Autodesk Research


  • Migrating custom Forge viewer shaders to WebGL 2 – Part 1

    An interesting thing happened when I tried Dasher 360 with the latest production version of the Forge viewer: no sensor dots appeared. As Dasher without sensors is a glorified 3D viewer, this was a bit of a problem. Digging into things a little, I worked out that our custom WebGL shader wasn't working properly in this latest version. At this point I reached out to my friend Elias Cohenca in Tel Aviv for a quick sanity check: he confirmed that this latest version of the Forge viewer is now defaulting to WebGL 2.0. This was confirmed in the Forge viewer…


  • Visually clustering the contents of models in the Forge viewer

    Some of you may already have seen Augusto's tweet showing the "Visual Clusters" Forge viewer extension that has been developed by the BIM 360 Design team. It really is super-cool: the extension takes the content of the model loaded in the Forge viewer and clusters it spatially based on the value of the various items' category property. The extension was first published in v7.6 of the Forge viewer, so it's been around a little while. If you don't have a Forge viewer application to test it out with, fear not! Petr Broz has added the capability to load extensions into…


  • Pune

    On Sunday morning I booked an Uber to get across to Bangalore airport for my flight to Pune. It was still early, so the only other being in the street was a cow. It was busier when I arrived at Bangalore airport. And more Christmassy, too. I got myself some idli sambar (the breakfast is better at the domestic terminal than the international one, by all accounts), and then waited by the gate for my SpiceJet flight. The flight was slightly delayed, but basically uneventful – it takes a little over an hour to get from Bangalore to Pune. This…


  • Geometry Systems and the Refinery Primer

    I mentioned last time that I was expecting to publish some posts about Autodesk University 2019 material I found particularly compelling (now that I've had the chance to consume some). I didn't get to watch as many recordings as I'd have liked – for now – but I did manage to watch the rest of a class of which I only caught the first few minutes before having to run to another meeting in Las Vegas, my friend Lorenzo Villaggi's session on Geometry Systems. There are two main pieces to generative design systems – at least in the way they're…


  • My AU 2019 classes

    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…


  • Reliving AU in Amsterdam

    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…


  • Digitalisation workshop at TU Delft

    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…


  • Wrapping up Autodesk University 2019

    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…


  • An updated model of the NEST building, now live on Dasher 360

    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…


  • Not coming to Las Vegas? Watch two of my AU2019 sessions from the comfort of your armchair

    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…