Autodesk
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This question has come up more than a few times over the last year or so: I remember a number of Revit developers hitting it when creating Viewer applications at the accelerators in Munich and Prague, for instance. The problem appears to be that RVT files – when translated and loaded into the Viewer – do not have the concept of room objects: they're just spaces. Which presents a challenge for developers who want to work at the room level. Last week I showed a demo during our "Autodesk Research and IoT" session, which showed room-centric navigation built into the…
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With such a great first day at the Forge DevCon, how would the second (and final) day compare? Here it is, in pictures. 🙂 As for the first day, Jim Quanci, my long-time friend and former boss, acted as Master of Ceremonies. The first external presenter was Chris Anderson – who I mentioned yesterday. Chris is a very entertaining presenter, and talked about the evolution of the UAV industry. I love Chris's vision for how drones should evolve: it aligns perfectly with mine. I was very happy to see Thiago da Costa speaking next. Thiago was co-founder of Lagoa, a…
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It was an amazing, whirlwind first day at the first ever Forge DevCon. I was there at 7am to put the finishing touches on the very cool Autodesk VR experience in the exhibit hall. The day's session kicked off with a keynote by Amar Hanspal and a number of other great presenters. I was really pleased with how our VR stand came together. Merten Stroetzel and Hans Kellner – colleagues in the Office of the CTO – provided their deep technical expertise, while JJ Stott and Clementine Joly did an amazing job with their demos. Here's the crew getting settled…
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It was a great weekend of football at Autodesk's annual tournament – this time nicely closely to home in Zurich. The Neuchâtel team did really well in the group round, as in recent years: we came top of Group C, which turned out to be the "group of death" – two teams we beat went on to finish 1st (England) and 3rd (VP Staff). Our goalkeeper – and our rock-solid defence – didn't concede a single goal during any of the matches, until we ended up being knocked out by Barcelona on penalties in the quarter-finals. So it goes –…
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In anticipation of next week's first Forge DevCon, the Forge platform has just been updated. Here's a quick look at what's new and changed: You'll notice there's a new Data Management API, which allows you to access data stored in A360, Fusion 360 and Autodesk's Object Storage Service. This is going to make it much easier to keep things simple and consistent when developing applications requiring access to design data. The Model Derivative API is another new API that does a few different things. Firstly it allows you to translate models into SVF – which is consumed by the…
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One of the projects I've been working on – alongside Simon Breslav, a colleague from Autodesk Research Toronto – is a prototype, web-based client for our IoT back-end. I'll be demoing it next week at the Forge DevCon. It uses Forge's viewer component to provide access to sensor readings from within a 3D model. Here are a few sequences of images to give you an idea of what it does. It's still early days, but we're steadily working towards feature parity with the desktop-based Project Dasher. The first sequence shows how you can view the sensors in a building model:…
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Following up from last week's post, which included a brief video showing where we're headed with generative design, today's post highlights a speech by my colleague in Autodesk's Office of the CTO (OCTO), Maurice Conti. I've mentioned Maurice before: he has an Applied Research team working on Pier 9 that is currently hiring a Machine Learning + Robotics researcher. Maurice gave a speech at TEDx Portland entitled "The Future of Human Augmentation". It looks at how we're being augmented, not only by computational systems (helping us think) but by robotic systems (helping us make) and by a digital nervous system…
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I was just sent this short video that captures the essence of the Dreamcatcher project beautifully. Be sure to check it out if you're interested in what Autodesk Research is up to in the field of generative design. You won't regret it. Exciting stuff!
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My friend and colleague on the ADN team, Lisa Senauke, helped get a bunch of special-branded VR viewers for the upcoming Forge DevCon. If you're coming along and don't get one from attending my class, be sure to swing by the exhibit hall and pick one up. This is the latest "Google Cardboard"-style device from our friends at DODOcase and should even fit 6" smartphones (a problem with the previous generation). They look really cool, even if I do say so myself (I spent a few wild hours inside PhotoShop to create the layout, believe it or not). A big…
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Now that the Tech Summit in Montreal is over, I'm busy with the last bits and pieces in advance of the Forge DevCon in San Francisco. I know I mentioned at some point that I'm helping organise the VR/AR presence at the event – working with internal and external speakers and exhibitors – and it's taking up most of my spare cycles, at the moment. I'm presenting one of the VR sessions myself (as well as co-speaking during an IoT session, but that's another story): one focused on using the View & Data API to implement VR for Google Cardboard.…