Every year at Autodesk UniversityAutodesk Users Group International “AUGI” present their members nominated and voted product wish lists to Autodesk at their annual meeting which precedes the infamous beer bust. This year was the most products covered in wish lists with:
I presented to an Inventor User Group organized by CADPro Systems last night in Christchurch New Zealand, but I never left my house, dealt with the security & customs checkpoints, or the long flight with the standard baby with an earache crying with an unchanged diaper on the 15 hours of flights each way. I used my webcam and GoToMeeting web conference software to present to the user group virtually where I could see and hear the attendees and they could see and hear me.
It was 10:30 pm time Wednesday (Halloween and wearing my Zombie Food shirt) and 5:30pm Thursday for them, so technically I was presenting into the future.
I placed my webcam upside down for a couple minutes just to have some down under Southern hemisphere fun.
I spoke about Autodesk Labs, the importance of sending in the CER reports each time and that they do not go into a black hole, and the recent Kenya research with 3d capture techniques and flying the Octo Copter in remote Northern Kenya to test capturing high resolution imagery to locate rare fossils faster and more accurately than just walking the desert.
During Q&A there was a common request to get the Autodesk Labs technology preview for the 3D Annotation in Inventor back or in Autodesk Inventor as a core feature. Here is s small webcam image of a small portion of the room when asked who not just wanted that feature, but who needed it. Scott Sheppard posted the feedback results of the 3D Annotation tool :
I stayed around for a Power Inventor user named Jason Dent of 4th Dimensional Façade Solutions Ltd to present on a mind blowing method of designing the exterior of a complex building using Inventor. Jason said: "Without Inventor, this job would have been absolutely impossible.”
It was a great treat on Halloween as I love speaking to customers and also seeing how they use our software and their feedback. Thanks to the user group members I attendance and Peter Crawley and Gavin Bath of CADPro Systems for making this happen. If you would like me to speak to your user group just send me an email request with details on the group, proposed date and topics.
Do I wish I was really in Christchurch and New Zealand, absolutely as I have been to New Zealand a couple times and loved every minute of it with the landscapes and people.
Autodesk Users Group International (AUGI) which is an independent user group of hundreds of thousands of Autodesk product users has a product wish list system. The latest submitted wish list items are now live and ready for you to vote on. The completed wish lists are provided to the Autodesk product teams for consideration in future releases and carries a great deal of importance and priority with the teams.
AUGI has given it's members the opportunity to dream for many years. The concept of a wish list is a channel to tell Autodesk what they need to add, fix, enhance, or remove, to any given program. AUGI has two primary missions, one is to allow for peer to peer support. The other is a unified voice back to Autodesk to improve the products we love to use. By participating in the Wish List System (WLS), your ideas, combined with the voting of your fellow members, is helping all of us achieve our goal of enhancing the productive, creative and efficient software tools provided by Autodesk.
Go Vote! The 2011 Vote period will close on 01:00:00 a.m. GMT, Tuesday November 29, 2011.
AUGI membership is free and there are many benefits to becoming a member if you are not already one. There are also several volunteer opportunities at AUGI.
I will be speaking at the Seattle and Minneapolis AUGICAD Camps the next two weeks. I will be the lunch entertainment showing some sweet Autodesk technology desserts.
In the presentation we will take a sneak peek into the some Autodesk technologies from Autodesk Labs. See where Autodesk's technology might be going and how you can get involved.
Seattle Washington - Tuesday, October 11 Minneapolis Minnesota - Tuesday, October 18
You can find information and register for these and other AUGI CAD Camp events at the CAD Camp website http://www.augicadcamp.com/ You get a discount for being an AUGI member, and the membership is free and the benefits are invaluable.
Please join me for a fun walk through of the recently released AutoCAD for Mac 2012 at the San Francisco Autodesk Users GroupSFAUG September 2011 monthly meeting. I will cover the new AutoCAD for Mac 2012 and aim wide for those that are Mac curious or newbies to the Mac as well as for the Mac experts and answer questions.
