APS (Forge)


  • Using web workers to run intensive browser-side analyses in Autodesk Forma

    The topic for this post relates to a project I've been working on for a few weeks, now. We've taken a complex set of spatial analyses - that use our favourite voxel-based architectural space analysis Dynamo package, VASA - and have translated them to work directly in the browser. (This translation process isn't really the subject of this series, but it's pretty interesting, nonetheless, and it's mostly what I was working on during the recent trip to Munich for the DevCon. Most of the Dynamo code was fairly easy to translate, although things like the automatic lacing of nodes meant…


  • Autodesk DevCon 2024 in Munich

    A full week has now passed since more than 500 people were in Munich for the Autodesk DevCon 2024, and yet I'm only now finding time to put proverbial pen to paper. It's just been really busy, but I'll talk more about why at some point in a future post. For this year's event I opted to take the train from Neuchatel to Zurich and then from there on to Munich. In theory that's 5.5 hours from city to city, but that's not really accounting for delays due to the unreliable Deutsche-Bahn network. (That's not me being all "Swiss"about things...…


  • Getting ready for the Autodesk DevCon in Munich

    On Monday I'll be taking the train across to Munich for the 2024 version of the Autodesk DevCon in Europe. I'll be around at the event on Tuesday and Wednesday, heading back on Thursday morning. If you're going to be at this year's DevCon, please do say "Hi"!


  • Left to My Own Devices: I join the TRXL podcast for episode 152

    Some weeks ago I joined Evan Troxel for a couple of hours to chat about my journey and some of the projects I've worked on. I've enjoyed the TRXL podcast for some time, so it was a real honour to be invited on. Our discussion has just been published as episode 152.     If you prefer video, here's the version from YouTube:     Evan's a great interviewer: I enjoyed the session a great deal and I hope you do, too. Listening back to it I realize there's a lot more we could have talked about… hopefully Evan will…


  • Autodesk DevCon 2024 events announced

    I know I'm late to the party on this one - if you're a software developer working in the Autodesk Platform Services ecosystem then you'll by now already have heard the news and marked your calendar - but anyway: a number of Autodesk DevCon events were announced last week. The flagship DevCon event is being held in Munich, Germany, from May 28-29, 2024. (This recognition that Europe is at the centre of the world is long overdue, just sayin'. ;-P) A satellite DevConX with more limited capacity is being held in Boston a few weeks beforehand, from May 14-15, along…


  • AEC Hackathon Zurich Edition 2024

    As I mentioned last week, on Friday I headed across to this year's AEC Hackathon Zurich Edition in the city of Winterthur, about 2 hours from my home. The event was held in one of the buildings on the ZHAW campus. The space was fantastic: an old factory that was once used to maintain trains (it's just next to the train tracks going through Winterthur). I was only able to come for the first evening of the weekend's event, as I had a prior personal commitment during the rest of the weekend. Friday had a number of talks focused on…


  • Swissbau 2024

    On Monday afternoon I received a message from my friend Sven Amiet asking whether I'd be going to Swissbau 2024. I had some sense it was happening this year (it happens every other one), but I hadn't realised it was this week already. In any case I checked my meeting schedule - and found that I didn't have anything important - and decided to head across to Basel on Tuesday morning. It's always impressive to arrive at Basel's Messeplatz by tram. The last time I'd been here was for Swissbau 2020 (I skipped the one held 2 years ago). Once…


  • Come and build a Forma extension in Oslo

    Happy New Year to everyone reading this blog. I hope that those of you who had time off enjoyed it to the max: I certainly did. Mixing metaphors gratuitously, I'm now back in the saddle and trying hard to get my head back in the game. Here's a fun topic to get the year started: Håvard Høiby from the Forma team has posted about an event that's coming up in Oslo from February 13-14, 2024. It's called an Extendathon: a public Hackathon (although if you want to treat it like an APS Accelerator and work on your own company's project,…


  • AU 2023 class materials: Monitoring and Visualizing Data from the MX3D and Dar Smart Bridges

    After yesterday's post pointing folks to the material for my first class at AU 2023, here's the material for the second one, which I co-presented with Pete Storey. I only have this photo from outside the classroom for this session: But I did get to hang out with Pete before we flew back to our respective European ports on the Thursday after AU was over. Here's the summary without audio: Here's the material posted for the class on the AU website: Class recording Presentation slides Handout


  • Autodesk DevCon 2023 in Munich - Part 2

    In the last post we took a look at the first day of last week's Autodesk DevCon in Munich. Today's post focuses on the second day and overall impressions of the event. For me day 2 of the DevCon started with a short U-Bahn trip from Goetheplatz to Harras. From the U-Bahn exit, I instinctively started walking the wrong way - I'd like to say this is easily done, but anyway - but luckily a fellow DevCon attendee coming from the other direction helped me realize my mistake. I do love the Autodesk developer community! The general session filled up…