APS (Forge)

  • On Wednesday morning I headed off at the crack of dawn to Geneva to fly back out to India. The sun was coming up across the lake – and the Alps behind it – as the train flew towards the airport. I changed flights in Heathrow, heading onwards to Bangalore. For once I had a World Traveller Plus seat – and a bulkhead, to boot – which I definitely enjoyed. The only downside was the combination of my aging Bose noise-cancelling headphones giving up the ghost partway through the flight with a tantruming toddler across the aisle from me. I…

  • The Autodesk University elves have been working day and night over the last few weeks to prepare 674 AU class recordings for posting to web. Some of my classes were livestreamed, this year, so I have already posted recordings for these. This post is just me gathering the various recordings together in a single post. Before that, though, I did promise a festive photo for each of the coming posts. Here's one I took this morning, when we woke to find that St Nicholas had passed by the house. The feast of St Nicholas – which is celebrated throughout much…

  • As the festive season is upon us, I've decided to start each post with a seasonal photo. Here's me with a reindeer/dog (reindog?) in the lobby of the hotel we stayed at in Hoofddorp. As mentioned in the last post, Sander Lijbers made the most of my vague suggestion to meet with a customer or two during my visit to the Netherlands by inviting many of the accounts he manages to a one-day event in our Amsterdam office. Everyone accepted – with some even flying in from the UK – so we had a really good, engaged group! Sander had…

  • After not being good for very much last week – while recovering from AU in Las Vegas – I headed back across to the Netherlands on Monday afternoon. In Geneva airport there was a large stuffed reindeer just sitting there. A huge thanks to Ben Rand for pointing out the obvious: that Rudolph is probably a big fan of Project Dasher! 🙂 I took the train from Schipol down to Delft, which was feeling very festive. I love Dutch train stations and the connectivity between multi- and two-wheeled transport. I had a very nice room in a hotel close to…

  • The Forge team has published details of a series of free webinars coming up over the next few weeks that take an in-depth look at the various Design Automation APIs for AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor and 3ds Max. Here are the dates and presenters for the various versions of the Design Automation API. All times are 8am Pacific. December 5th, 2019 | AutoCAD | Albert Szilvasy December 10th, 2019 | Revit | Sasha Crotty December 11th, 2019 | Inventor | Andrew Akenson December 12th, 2019 | 3ds Max | Kevin Vandecar For more details and to register, head on over to…

  • Wednesday and Thursday were my busy days at this year's Autodesk University in Las Vegas. After a breakfast meeting with a colleague from Toronto, I had my first class of AU2019 to deliver. It was a live-streamed class that was focused on advanced visualization (primarily of IoT data) using the Forge viewer. Somewhat unfortunately the class was scheduled at the same time as the AEC mainstage (more on this later), but that basically just meant that the room wasn't completely full and that most of the attendees were Forge-focused. As it was live-streamed the class recording is already available: Since…

  • A few days ago our friends at BIM Facility AG sent through a new version of the Revit model for the iconic NEST building. This version is much more complete: it has the award-winning Urban Mining and Recycling Unit modelled, as well as having a significant amount of additional detail (furniture, etc.) elsewhere in the building. The DFAB House has also received a makeover, getting more realistic materials, plus the ability to see into its ground floor and robotically-printed supporting wall. Considering all the hard work the BIM Facility team has put into making this version so much better, we…

  • Or at your desk, or from the train. Just please don't watch them while driving. Anyway, the point is that this year two of the three sessions I'm presenting at Autodesk University 2019 are part of the event's livestream schedule. The first is on Wednesday at 10:30am Pacific: The second is on Thursday at 3pm Pacific (I have a 15-minute segment at some point during the hour timeslot): I'm not sure what's happening with my third class – which is focused on Project Rediscover – but if that doesn't end up getting recorded I'll make sure equivalent material is posted…

  • I'm currently putting the finishing touches on my material for Autodesk University 2019. To encourage a few last-minute sign-ups, here are a few teaser GIFs from my classes. The first is from the class on Project Rediscover (which is apparently now full at 109 sign-ups, so in quite a small room). I used Capturefinery to create a GIF of quite a large Refinery study, but this time highlighting the congestion in a more 3D context. The second is from the class on Project Dasher – and using Forge for advanced data visualization – which still has 36 spaces in the…

  • After the pre-BILT Hackathon on Wednesday, there were still three full days of the main conference to be experienced in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. My family was with me – at the start of our 2-week Scottish adventure – so I wasn't planning (or able) to spend the full 3 days at the conference. I did make it along to the opening keynote, however, which was largely run by Marcus Fich, who introduced two Danish psychologists who talked about (among other things) our response to stressful situations. It was a very different and interesting session. After that I went…