Autodesk
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After a pretty late night on Monday – I stayed to help clear up after the evening Swiss Tech Talk – I managed to grab a few hours of sleep before getting up early, yesterday, to head across to Zurich for meetings at ETH. I'd been invited by Philipp Mueller (from our Education team) and Peter Schlipf (from ADN) to meet with a few different groups at ETH. I was happy to see Jeremy Tammik also came along for the first meeting. It's that first meeting that I really wanted to talk about, today. It was with Dr Philippe Block,…
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Yesterday I had the honour of presenting a Swiss Tech Talk in Autodesk's Neuchatel office. I've attended a number of these events over the last year or so – on such diverse topics as Bluetooth, IP issues related to the cloud and IoT, and the changing face of management consulting – so it was a great pleasure to be invited by the Swiss Tech Association to deliver a session on behalf of Autodesk. I figured the audience wouldn't be interested in hearing about AutoCAD APIs – sure, I find this fascinating, but different strokes and all that – so I…
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After a nice week on the slopes – children in Neuchâtel have their annual "semaine blanche" around March 1st, the day the canton celebrates becoming a republic – I eased back into work this morning by heading across to Geneva for the 86th "Salon de l'Auto". I was there when the doors opened so I could make it home for a late lunch. As usual there was plenty of shiny on display at this year's show. I liked the fact that I could watch the reflection in the paintwork of a physical car of a video that was certainly computer-generated…
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Registration is now open for the Forge Developer Conference being held at Fort Mason in San Francisco on June 15 & 16, 2016. This event marks a significant shift for Autodesk, as we march towards a future where the majority of software is delivered via the web – and is accessible via web-services. We're still very much at the beginning of this journey and this conference is a great opportunity to be part of it: you can get in on the ground floor and participate actively in this important industry shift. We're expecting upwards of 1,100 developers (from more than…
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As part of the restructuring that went on at Autodesk, last week, I have a new role. This isn't a bad thing, thankfully: in fact it's the opposite… it's something I've been working towards for several years. I've been in the AutoCAD team for the last 4 years and was in the Autodesk Developer Network team for my 16+ years at Autodesk prior to that. These were great environments for me, for quite different reasons, but my ultimate interests lie in where the company (and the broader industry) is heading, technology-wise… one reason I've always felt drawn to the work…
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The last couple of weeks have been very interesting: partly for reasons that I'll go into in my next post, but also because I've had (or am having) the opportunity to visit three universities in Switzerland. My first visit, on Thursday of last week, was back to ZHdK – Zurich University of the Arts – to have lunch with Max Rheiner (who you may remember from my post about Birdly, some months ago) and discuss the possibility of collaborating on some research into the use of VR for CAD. It was a great discussion, and I'm very much hoping it…
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One of the coolest news items to break during AU 2015 was the collaboration between Autodesk and Airbus to design and 3D print a groundbreaking new partition for the A320. Partitions are certainly not the sexiest part of a plane (not that I have a particular opinion on what that might be… the undercarriage, perhaps? 🙂 but even they can have a significant impact on its performance and therefore the environment. Each A320 currently sports a 65kg partition at the back – separating the passenger compartment from the galley – that supports two crew seats and can be opened in…
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Knowing how thoroughly I'd enjoyed my visit to JPF-DUCRET with them, our friends at hsbcad suggested I tag along to a visit they were making to the leading maker of ecological, pre-fabricated homes in Germany, Baufritz. So yesterday Peter Schlipf (from our ADN team) and I headed across to the Baufritz office in Erkheim, about an hour's drive west of Munich. On the way we met with colleague Krisztian Hegedus, who happens to live in a Baufritz home and was also keen to find out more about the company who'd built it. At Baufritz we were welcomed by Kris Riemslagh…
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The snow arrived, at last, and it's amazing. I spent the weekend on the slopes with my family before heading across to Zurich to hop on the last flight to Munich, last night. I had a sinking feeling, on arriving at the airport, as the information board said "More information at 20:15". This is generally not a good thing for a flight that's scheduled to leave at 20:15. In the end it was a mere 45 minute delay – which was quite the relief – which gave me some time to watch another episode of the excellent Mr. Robot (yes,…
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My friend and colleague, Fernando Oliveira, had the honour of printing the first object from the Ember printer we have in the Autodesk Neuchâtel office. To capture the moment, I decided to take a few snaps that I'll share here. The design work was all done in Fusion 360. The design is a logo comprising of Fernando's daughter's initials. The printing process was managed by Print Studio, part of the Spark platform. I included the below shot – despite it being out of focus and not especially flattering – because it gives a view from our corner lab across the…