AU


  • Forge DevCon 2018 in Europe

    The Forge DevCon is coming back to Europe, specifically to Darmstadt, Germany (on October 16) ahead of AU Germany (on October 17-18). While the content for AU Germany is presented in the local language, everything at the Forge DevCon will be in English. And it's free to attend! Registration is now open for the event. There's a great line-up of speakers delivering a packed agenda, so be sure to sign up soon. If you're also interested in AU Germany, here's a video showing a few highlights from last year's event: I don't yet know whether I'll be attending, myself: I…


  • Class recordings from AU London 2018 are now available online

    The class recordings from this year's Autodesk University held in London's Tobacco Dock are now available for your viewing pleasure. Here's the recording of the class I presented: If you're interested in going a little deeper into the technical aspects of how we've used Autodesk's Forge platform in Dasher 360, then I recommend watching this class from the Forge DevCon at AU 2017 in Las Vegas, where my colleague Simon Breslav presented similar material – but with greater depth – for an audience made up primarily of developers: We have a number of ongoing projects related to Dasher 360, at…


  • Voting for Autodesk University class proposals

    The call for proposals for Autodesk University 2018 has ended and people have the opportunity for vote for their favourite classes. Head on over to this page and start voting for the classes you'd like to see at AU 2018. From my side, I've submitted three different class proposals for AU 2018. I don't expect (or want!) them all to make the cut, but I'd be happy to receive your votes for the ones that interest you most. My favourite proposal is actually a class that would have 3 speakers, two from Autodesk and one from Van Wijnen. The plan…


  • AU London 2018

    After all the fun of the Autodesk World Cup in Bordeaux, it was off to London for my first-ever non-US Autodesk University. (I nearly made it to AU Sydney and AU India during last year's big trip, but I somehow managed to miss both events by a week or so… next time we do a "once in a lifetime" trip I'll be sure to check the AU international schedule when planning it. 😉 Arriving in London on Sunday morning, I had the chance to catch up with Simon, an old friend from university who lives and works near Windsor. On…


  • AU classes and Forge events

    I'm on the train, heading to Geneva airport for my trip across to Barcelona for the latest Forge Accelerator. It seems there's a good crowd in the room, already, so it should be a fun week. Yesterday I submitted two classes for Autodesk University 2018 in Las Vegas: I wonder what proportion of classes are submitted on the last day of the CFP period, and whether this number is stable, year after year. I usually try to submit my own classes earlier, but this year things have been a little hectic, for some reason. The first class I submitted is…


  • One man’s trash... Bjarne Stroustrup’s The C++ Programming Language

    I came across this classic tome while wandering the halls of the Neuchatel office, this week. It's one I remember reading when in my last year at University (in fact I'm almost certain I have a copy gathering dust in my basement). This particular volume once belonged to James Carrington (at least that's my best guess from a Post-It on the inside that mentions his first name), who was an early member of the Developer Support team at the ESC (European Software Centre) in Neuchatel, way back when. This edition is from 1986, which I'm pretty sure makes it a…


  • The Forge DevCon (and AU) 2018 call for proposals is now open!

    This year will be the 3rd edition of the Forge DevCon. Once again it's being held in Las Vegas on the Monday before Autodesk University 2018 starts, which for this year means November 12th, 2018. The "call for proposals" website is now live, and will remain open until June 11th. If you're interested in submitting a class for this year's DevCon then head on over: we'd love to hear from you! This year's event will have the following tracks: Forge Platform and Roadmap Getting started with Forge and Forge APIs Community stories and case studies General web programming Complementary technologies…


  • Tickets are now on sale for AU London 2018

    Tickets are now on sale for this year's AU London. Until April 30th you can get the earlybird discount of £160 on the regular price: for the next several weeks the price is £540 + VAT instead of £700 + VAT. I'll be attending – and speaking at – this year's AU London. I'll be presenting a session entitled "Using Forge to Connect BIM to the Internet of Things" on June 19th at 3:25pm. Here's the class description from the AU London website: Autodesk Research has been working on the display of building performance data in a rich 3D environment…


  • Hackrod is open to the crowd

    I was really excited to hear, over the weekend, that our friends at Hackrod have launched a successful crowd-funding campaign and that there's still time to participate. The campaign is being hosted on MicroVentures, which means investors should receive interest on their investment as well as equity in the project, assuming things work out. This admittedly seems a nicer model than getting a T-shirt or coffee mug saying you supported their Kickstarter. 😉 I haven't yet decided whether I'm personally going to get in on the action (so to speak) but I thought I'd post about it in case others…

  • The project I'm currently working on fits squarely under the umbrella of "Generative Design for Architecture". We're using Dynamo Studio to generate layouts of residential housing – including both individual homes and apartment buildings – with the results quantified in a number of metrics that will be easily explorable by the user of the system. It's the approach The Living – the architectural studio in Autodesk Research doing pioneering work in the generative design space – has used for a number of projects, including Project Discover and the layout of the AU 2017 Exhibit Hall. I came across this video,…