Autodesk
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This is the second time I've been at a Forge Accelerator this year in Munich, and it seems it won't be the last: there'll be another one in early December, adjacent to the European DevDay being held here, and I'm pretty certain I'll be back across for that. It was a fun, whirlwind three days. The weather was nice when I arrived at the office on Monday morning – here's a view across towards one of the nearby buildings. We had lots of participants, which was great. Here's one of the rooms we occupied: The weather was nice enough on…
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Over the weekend I managed to wind down nicely after giving 10+ hours of HoloLens demos on Thursday and Friday at our Design Night events (it may well have been less, but feels like it was much more). In advance of the Design Night, I'd recorded a video that I ended up putting on a loop during the event. It was an effective way for people coming near the HoloLens exhibit to understand what it was all about. What was particularly interesting to me was whether people understood – or even thought to question – how this video was made.…
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It was a first for the Neuchatel office, so we really weren't quite sure how it was going to turn out. But yesterday's Design Night ended up being a huge success, with around 400 people attending. Wow! I was asked to be part of the core team organising the event several months ago. Aurelia, Olivier and Sokhanita – three colleagues from the Neuchatel office – and I have been meeting on a weekly basis since the beginning of June to plan the event. My role was largely "technological" – in that I was there to help out on all things…
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Yesterday afternoon I popped down to the Case à Chocs in Neuchâtel to see the first of the robots being set up for tomorrow's big event – Design Night Switzerland, celebrating 25 years of Autodesk's presence here. (At the time of writing, there are still tickets left: get yours from here.) The first arrival was courtesy of Rollomatic's Humanoid Power division: they've configured one of their robots to perform that most important of tasks, serving beer. Prospective drinkers get to choose between a "Blonde" and an "Eve", two products from the Cardinal brewery in Fribourg. I'm already know…
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It was an interesting week, last week, getting two HoloLens devices to coordinate. After talking about the network infrastructure, last time, today we're going to look at other levels of the problem. Logistically there's a requirement to have two devices: it might be possible to get it all working with a mix of devices and emulators, but that seems like a stretch. And you'd need – in any case – to test with physical devices at some point. The good news is that HoloLens distribution is gradually opening up – with devices now available to pre-order in Australia, Ireland, France,…
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Our Silverdraft Demons arrived from L.A. yesterday – they'll form the core of the VR installation in the Autodesk Neuchatel office. Today I had the chance to swing by the office to check them out: they were in our IT area being installed and bound to the network. I do like the idea of binding demons to a corporate network: hopefully they'll stay within our control, this time. The Silverdraft people included some fun schwag in the shipment. Here I am sporting a Demon beanie and a couple of stress balls. I'm definitely more excited than stressed, for now, but…
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I've been waiting for this piece of news for months: Autodesk LIVE – the "one-click" publishing workflow from Revit to high-quality, interactive 3D visualization courtesy of Stingray – now supports VR via the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via a public beta. Admittedly it's more like two (or even three!) clicks, but the clicking does seem altogether painless. Here's a video showing what's what: This is great timing, as I've just heard that my Demons are at the doorstep (well, Zurich airport). I'll for sure be kicking the tyres on this workflow over the coming weeks. If you're…
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The countdown is on… the first Design Night Switzerland is being held at la Case a Chocs in Neuchâtel on October 20th, 2016 to celebrate Autodesk Switzerland's 25th anniversary. (It's actually very timely, as la Case has celebrated its own 25th birthday, this year). The theme for the event is robotics: as I've mentioned before on this blog, some of the first automata – in fact the ones that inspired the movie Hugo – were invented in la Chaux-de-Fonds (also in the canton of Neuchâtel), so there's a long history in the region. And with the world about to embrace…
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My father used to take me to the Design Museum in London when I was a child: he was a graphic designer and deeply passionate about typography and all other things design-related. I have fond memories of those visits. When visiting The Boston Build Space a few weeks ago, I had the chance to meet with Madeline Gannon, who (it turns out) was working on an upcoming exhibit for the newly relocated Design Museum (it's moving from Butlers Wharf to Kensington High Street, and Madeline's exhibit will be one helping inaugurate the new space in an exhibition entitled "Fear and…
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At Autodesk we're in the process of equipping a number of our offices around the world with high-end VR showrooms. San Francisco and Boston are already set-up with a number of others currently in progress. It seems likely that Autodesk Neuchatel is going to be one of the next ones to come online, which is a source of great excitement to me, at least. As part of that effort, we've placed orders for two Silverdraft Demon systems as well as two HTC Vive Business Editions. The first Vive arrived yesterday: If you were at the Forge DevCon, you'll already have…