Autodesk
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I recently sailed past my 18-year anniversary at Autodesk. Part of me finds this scary – in this world of post-millennial job-hopping – but then I really enjoy what I do. Long may it last. The company has grown a great deal since I joined (I had to look it up, but it seems that over this period we've gone from around 1,800 employees to around 7,500, with an additional 1,000 or so temps and contractors), so it should go without saying that I haven't met or interacted with the vast majority of the people who work at Autodesk. But…
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This is the second part of the two-part interview with Morgan Motor Company's Head of Design, Jon Wells. Here's the first part, in case you missed it. How long has Morgan been using Autodesk software? I introduced Autodesk software to the company when I joined. I was the link between the aesthetic designer that had just joined the company – who was very visual-based – and the engineering team. With my technical background and understanding of 3D and surfacing, I was able to understand both the aesthetics and how that would interpret into an actual, physical component. And to enable…
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A few weeks ago I visited Morgan Motor Company in the UK. The highlight of the visit for me was getting the chance to sit down with Jon Wells, Morgan's Head of Design, to talk about the company and their use of Autodesk software. I'm a huge fan of this company and the way they meld the traditional – cars are built in much the same way as they have been for 100 years – with the modern – aside from their advanced use of software they're also pushing boundaries in terms of materials science in the automotive industry. The interview…
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I've been involved at some level in Autodesk's annual Developer Days tours for as long as they've been happening (at least in a coordinated, worldwide fashion), although for the last few years it's been purely as an attendee (and last year only in Las Vegas). This is the first year I can remember the event being publicised more broadly than to our existing ADN members: many non-ADN (or ADN Open) members may not realise that this tour is a benefit available to Standard and Professional members, so we're helping spread the word. DevDays is a great way to get a…
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This one came as a (very nice) surprise: Autodesk has collaborated with Circuits.io to provide a new tool called 123D Circuits. Here's the announcement along with some media coverage. 123D Circuits is a handy, web-based tool that allows you to create, share and collaborate on circuit designs such as those you'd use with an Arduino microcontroller. And if you're using an Arduino in your circuit, you can even code inside the embedded IDE and simulate its behaviour directly inside your browser – with almost no risk of blowing it up! You can also embed these circuits into web-pages, which is…
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The clock is ticking… the Exchange Apps Portathon is being held next weekend, and it's not too late to participate. If you're not sure what this is all about, take a look at two previous posts about this event. In a nutshell: Autodesk is paying developers $100 for each of the first 5 apps that developers publish to Exchange Apps before the end of the weekend, and the DevTech team will be online for a solid 48 hours to help people get there. On a side note, the DevTech team now has a YouTube channel for their DevTV sessions. There…
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As mentioned previously, I spent much of last week visiting an Autodesk customer in the UK, the Morgan Motor Company. They're based in the beautiful West Midlands town of Great Malvern which lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, an area of outstanding natural beauty (yes, that's an official designation :-). [Update: to clarify, Malvern is in the county of Worcestershire which is in the West Midlands region (not to be confused with the similarly named county). So I should probably have said "the beautiful Worcestershire town of…". Apologies for having stated this in a potentially confusing manner.] To…
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As Labor Day passes and the summer draws to a close, it's time to start thinking about Autodesk University. The AU team clearly knows this (they themselves have been thinking about the event since before AU 2012, so this is more for the rest of us 😉 and so they've gone ahead and posted a preview of the class schedule for this year's event. Take a look at rows 2^8 and 2^8+1 (that's 256 and 257 for non-programmers 🙂 if you're interested in seeing information on the two classes I'm delivering, this year: one is on Leap Motion, the other…
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I'm sitting at Geneva airport, waiting to board a Swiss flight to the UK. I've been hacking away in Python – and now IronPython – for the last few days, which has been very interesting. Here's a quick update on that… I'm now managing to save out PNGs of the de-skewed portions of perspective photographs with a high degree of quality, if not with exceptional speed. I'll post a little on the approaches I tried out – and settled on – when I get the chance. It's now time to get the code working inside AutoCAD: I have the basic…
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A picture is worth a thousand words, so whatever your feelings about infographics this must be worth at least a hundred. 😉 Lots of people are participating in the previously announced Exchange Apps Portathon. You have 3 weeks until it starts, so it's a good time to consider joining the fun. Here's a note from Jim Quanci and Stephen Preston, describing the value of the event: At the risk of repeating what's already been said: curated online marketplaces are becoming the preferred way for software users to find add-on functionality. This is also true of Autodesk software, with a million…