Autodesk
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There's a new WebGL-based technology being developed by Autodesk and it's completely awesome. And you can request access to it today. Project Play has been in development for some time. It has some shared lineage with the Smithsonian X 3D Explorer – although I'm not sure to what extent, if any, they share code – and it's the viewing technology used by millions (?) around the world to explore the ReCapped Apollo 11 Command Module. But this technology is about way more than just viewing static models. It's a full node-based editor that allows you to create rich 3D experiences…
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I was a little surprised when LinkedIn reported my 21st anniversary at Autodesk, a couple of weeks' ago. I eventually realised it was because the middle of my month of starting had been chosen to notify my connections of this particular anniversary (LinkedIn doesn't have the specific date, I suppose). Anyway, it turns out today's the actual anniversary. 21 short years' ago, I joined Autodesk Ltd. in Guildford, Surrey. Since then I've worked for Autodesk Development S.à.r.l. (Neuchâtel, Switzerland), Autodesk India Private Ltd. (Bangalore, India), and Autodesk, Inc. (San Rafael, California). But all within the umbrella of life at the…
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This week has been a little hectic, once again. Yesterday I spent the morning back across at ETH Zurich, speaking with members of the Block Research Group about Forge, Dynamo and HoloLens. They've just moved into a brand new building labelled HIB – where the various schools at ETH focusing on architecture from a technological perspective will be co-located – but as it's so new it's yet to be sign-posted. I eventually did find it, but not without asking for directions from 5 different people. Inside the ceiling is pretty cool: they've used a combination of skylights for natural light…
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We have an internal company Hackathon being held at Autodesk locations around the world on September 6th and 7th. The theme for the event is "What's Next?" and there are variety of sub-themes under which the hacks can fall: Computer as collaborator Future of product interfaces Internet of Things Social good / Sustainability The future of anything else I signed up some time ago to be an "evangelist" for the event, which means I'm a resource for people in the local Neuchatel office should they have questions about VR/AR and IoT (which fall under the second and third sub-themes, respectively),…
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Some of you may have heard about the launch of a new Autodesk product, last week, that's focused on generating interactive 3D environments from Revit models. It's called Autodesk LIVE and is part of the Autodesk LIVE Design umbrella (at least I think I have that the right way around). Autodesk LIVE Design is all about making it easier to apply best-in-class visualization technology from our Media & Entertainment division – who collectively know a few things about high-end rendering and animation, admittedly – to the world of design and engineering. Here's a video describing how Autodesk LIVE –…
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I'm happy to report that a HoloLens device has arrived in the Neuchâtel office. I'm meant to be on holiday, next week, but as the kids are signed up for various fun activities of their own I foresee some amount of fooling around with HoloLens in my immediate future. 🙂 I was pleased to see a few HoloLens devices floating around at the recent Forge DevCon. In some cases it was inevitable – in that one of our speakers, Dona Sarkar, comes from the HoloLens team and also participated in the SFVR Meetup at the DevCon – but a nice…
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Over the last few days, recordings of several of the keynote presentations from the recent Forge DevCon have been made available online. More will be added over the coming days. Here's the YouTube playlist, so you can check them out: To get a sense of the overall event, here's a fun video (also in the above playlist, but worth calling out seperately) compiled from footage taken on the first day of the conference. To finish up, here's a nice video (again, from the playlist 🙂 that was shown during the event and I think does a…
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Last week this blog sailed through the 10th anniversary of its first post. I can't believe how time has flown… posting 3 times a week for a decade has resulted in 1,448 posts, accumulating more than 6.2 million pageviews. I suppose when something's so much fun you don't really see time passing. Visually, the blog has changed a few times, over the years… (There's a 4th theme that is still in the works, but I've hit a bit of a wall with the content transfer… I've noticed that backslashes have been filtered from the various code samples. I need to…
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Today has been a strange day, to say the least. Waking up to the results of the UK's EU referendum (also known as the "Brexit" vote) was a complete shock, and I'm yet to recover. The world has certainly changed but it's going to be some time before the full impact is felt. Last week in SF I felt a little bit of this, although in a much more positive direction: that we were at a moment in time where things were about to change. Not immediately, and not for everyone, but I definitely came away with the sense that…
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After a hectic week in SF, I was looking forward to some relaxation, back in Switzerland, despite having a few visits planned for this week. It didn't quite work out that way, but it was all for the best. On Tuesday I spent most of the day with Hurni Engineering, a very close partner based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the centre of the watchmaking industry – and the home of Le Corbusier and Louis Chevrolet – in Switzerland. I visited alongside Martin von Wartburg (our manufacturing industry salesperson for Switzerland) and Peter Schlipf (the Forge Partner Development Manager for EMEA). It…