open and b) our kids are at school physically rather than remotely. Spring seems to be hitting early, this year, but even if the snow's a little soft, the sun is very welcome. Here's a shot where we're sitting at the top of a run as a rescue helicopter takes off (this is never good to see, but it is often impressive): Yesterday we went to another…

  • I added a "simple" feature to Project Dasher (although it's not live just yet) the other day, that I think is worth sharing some information about – especially as from a UX perspective it's completely hidden and amounts to an Easter egg. For a particular project I've been searching through sensor data for time periods that tell an interesting story. In Dasher the simplest way to explore the data for one or more sensors (as you can add multiple sensors to a single chart by holding down the Shift key when you click on a sensor) is to use our…

  • Last week I mentioned some feedback I'd received from our HCI & Visualization team regarding the possibility of animating the heatmaps in the Types By Level UI. (Prior to this the Types By Level feature has really just been a legend for quick access to per-level heatmaps: I stopped short of attempting to animate the individual heatmaps while the timeline is playing.) For some background, the Types By Level feature is a stack of "cards" that each displays data from a particular sensor type for a specific floor using a 2D heatmap. These cards are rendered as individual textures –…

  • Last week I had a valuable discussion with members of our talented HCI and Visualization research team. They had reached out with the offer to perform "live science" review session for other teams' research projects – with a particular focus on Human Computer Interaction and Visualization, of course – and I jumped at the opportunity. We sat down and talked through some of the recent work that had been done in Project Dasher to implement a multi-level UX that allows users to go from a top-level summary view to bring up individual 2D heatmap panels and a central 3D heatmap.…

  • At the beginning of March our Developer Advocacy and Support team will be running its annual series of DevDays Online events. The first week will focus on public information – mainly news related to the Forge platform – while the second week will be for Autodesk Developer Network members, and focus mainly on our desktop products and APIs. You can find more complete information here, and register via the links below: For everyone March 2 – DevDays Keynotes – Jim Quanci March 3 – Forge API update – Augusto Goncalves March 4 – Autodesk Construction Cloud and API update –…

  • Just before the holiday break I had an interesting chat with Elias Cohenca (someone I've mentored on and off over the last few years). He was about to participate in his 6th annual hackathon in the Tel Aviv office, and wanted to bounce a few ideas off me regarding technologies. Our Tel Aviv office has held these hackathons – named Bazinga, after Sheldon Cooper's catchphrase in the Big Bang Theory – since 2015. Elias has used the hackathon to try out some really interesting concepts, over the years, from adding BIM 360 issues into a mixed-reality environment using HoloLens to…

  • Last week was a big week for the team developing the Data Visualization Extension (codenamed Hyperion) for the Forge viewer. And for the Dasher team, of course, who were very excited to see what our development partners can do with the new Dasher-like capabilities being built into Forge. As it's still early days for the extension, the decision was made to limit the number of organisations (I won't say companies, as a university was included) who would work with Hyperion to just 5. With hindsight this was a very wise decision, as there were a number of teething issues with…

  • My friend and incredibly inspiring former colleague, Mickey McManus, has been co-hosting a regular (I want to say weekly) live-streamed event under the name of Quarantime. They've just posted the 51st episode (which means they must be doing this more than once per week) which featured another friend and current colleague, Alec Shuldiner. Alec has been the real workhorse driving forward the MX3D Smart Bridge project and Autodesk's involvement in it. He joined Quarantime to talk about the project in the context of our cities' future digital infrastructure. Here's a snapshot with Project Dasher as a backdrop: It's really a…

  • During the last week the kids have been opening their Advent calendars, we had a visit from St. Nicholas (I've talked before about this central European tradition), and the Candy Cane accelerator has kicked off. All-in-all things are starting to feel very festive! (And yes, Dasher is one of Santa's reindeer, so there's that, too.) The accelerator has upwards of 30 companies and academic partners in attendance, with 5 or so of these focused on "building their own Dasher" using the upcoming Data Visualization Extension for the Forge viewer (Project Hyperion). Yesterday I presented a session on Project Dasher to…

  • Forge Accelerators have always been BYOD. First they were "Bring Your Own Device", then (on going virtual) they were also "Bring Your Own Drinks" and now for the upcoming event – on December 7-11 2020 – we're giving people the opportunity to "Build Your Own Dasher". BYOD3! Attendees at the Candy Cane accelerator (love those codenames) will get early access to to the Forge viewer's Data Visualization Extension – and the source code for the reference application that shows how to use it – which will greatly simplify the process of building a Digital Twin using Forge. (Something that was…