Autodesk

  • Just to put the cherry on the cake that was my week in San Francisco, I went across to Pier 9, this afternoon, to catch up with David Thomasson and visit the robotics laboratory belonging to Autodesk's Office of the CTO. David and team are working on some really interesting projects. The first will be unveiled at AU 2015 and investigates the potential for humans and robots to build things together that neither group could on their own. Visitors to the exhibit at AU will have tasks to perform in conjunction with robots – with these tasks being coordinated centrally…

  • Last night, I left the (very fun) party at the X Summit a little early: partly because I knew I was presenting this morning and needed a clear head, but mainly to attend a WebVR meet-up being held at Mozilla. I'm rarely in the Bay Area and it seemed a shame to miss the opportunity to attend the event, especially as it was a chance to hang out with Jim Quanci and Goran Borjesson, a colleague visiting from Gothenberg. I'll describe my experiences of the evening's proceedings, but you can also watch the online recording. It was really an interesting…

  • I'm in San Francisco again for the Autodesk X Summit 2015. The event is targeted on User eXperience (UX), but is being attended by a very diverse set of Autodesk employees. It's the first such summit since Maria Giudice joined the company from Facebook, which many of us hope (believe!) will usher in a new era for our products. I'll be presenting a session on Wednesday regarding my experiments around UX for VR, particularly with respect to my View & Data API samples for Google Cardboard, culminating in a widescale demo of Vrok-It. Should be a lot of fun!

  • When I was in Prague recently I spent some time with Alex Vinckier and Kris Riemslagh from hsbcad, an ADN member and provider of software for the offsite construction industry. I've corresponded and spoken with Alex and Kris a number of times during my time at Autodesk, but this was my first opportunity to meet them in person. They suggested I coordinate with another member of the hsbcad team – Alex's twin brother, Karel – to visit to one of their best customers, who happens to be based just 40km from my home. So it was that Karel and I…

  • Today was an interesting day: in the morning Autodesk Neuchâtel opened a new common space, while in the afternoon I headed across with a development partner to meet an AutoCAD user doing some really interesting things with wood. More on that in the next post. For now, here are a few snaps of the new office space: I really like the new astroturf area. Although our facilities team didn't seem very open to the idea of us installing 5-a-side goals at either end of it. In the corner we have a little Lab space, with a couple of 3D printers,…

  • Members of the Autodesk Developer Network have started receiving information on how to register for the upcoming series of DevDays being held around the world. Thanks largely to the positive experience of running Cloud Accelerators in different locations, the ADN team has shifted their thinking for this year's tour: rather than visiting 15+ cities around the world, the team has reduced the number of locations to a few per geography but increased the amount of time being spent in each. 3-4 day Accelerators will be held in a number of cities adjacent to the more traditional DevDay events. This gives…

  • Birdly is an immersive Virtual Reality experience that let's you fly like a bird through virtual cityscapes. To get a sense for how it works, check out this video:   Birdly - Splitscreen from maxR on Vimeo   I first heard about Birdly from Brian Kling, a friend and colleague in our Neuchâtel office who tried it out earlier this year at the Lift conference in Geneva. He came back really excited about the exhibit, and his excitement was contagious. Since then I've been looking for an opportunity to experience it firsthand. I'm happy to say the opportunity finally presented…

  • We're about halfway through the first Cloud Accelerator Extension being held in the incredible city of Prague. The entire European ADN team is in town – so a great chance to catch up with old friends such as Jeremy, Adam, Philippe, Cyrille and Peter – along with cloud-focused developers from Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Romania, Italy, Greece, Israel and (of course) the Czech Republic. So definitely making new friends, too. 🙂 I'm mainly here to help developers working with AutoCAD I/O – gathering feedback for the development team, in the process – and it's really great…

  • There's another online Hackathon in town, this time for Fusion 360. It's running from September 23 to October 30, 2015, so a reasonable period during which you can create your first Fusion 360 app using JavaScript, Python or C++. I don't know much about Fusion 360 development, but I'm looking forward to learning more during this event. This is a great chance to start working early on with one of Autodesk's hottest new platform technologies. And to get Autodesk not only to help you with your development, but also to compensate you for your efforts! (You can receive $500 if…

  • I'll be in Prague – with Adam Nagy from the ADN team – on Tuesday of next week (from 6 to 9pm on September 8, 2015) to talk to people about Autodesk's horizontal PaaS offerings, notably the AutoCAD I/O and View & Data web services. If you happen to be in the area and are interested in attending, please sign up and come on by the Autodesk Prague office on Tuesday evening! From my side I'm going to talk about the implementation details relating to the use of Autodesk web services in Jigsawify and Vrok-It. It should be a fun…