AutoCAD for Mac 2012 software includes familiar AutoCAD capabilities, such as 2D and 3D design tools, and includes 3D free-form modeling capabilities; 3D visualization and rendering; network licensing; advanced customization of the menus; support for LISP and ObjectARX and ObjectDBX applications; and more.
Being a multi OS platform and software kind of guy I can also answer your AutoCAD for Windows and other Autodesk product questions. I will also be showing some cool "FREE’ technologies we are working in in Autodesk Labs.
Fun Autodesk fact for those that compete in geeky Autodesk trivia: AutoCAD 2012 for Mac was codenamed Iron Maiden while AutoCAD 2012 for Windows was codenamed Ironman while in development and beta testing. We seem to be in a music theme recently.
It has been quite awhile since I had presented at SFAUG but I am really honored and excited to get back and see everyone.
The AUGICAD Camps will be starting this month and held in many locations throughout the US and Canada. The AUGI CAD Camps are a great cost effective way to get some Autodesk product training from some of the industries best as well as network with others.
While there is a CAD Camp in the tropical beach laden Hawaii this year, I am pretty sure those of us whom are on the mainland would have a hard time getting that location approved for training by our boss. Wouldn’t that be sweet to get top notch Autodesk product training, a sun burn, a mai tai, and a grass skirt all in one place besides Vegas at AU?
Last night at the AUGI Annual Meeting at Autodesk University 2010 Several Autodesk product wish lists were presented to Autodesk teams. AUGI members nominated and voted throughout the year their top wish list items. Receiving the list from AUGI incoming President David Harrington was Amy Bunszel Sr. Director, AutoCAD.
1. The ability to drag and drop commands from the menu to the ribbon. Submitted by Keith Cruz
2. The ability to change objects (like attributes) to a layer even if they are embedded in a block. Submitted by Jason Kelso
3. The ability to rotate multiple objects about their centers simultaneously. Submitted by Jeff Bartley
4. A setting to always display text horizontally in a block, regardless of the rotation of the block. Submitted by Geoffrey Keehn
5. The ability to modify 3D solids using the stretch command. Submitted by Chad Wanless
6. A task manager for AutoCAD that allows you to end commands that have frozen. Submitted by M Roth
7. For AutoCAD to automatically differentiate between edited and unedited dimensions. Submitted by Matt Rogoff
8. The ability to control linetype scale by layer. Submitted by Charles Perez
9. The ability to select a layer when inserting a block or XREF Submitted by Phil Tingley
10. The ability to copy text from an external program and have the option to match the format of the existing mtext you are pasting that text into. Submitted by Anita Nichols
Amy thanked the community and said
“We on the AutoCAD Team sincerely appreciate the participation and feedback.
For those not participating yet, we need your feedback on what to do or change so please get your wish list items in the AUGI Wish List
First the current upcoming Autodesk University is only 49 days away!
Cannot attend AU this year, how about attending virtually? Details on how to access AU Virtual and vote are available via the contest page: http://www.autodesk.com/yt2010
Voting now open for this year's AU YouTube Contest. Learn more and vote today: http://bit.ly/bBi3rq #AU2010
Unofficial Autodesk University history
1993 San Francisco California – Marin County near Autodesk HQ. First Autodesk University
1994 Atlanta, Georgia
1995 San Francisco California Moscone Center "More than 230 classes, including courses on extensions to AutoCAD, systems design and data management, and 80 hands-on working lab sessions, will make this year's Autodesk University Conference and Exhibition bigger and more comprehensive than ever. Running from October 29 to November 2, 1995 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, the third Annual Autodesk University features a detailed program for professional users of AutoCAD, the world's most popular design software for engineers and architects, and an entirely new Multimedia Conference-Within-A- Conference to address the state-of-the-art in rendering and animation applications."
