Autodesk
-
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…
-
The AutoCAD team recently released a preview version of a new AutoCAD web viewer. Give it a try using the latest version of Chrome. What's interesting about this is that it's very much a taste of things to come – something I alluded to in this recent post. Here are some screenshots: The top three thumbnails link to standard models so that you can quickly take the new viewer for a spin: Here's the "Plumbing.dwg" drawing loaded in the browser: The text on the left of this page is very interesting, particularly the piece I've highlighted below in bold. New…
-
Over the coming weeks I'll be sharing a number of guest posts by Autodesk colleagues working on a project that I think will be of interest to many of this blog's readers. The first post is by Alec Shuldiner, who is introducing the project. At Autodesk, we have a bridge. Recently, we gave that bridge a nervous system: sensors, wires to carry the signal, a small amount of local computing power to pre-sort the data, and, far away, in a virtual head, a brain to make sense of it all. It's a neat thing, and in a subsequent post…
-
The AU2017 call for proposals is now open. The event is being held from November 14-16 in Las Vegas. Being accepted as a presenter is a great way to get exposure within the Autodesk community, as well as being a sure-fire way of attending the conference itself. Something that's likely to be of interest to this blog's readers: this year's Forge DevCon is now sharing the same CFP process as AU2017 (as some of you may be aware, the DevCon has shifted from its original June date in SF to being held on the Monday before AU starts). So if…
-
A few weeks ago I received an invitation from an Autodesk customer – Audemars Piguet, a luxury watchmaker based here in Switzerland in the town of Le Brassus – to have a tour of their museum and production facility. So it was that yesterday I headed across to the Vallée de Joux with my friend and colleague, Francesco Tonioni, who works closely with Audemars Piguet. We were welcomed by Denys, who took care of us throughout our day there. Our tour started in the Audemars Piguet museum, where Denys educated us about the rich history of the region and its…
-
I had the great pleasure of attending the first half (give or take) of the recent AEC Hackathon in Munich. It was held over the first weekend of my kids' school holidays, so I ended up having to compromise on attending the full event: I flew in on Friday afternoon – with just enough time for some VR fun at our Munich office – and flew back home on Saturday afternoon. So I didn't get to attend the really fun piece – seeing the results of the weekend's efforts – but I will talk in this post about what I…