Autodesk
-
OK, so that was perhaps a little mad. Earlier today I spent 5 hours on the train – going from Neuchatel to Zurich and then on the new SBB service via the Gotthard Base Tunnel – to get to Milan, had a coffee with my uncle (who lives and works nearby), gave a 30-minute presentation on Forge and AR/VR at a Meetup, and then spent 4.5 hours on more trains – this time going towards Geneva on the EuroCity (formerly Cisalpino), and then changing at Brig to head via Bern – to get home. This was the main train there…
-
On Tuesday, I'll be travelling to Milan and back (on the same day, by train) to present at a "3D / Mixed Reality" Meetup hosted at the beautiful new Microsoft House, headquarters of Microsoft Italia. I'll be talking about Forge and AR/VR, and I'll no doubt include a Dancing Robot or two, I expect. It's pretty cool to be visiting Microsoft House: it was designed by Swiss architect Herzog & De Meuron (a good customer of Autodesk's who I visited earlier this year in Basel) and it looks absolutely stunning. Many thanks to Giorgio Mazzucchelli for extending the invitation to…
-
I was asked recently by Bill Debevc to talk about Dasher 360 during an interview for the BIM Thoughts podcast series. It was certainly fun chatting about the project with Bill. I'm happy to see that the podcast is now live on the BIM Thoughts site. Enjoy!
-
Most of my team has been 100% focused on an event taking place in Toronto, this week, the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (or SimAUD). This is a really interesting conference for people working in our space: I'm looking forward to attending myself, at some point. As the only non-Toronto based member of the team, it made sense for me to skip it (and given the fact I'm about to embark on a 6-month trip – including some time in Toronto – I didn't even suggest that I attend). This meant that I ended up spending the…
-
We've been busy working on a number of interesting features for Dasher 360 over the last few weeks. The main focus – at least from my side – has been to extend the filtering capability to allow people to filter sensors based on type and their location in the model. Not only that, but the filtering is reflected in realtime in the list of sensors, even when highlighting different areas of the model via the site's breadcrumbs. I wasn't sure if this was going to be viable – mainly for performance reasons – but for now it seems to work…
-
We're now in the last few days before the AU2017 – and Forge DevCon 2017 – CFP deadline on May 17th, 2017. Submit your class today! I'm particularly interested in your proposals related to Virtual, Mixed or Augmented Reality: despite not being able to attend the event, myself, I'm still running the AR/VR track. So – if you have a cool project that involves software development for AR/VR, ideally involving the Forge platform in some way – then submit your proposal with "Software Development" as a relevant topic and "Forge DevCon" as a pre-conference event. I'll be involved in the…
-
This year's Autodesk Technical Summit had a couple of fantastic parties. After all, the event's raison d'être is – beyond inspiring employees with excellent technical content, much of which I'll be going through offline during the coming weeks – to get a bunch of introverts to speak to each other. One was held at The Roof Gardens / Babylon – a rooftop venue with live flamingoes in central London (wait, what?) – while the other was held at that venerable Londonian institution Madame Tussauds. Madame Tussauds is one of the most visited tourist attractions in London, and has been for…
-
Once again the Autodesk Technical Summit is proving to be hugely valuable and interesting. I've been attending a number of classes on various themes: yesterday I mostly attended sessions on AR and VR, while today I've been finding out about the impressive work the AutoCAD team is doing with Fabric, as well as some upcoming Forge services and some internal tools to help build neural networks. Speaking about neural networks, we had a load of fun at the local pub, last night. Brian Pene introduced a few of us to Prisma, a tool that uses a cloud-based neural network to…
-
I'm writing this on a train to Geneva airport from where I'll hop across to the UK for a week. This afternoon I have a meeting in London at the British Library, after which I'll be checking into the Hilton London Metropole where Autodesk is holding its 9th (at least I think that's right, if the first was – as I seem to recall – in 2009) annual Technical Summit. This is the internal meeting where technical staff from around the world get together to share information and learn from each other. Every year the percentage of presentation proposals selected…
-
Late last year I visited members of the EssentialTech team at EPFL: they spent some time describing some of the challenges faced when transferring technology for use in developing nations. Examples included dealing with frequent power outages and extreme operating conditions (such as using hermetically sealed, protective suits in stifling temperatures or mechanical equipment where there are high quantities of dust and sand). EssentialTech has just launched a new – and free! – MOOC on edX entitled "Technology Innovation for Sustainable Development". Here's a teaser video for the course: The content looks extremely interesting. Here's the description: Technology…