1996 Chicago Illinois
1997 Los Angeles California
1998 Philadelphia Pennsylvania
1999 there were 4 AUs
Boston Massachusetts
Dallas Texas
Chicago Illinois
San Francisco California
2000 Las Vegas Nevada first Vegas AU MGM Grand
2001 Las Vegas Nevada MGM Grand
2002 Las Vegas Nevada MGM Grand
2003 Las Vegas Nevada MGM Grand
2004 Las Vegas Nevada MGM Grand
2005 Orlando Florida -Walt Disney World
2006 Las Vegas Nevada Venetian
2007 Las Vegas Nevada Venetian
2008 Las Vegas Nevada Venetian
2008 Shanghai China
2008 Tokyo Japan
2009 Las Vegas Nevada Venetian
2009 Shanghai China
2009 Tokyo Japan
2010 Las Vegas Nevada Mandalay Bay
2010 Shanghai China
2010 Tokyo Japan
I hope to see you at AU #22!
That is thousands of classes, tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of attendees and a infinite knowledge and fun over the years.
For some fun reflections back on Autodesk University in photos please see my AU Flickr gallery and the AUGI AU page which even has a photo of Lynn Allen from 1997.
Your vote, nominations and feedback are very valuable in the shaping of the future of Autodesk products. AUGI is a large independent group of Autodesk product users numbering in the tens of thousands with many resources,networking, and best of all it is FREE.
1. Change Objects in a Block to a new Layer The ability to change objects (like attributes) to a layer even if they are embedded in a block. Submitted By: Jason Kelso
2. Automatically Differentiate Manually Edited Dimensions For AutoCAD to automatically differentiate between edited and unedited dimensions Submitted By: Matt Rogoff
3. Selection Boxes to work Relative to Crosshairs If the crosshairs are rotated, the selection boxes should be rotated as well. Submitted By: Don Foltz
4. Layer Select in Insert Dialog The ability to select a layer when inserting a block or XREF Submitted By: Phil Tingley
5. Set Format of Copied Text The ability to copy text from an external program and have the option to match the format of the existing mtext you are pasting that text into. Submitted By: Anita Nichols
6. Intelligent Text Masking Text masking to be more intelligent with improved features. Submitted By: Allen Closson
7. Dimension, multileader and text style editorThe ability to edit dimension style, multileader style and text style in one place. Submitted By: Joe Barrett
8. Ability to Export Tool Palette Groups Tool palette group system to be able to export and include the the tool palettes assigned to that group. Submitted By: Brad Ellis
9. Multiple Viewports Across Dual Monitors The ability to place one viewport on one monitor and another viewport on another monitor. Submitted By: Paul Jordan
10. Embed shapes in the drawing file The ability to embed shapes in the drawing file. Submitted By: Perry Medina
Date: Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 Time: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM Location: CLC Associates 420 East South Temple,Suite 550, SLC Latitude: 40.769293 / Longitude: -111.879151
Topics: We will have a presentation about Civil 3D and a general discussion where you can discuss Civil 3D with your peers. We will also plan our next year.
Cost: Still free!
A light meal will be provided. Registration is not required but will let us get an idea about how many will be attending.
I wanted to pass along some exciting information for Revit users located in the Intermountain West. The Wasatch Front Revit Users Group (WFRUG) will be re-launching and the first meeting will be January 20th, 2010 in Salt Lake City Utah. I hope to be in attendance but I will unfortunately be ineligible to win the PS3 that will be given away at the WFRUG meeting.
The first meeting of the year for the Salt City Autodesk Users Group will also be coming up in the new year and will be affiliated and supporting local user groups like WFRUG. The Salt City Autodesk Users Group is a group of Autodesk product users holding meetups to show what they are doing, network, share multi-discipline tips and tricks, and to encourage participation in product and discipline specific local user groups such as WFRUG and the Wasatch Area Users Group for Civil 3D (WAUG) (http://waugblog.blogspot.com/) which are holding a meeting January 12, 2010 .
There will be more groups re-launching such as the rumored Autodesk Inventor local user group among others.
Spread the word and get involved!
Cheers, Shaan
Join Us For The Official WFRUG Re-Launch Meeting We will be discussing Revit Project Coordination Issues Across Disciplines This is your chance to voice all those complaints you’ve been building up. (you know the ones we’re talking about!)
