Generative design
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I really enjoy my job, these days (although frankly that's been true for the majority of my career at Autodesk): I get to work on projects related to IoT (Dasher 360) and to generative design (using Dynamo + Refinery). This is a real privilege, because there's a connection between the two that's tangible and that will become more and more important. It's that connection that I want to talk about today, as this week was the first time I've covered my two areas of focus in a single, in-depth presentation. On Wednesday afternoon I presented a keynote session at the…
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My friend Dieter Vermeulen will be presenting a free, 1-hour webinar at 11am GMT on December 6, 2018, about how Computational Design can improve automation and optimization in the AEC industry. Here's a photo of Dieter having a turn as DJ at the recent DynaNoche at AU Las Vegas. While the webinar's title mentions computational design, Dieter tells me he'll also be talking about the generative design tool Autodesk released into public Beta last week. Here's the invitation to attend the session: Join us for this webinar brought to you by Building Magazine & Autodesk. Improve Automation in AEC with…
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I'm on the train home after a whirlwind week in Las Vegas. Another great AU is "in the bag" and I'm looking forward to getting home to my family. But first a quick recap of the week… I arrived on Saturday night, as usual, and managed to get a decent first night's sleep. On Sunday I did a few things… I checked out the rooms I'd be presenting in during the week, which is always slightly surreal. I wandered along the strip: they'd closed it off for the Rock N Roll Marathon, which apparently caused incredible havoc for those arriving…
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I'm very glad to be able to share the news that Project Refinery is now available as a public Beta. This is the optioneering and optimization engine for Dynamo that Autodesk Research has been using to implement the "generative urban design" workflow for Van Wijnen. It allows you to generate 1000s of solutions to a particular design problem, whether you want to explore random solutions, work your way through the parameter space systematically, or use evolutionary computing to hone in on optimal solutions. In the Manufacturing space we had Project Dreamcatcher – now the generative design capabilities built into Fusion…
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I was hoping to be able to announce something exciting today, but it looks like I'm going to have to wait until Monday. In the meantime, here's a quick taste of what you're going to see next week. Exciting times! 🙂 If you're coming to Las Vegas, next week, you'll be able to hear more during my AU classes. See you there!
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We're in the last few days before the biggest week in my calendar: Autodesk University in Las Vegas. As usual I'm trying my best to conserve strength in the week before the trip, as if preparing for a marathon. (There's actually a half-marathon in Las Vegas on Sunday, so a number of AU attendees are preparing for that as well as AU itself. Utter craziness!) Photo credit: James Marvin Phelps The Sign Says It All II via photopin (license) My handouts are uploaded and my slides are getting close to being presentable. To give you a sense of what's coming,…
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There's just over a week to go before the craziest week of my year (i.e. Autodesk University) kicks off, once again. I've been heads-down preparing various slide-decks and handouts for the big event. Things are in reasonably good shape, but there's still a bit of work left to do. I had a quick glance at the class list – mainly to make sure that I had the classes themselves in my calendar, before people start double-booking me for meetings – and I noticed the numbers of registrations: Here's a list to the various classes with links so you can check…
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We hit a major milestone with our research into smart infrastructure, this week. After a massive push over the last 3-4 weeks (which in itself was built on work done over several years), we were able to deploy a system that measures – and reports in realtime – the performance and usage of the world's first 3D-printed steel bridge. To give you a quick sense of some of the results of this work, here's an image of Dasher 360 showing the 3D model of the bridge with skeletons walking across it with the bridge's accelerometer readings displayed as a heatmap.…
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It's been a whirlwind few days. The trip up to Darmstadt on Monday went relatively smoothly: I had to take four trains to get there, and only missed one connection (the one in Frankfurt, but thankfully I could hop on another train and arrive just 10 minutes later than planned). Still, the nearly 6 hours of train passed reasonably smoothly. After arriving in Darmstadt I met with Sander Lijbers and Tony Thuy, who'd organised to host some customers from the Netherlands. We went for dinner at a nice restaurant serving local food. When in Germany, eat schnitzel! It was a…
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After a crazy (but cool) few days in Amsterdam at the beginning of last week, on Thursday night I hopped across to Barcelona for an event being organised by our Enterprise Priority support team. They had invited our larger customers from all over Europe to come and hear about the use of generative design technologies in the AEC space, both present and future. I woke up early in the hotel opposite Autodesk's nearly-beachfront office to see the morning light hitting it. The event itself was on the first floor of the office, so we were surrounded by autumn colours. My…