Autodesk
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It's really proving to be a fun series, as we recycle the contents of the closing Autodesk Neuchatel office. So far we've given away a couple of RS-232 breakout boxes, a signed copy of The Autodesk File and a (so far unclaimed) patch panel punch down tool. Today we're offering a very special item to readers of this blog. It's one of Autodesk Neuchatel's best-kept secrets – not even all of our local employees know about it – but up on the roof of the building in Puits Godet we have a hot tub. And it's awesome – a great…
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Colleagues in Autodesk's Office of the CTO (OCTO) – who work in the robotics lab on Pier 9 – have just released the code for a new tool called Mimic. Mimic is an open source plugin – with the Python code posted on GitHub – that allows you to simulate and control the use of a number of industrial robots (including various robots from ABB and KUKA). Here's a screenshot: I'm really happy to see OCTO releasing open source projects in this way. If you're interested in contributing to the project, be sure to check out the developer notes. There's…
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Yesterday was a big day for the AutoCAD product. A multi-year engineering project – started in the AutoCAD team way back when I was part of it – culminated in its first deliverables getting into the hands (or, in this case, browsers) of customers. The AutoCAD team has been working on a project codenamed "Fabric" for the last several years. It's has been a huge amount of work – something I'll hopefully get into in a future blog post – but it's finally bearing tangible fruit. In broad strokes the work was to take the core of AutoCAD and make…
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I was a little torn about my plans for this week: the Forge team is running a packed Accelerator in Munich, so it would have been great to have spent my week over there. As it happened I ended up coming to the Netherlands, instead, to meet with two incredibly innovative companies, Van Wijnen and MX3D. Despite missing the Accelerator the timing was actually pretty ideal: it proved possible to spend a day and a half with Van Wijnen at Autodesk's office in Hoofddorp before coming into the city to join some of my Autodesk colleagues – Alex Tessier, Alec…
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As we continue clearing out cupboards and desks in the Neuchatel office, another potential treasure was uncovered by Francesco Tonioni. It seemed like a very interesting – and probably very useful – tool. We weren't at all sure what it was until Hashim Mundol recognised it from a previous life. He identified it correctly as a patch panel punch down tool that's apparently used by network technicians to wire network cables into patch panels. I have no idea if it's something a reader of this blog might find useful. If so, drop me a mail with your name and address…
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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…
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Many thanks to all of you who responded to the last "one man's trash" post offering a signed copy of The Autodesk File for one of the people answering John's question correctly: What was the first Autodesk product which, after having been sold, was subsequently discontinued? The answer is, of course, AutoScreen. Of the 15 people who responded, 7 gave the correct answer (the other popular – albeit incorrect – answers were MicroCAD and Lightscape). John's "bonus points" question really had people scratching their heads: What was the original in-house name for the product eventually introduced as AutoSketch? (In all…
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When I first visited Neuchatel I instantly fell in love with the city. This was back in the summer of 1995, during my second round job interview for Autodesk. From that moment I knew I wanted to live here, but it was only in early 1998 that I had the chance to do so: a colleague had moved across to San Francisco to join the Kinetix development team, which left a Swiss-based vacancy in the European Developer Support team. I was thrilled to have the chance to move across and fill that role. During my first few weeks in the…
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I know this one is going to be extremely popular with the readers of this blog. While starting the clear-out of her bookshelf, a colleague in the Neuchatel office, Maria Elena Santoyo Torres, found a copy of The Autodesk File in book form. I hadn't realised it had been bound into a book, so this was really exciting to me! I admit to having been more than a little tempted to hang on to it for myself. Ah well. (For those of you who are new to this series, we're using this blog to give away interesting items we've found…
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In response to the last "one man's trash" post I actually received two emails: the first from Kean Maizels, who ended up receiving the box, and the second from an old friend and former colleague from the UK, Phil Gill, who just missed out. Luckily the Neuchatel office's "recycler in chief", Francesco Tonioni, managed to find a second breakout box (he'd also found the one that launched this whole initiative, of course). A different model than the first, but with similar capabilities. I stopped by the Neuchatel office on Tuesday to pick it up, and I remember thinking to myself…