Date: - Jan. 20th Time: - 6:00pm-7:30 Place: - Spectrum Engineers (324 S State Street, Suite 400)
Agenda: 5:45 - Food/ Networking (Thanks to IMAGINiT for providing food) 6:00 - Welcome/ Leadership Introductions 6:15 - Revit Project Coordination Issues Across Disciplines - List/ Describe/ Show effects of known Coordination Issues - Discuss solutions to avoid these issues in the future 7:15 - Preview of Boast or Beef for future meetings/ Thanks/ Wrap up 7:30 - End Meeting
We would like to structure the WFRUG, and especially our users meetings, in a way that meets YOUR needs and wants. Please help us to identify those needs and wants by taking the survey we have set up at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N8HYD6F
Our thanks to Spectrum Engineers, who have graciously offered to host our official re-launch meeting at their offices. Parking is available in the attached parking garage which can be accessed from State St. or Exchange Place. Attendees will be responsible for their own parking fees. The owner has asked that all WFRUG attendees refrain from walking around their office. And we would very much appreciate everyone being respectful of their property, both physical and intellectual.
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, complaints, advice, grievances, condolences, kudos, or other pertinent information to pass along to the leadership of the Wasatch Front Revit Users Group, please send it to:
* Enter to win a Play Station 3 along with Guitar Hero and an extra Guitar. This package was won by the WFRUG at Autodesk University this year. It was set up and played by attendees during the duration of the conference. We will give it away at the May users group meeting. Enter once each month for a chance to win. Must be present at time of drawing to win. Leadership committee members and software reseller employees are not eligible to win.
For the first time in 12 years I had to miss a day of AU and sessions, the AUGI meeting, a team dinner, photos, and of course the AUGI Beer Bust event. I awoke yesterday morning with a a bloody nose & ear, dizzy, and massive migraine. I was at the doctors for much of the day as I was diagnosed with dehydration and a bad sinus infection. I spent yesterday after returning from the doctor in bed on prescription antibiotics and headache medicine. I would have preferred to be at AU.
Below is a photo from Tuesday evening taken of the audience preparing to watch the private screening of the movie “Avatar” all decked out in 3D Glasses. I was blown away by the is movie in 3D as were most attendees. It was a serious 3D visual experience! I cannot wait until the movie is released publicly on December 16th. My jaw was literally dropped for the entire time and perhaps that is how I got so dehydrated.
I will be at the AutoCAD booth half of today and giving away goodies and playing “Hide & Geek”. At 5PM I will get my head shaved as promised for charity. Then the evening concludes with the Autodesk University 2009 party. I want to thank everyone who donated goodies to give away such as Techsmith with 10 seats of Camtasia which shares the common bind with AutoCAD as both products were launched in Las Vegas at Comdex events just different years as Camtasia just turned 10 and AutoCAD turned 27.
I want to sincerely thank my guardian angel Heidi for teaching my class at 5PM last night. All she asked for was my handout and PowerPoint and she did it. I guess this was karma and payback for when I taught an AU class back in 2000 in San Francisco with 5 minutes notice due to a sick presenter.
I have created a public Flickr group for AU2009 for sharing photos.(http://www.flickr.com/groups/au2009/) just like the previous public groups for AU 2008 and AU 2007. Flickr is free. Anyone is welcome to add AU2009 photos to the Flickr group as long as they are AU 2009 related and G rated only. You can get a free Flickr account if you wish to share photos with others or even keep them private if you prefer. It is even better if you can geotag your photos with their locations which Flickr allows you to do or if you have a GPS software to do this. Also I have my own Flick Photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/btl/.
At the AUGI Annual Meeting the AutoCAD Top Ten Wish List was given from AUGI President Mark Kiker to Guri Stark VP, AutoCAD & Platform Solutions.
