Generative design
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I've spent most of this week in Amsterdam with colleagues from the Toronto office. Our group descended on the MX3D offices in the funky NDSM wharf area of the city, to make a big push and help get the world's first robotically 3D-printed steel bridge – and its supporting systems – ready for Dutch Design Week. Most of the team stayed in a hotel right next to MX3D, but we did get the chance to take the ferry across to "the mainland" (it isn't really: everything is connected, it just seems that way) from time to time. It was really…
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Last Thursday registration opened for the latest edition of Autodesk University and its pre-conference events, Forge DevCon and Connect & Construct. I've just gone ahead and registered: I'll arrive in Las Vegas on Saturday November 10th (to give myself a fighting chance of handling my jetlag before things kick off properly on Monday the 12th) and head home on the Thursday evening. My classes, this year, fall during the pre-conference and the first day of AU proper, which is nice, especially as it means you won't need a full AU pass to attend (you can find pricing of Monday passes…
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One of the highlights of last weekend's AEC Hackathon in Berlin was getting to meet Michael and Keith from the Dynamo team. They'd delivered a pre-event workshop on the Friday and stayed on to tutor the many Dynamo-centric teams participating in the weekend's Hackathon. On afternoon on Saturday Keith and Michael presented an additional session that briefly mentioned Refinery (the optimization engine for Dynamo that's currently in Beta) but focused mainly on the API infrastructure that enabled its integration into Dynamo: the View Extension API. It was really helpful for me to see how it's possible to extend Dynamo with…
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I've seen a few of these postings via LinkedIn, and thought it was time to post something of my own. As mentioned previously, I submitted three class proposals for this year's Autodesk University in Las Vegas. Two out of three have been accepted: the ones focused on Generative Design for AEC. I'm really excited about the first one, in particular, and it seems like it may also be featured in one of the pre-conference events (more on this once things get confirmed). I think it'll be really cool to look at the project we've been working on with Van Wijnen…
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I've just arrived back from Berlin, which I was primarily visiting for this year's German AEC Hackathon (last year's was in Munich, which I attended briefly in the weeks leading up to our big trip). I was there with my family, and we had a great time visiting the city when I wasn't needed at the Hackathon. Let's start with a few tourist shots. On Thursday we visited a few places, such as the Holocaust Memorial… … and the Berlin Cathedral, which was beautiful inside but had stunning views across the city from its roof. We were staying with an…
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On July 20-22, 2018 I'll be attending the AEC Hackathon in Berlin. Here's some information about the event: The AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) Hackathon is a weekend of geeking at its finest. It gives those designing, building and maintaining our built environment, the opportunity to engage, collaborate and interact on multiple aspects of the building industry. Not all built environment professionals have to code or have much background with tech. Just come with your knowledge, an open mind, collaborative spirit, and willingness to solve Mon-Fri problems leveraging various kinds of technology. We've shaped an exhilarating Program on Robotics, Generative…
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I'm on the train, heading to Geneva airport for my trip across to Barcelona for the latest Forge Accelerator. It seems there's a good crowd in the room, already, so it should be a fun week. Yesterday I submitted two classes for Autodesk University 2018 in Las Vegas: I wonder what proportion of classes are submitted on the last day of the CFP period, and whether this number is stable, year after year. I usually try to submit my own classes earlier, but this year things have been a little hectic, for some reason. The first class I submitted is…
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On Monday afternoon I flew back across to the Netherlands, this time from Bern airport. My main purpose for this trip was to attend the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, or SimAUD, in Delft. I've been staying at an Airbnb a little way out of the centre of town, the advantage being I'm just across from a really pretty park. Delft is a university town and is a bit like a smaller, easier version of Amsterdam. There are canals everywhere… … and almost everyone seems to travel around by bike: I rented a bike from a local…
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It's been a quiet week on the blogging front, mainly because of the May 1st holiday on Tuesday, but also because I've been heads-down on projects I can't really talk much about. One thing that does seem worth sharing is an approach we've been using to take geometry from Dynamo into Revit. The project itself relates to the use of Generative Design for urban planning. I can't yet talk about the generative aspect – which is extremely cool – but once the design is basically finalised there's a need to bring the geometry into Revit. The ideal scenario would be…
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I was a little torn about my plans for this week: the Forge team is running a packed Accelerator in Munich, so it would have been great to have spent my week over there. As it happened I ended up coming to the Netherlands, instead, to meet with two incredibly innovative companies, Van Wijnen and MX3D. Despite missing the Accelerator the timing was actually pretty ideal: it proved possible to spend a day and a half with Van Wijnen at Autodesk's office in Hoofddorp before coming into the city to join some of my Autodesk colleagues – Alex Tessier, Alec…