5. Fillet 3D Polylines The ability to fillet 3D Polylines Submitted By: Thien Nguyen
6. Control Mirroring of Text in Blocks Ability to control whether text/attributes are mirrored in blocks when the block is mirrored. Submitted By: Florian Stuckenberg
7. Create and Zip Complete Drawing Package The ability to create and zip a drawing package that includes multiple formats of same drawing (PDF, DWF) using eTransmit Submitted By: Neil Foden
9. Attributes Always Horizontal The ability to set an attribute relative to UCS regardless of the rotation of the block. Submitted By: Gunnar Jansson
10. Enable Renaming of Anonymous Blocks The ability to rename anonymous blocks in the properties dialog or quick properties dialog. Submitted By: David Henry
We have a pilot project coming up on the AutoCAD Exchange that will allow local user groups to setup their own groups to communicate with group members. This functionality will be similar to the GroupShare feature on the Autodesk University Online website allowing members to create groups in which they can post news, host discussions, post files & pictures, and set up and maintain pages.
If you would be interested in your user group participating in this pilot, please send me an email at shaan@autodesk.com and use the email subject line of “User Group Pilot”.
It should be a great event with Lynn Allen and myself showing AutoCAD based products and their new power as well as their interoperability with other Autodesk products. AutoCAD is not only a general purpose Swiss army knife of 2D but is also powerful in 3D which means AutoCAD is a 5D (2D +3D) CAD system! ;-)
We might even get blessed with the talent of DJ Robbie Rob aka Rob Cohee show up at the Boston event. Check out Rob’s latest work to highlight the new Subscription Advantage Pack for Autodesk Inventor 2010.
DJ Robbie Rob mixxes up a little ditty demonstrating the features and benefits of the Autodesk Inventor 2010 Subscription Advantage Pack. Key enhancements for our subscription customers include DWG... “
I have something special planned for this weeks events especially on Thursday the 22nd in Washington DC.
I have received a great deal of contacts from people planning on attending tonight's meetup and some are coming from a great distance. We will have root beer and pizza thanks to the generous offer by ProSoft. I will also have some goodies to give away.
Date and Time September 23rd at 5PM - 8PM
Location BetaLoft http://betaloftslc.com/ 357 West 200 South Suite 201 Upstairs Salt Lake City, UT, 84101 Located next to the Gateway Mall and UTA Trax and Frontrunner transportation
Purpose To network and discuss interest in future meetups
Please spread the word and invite others to attend. This is not just a Salt Lake City or Utah event but one for anyone wishing to attend.
I just set out the reminder email to people that have signed up to attend and receive information on this inaugural Autodesk User Meetup this week.
Date and Time September 23rd at 5PM - 8PM
Location BetaLoft http://betaloftslc.com/ 357 West 200 South Suite 201 Upstairs Salt Lake City, UT, 84101
Located next to the Gateway Mall and the UTA Trax and Frontrunner transportation
Purpose To network and discuss interest in future meetups
Agenda
5:00 - 6:00 Meet & Greet Networking and Root Beer Bust (pizza and root beer soda) 6:00 - 6:15 Welcome and Introductions 6:15 - 6:20 Overview of the Meetup and idea behind it. This group is for all Autodesk product users to exchange ideas, presentations, and fun. We have a very rich and diverse design community using Autodesk products and can benefit from networking. 6:20 - 7:15 Open Discussion of Meetup and User group organization. 6:30 - 6:55 Next Steps 6:55 - 7:00 Thank You and Meeting Wrap Up
I will remain until 8:00PM for those wishing to stay and talk with people or eat the left over pizza.
I will be presenting along with Autodesk’s own Lynn Allen and some fine Autodesk partners for a busy October schedule. Please come visit with us for these free events. I will be covering a potpourri of AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD based products AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD Architecture, and AutoCAD MEP with my favorite tips and tricks. I will also be talking about Autodesk Impression and the AutoCAD Exchange as well as hopefully some really cool future possibilities.
I will also be lining up some customer and user group visits while on the tour so contact me if you want to meetup.
See the Difference with AutoCAD 2010 Tour Autodesk Technical Evangelists Lynn Allen and Shaan Hurley
A grand total of 14,023 domestic air miles which are equal in my book to 7 international miles for each domestic mile traveled. I will be jumping during most of the flights so that I can reduce my carbon footprint by half. The warped/twisted theory is that if the plane has to only carry my load half of the trip it saves fuel. Of course I am joking about the jumping part saving fuel. ;-)
I am also working out a schedule for other events coming up including Autodesk University in Las Vegas which is only 88 days from now.
I recently mentioned that I was looking into hosting a local Autodesk product user meetup in Salt Lake City and have now selected a date.
The idea behind the meetup is to explore a future formal user group formation as well a great option to meet fellow Autodesk product users in the region. I will be holding this initial meetup at my office located off the TRAX and FrontRunner train line in downtown Salt Lake City on 200 South just across from the Gateway. I think this would be a good opportunity, especially since I get quite a few requests for local Autodesk product users by other firms looking for people to hire.
The group would not be discipline specific and cover all Autodesk products from AutoCAD users to 3ds max visualization specialists with a focus on fellow user tips and tricks, and perhaps further networking in sub groups. We could also do some local trips and activities to feed our inner geek as well as social needs.
I am looking at a date and time of September 23rd at 5PM – 7PM so please sign up and spread the word.
I am kicking around the idea of a monthly user group meet up in downtown Salt Lake City at my office. The group would not be discipline specific and cover all Autodesk products from AutoCAD users to 3ds max visualization specialists with a focus on fellow user tips and tricks, and networking. We could also do some local trips and activities to feed our inner geek as well as social needs.
If you are interested in a Salt Lake City Autodesk User Group meet up please please email me with the subject line of “User Meet up”. and also spread the word to others that might be interested in a meet up get together..
In reading through my AUGI Hotnews emails after returning from a lengthy vacation, I noticed a great article series for AutoCAD Architecture 2010 features. It was written by Tharakesh Ananthakrishnan of OMNIX International Dubai who is a very knowledgeable Autodesk Authorized Instructor that I had met while presenting in Kuwait last October at the Kuwait FOCUS Users Group meeting (Amazing event by FOCUS Kuwait Users Group Meeting). Tharakesh was also the first Autodesk Certified Professional in the Middle East. I hope to get back to Kuwait and UAE really soon as the people and experience was top notch in addition to some really mind blowing construction projects using AutoCAD Architecture.
If you are looking for a nice overview of AutoCAD Architecture 2010, then this three part series is definitely worth reading to get up to speed.
You may need to register for a FREE Autodesk User Group International “AUGI” membership. With AUGI at almost 100,000 members I am pretty sure most of the readers here are already members with all the great resources offered by AUGI membership.
I want to thank AUGI’s President Mark Kiker, the dedicated and hard working AUGI AutoCAD Wish List volunteer Brenda Richardson, and the AUGI membership for another great cycle of nomination and voting for the AutoCAD Wish List. While I cannot provide details on future development publicly, I can say you will be pleased at our listening and knocking more items off the Wish List. You, the user of our products are vital to defining the direction and future functionality of our products. We at Autodesk sincerely appreciate your helping shape the future of Autodesk products!
Send Shaan on a free trip to visit Hawaii CAD Camp with Yoshi Honda, Brazil, India, Kuwait, China, Turkey, Japan, Singapore, and Down Under to meet with AUGI members and give free refreshments and share AutoCAD Tips and Tricks.
OK so I added number 11 myself but the remaining 10 are great wish list items for AutoCAD.
AUGI membership is free and there are many many benefits to the membership. Get involved and network, Share and Learn. Don't just sit on the sidelines, make a difference.
I had the pleasure to present to the Seattle based PSAUG Puget Sound Autodesk Users Group last week. I called this my Shaan's Digital Design Rodeo Roundup Seattle 2009 as a fun theme name as I am a digital design rodeo clown with my warped humor and presentation style and loving the live Q&A even the tough questions with horns. I promised I would provide my resource links to all that attended and am sharing below.
