Between the Lines

It's Not Easy Being Green

Autodesk was recently recognized by Newsweek in the Green Rankings as #21 among U.S. companies, and #6 IT & services for the commitment to sustainability across the entire company making Autodesk a truly green company. Read more →

More Active = Less Shaan

Autodesk has some of the most comprehensive health and wellness programs of any employer to encourage employees to get healthy using a carrot instead of a whip. Autodesk employees recently participated in the Global Corporate Challenge to walk, be more active and compete on an online community with fellow employees, teams, and companies. In the 90 days I walked and ran over 560 miles and it tracked my progress on a virtual tour of locations. The GCC 2012 Wrap Video... Read more →

Autodesk University 2012 Blogger & Press Reception Survey

The event will be Monday November 26th from 7-10pm. We have limited availability for this special event where many of the Autodesk executives will be as well as your fellow press and bloggers. Read more →

Wouldn't it be cool if...

You could engineer a better world? Autodesk’s own Dawn Danby and the independent creative genius Saul Griffith produced a video to inspire young people, teachers, designers, makers and others to dream of all the challenges and things you could do. Read more →

AU 2012 Countdown 39 days

More cowbell! Autodesk University will be in only 39 days. I hope you have all your plans set by now if you plan on attending and certainly if you plan on being a speaker you better be working hard on your presentation and handouts. I hope to see you at AU this year! Read more →

Autodesk Vasari Talk Session October 24th 2012

Autodesk Vasari Talk Session number 20 on the subject of “Augmented Parametric Design with Dynamo.” Autodesk Vasari was previously in Autodesk Labs as Project Vasari and now in public beta testing. Read more →

Autodesk University Blogger and Press Reception

Many of the Autodesk topic related bloggers and industry press look forward to the reception the night prior to Autodesk University kicking off. It is a great way to meet fellow bloggers and press and also several key Autodesk people in attendance. It started small a few years ago and then grew. It will be the Monday night before AU kicking off. Read more →

Magic Finger for Your Designs

Maybe you have already heard in the last day or two about the innovative Magic Finger research. The Magic Finger turns any surface into a touch interface. Magic Finger is a research project from Autodesk Research in collaboration with the University of Toronto. Magic Finger inverts the typical relationship between the finger and an interactive surface: with Magic Finger, we instrument the user's finger itself, rather than the surface it is touching. Magic Finger senses touch through an optical mouse sensor, enabling any surface to act as a touch screen. Magic Finger also senses texture through a micro RGB camera, allowing contextual actions to be carried out based on the particular surface being touched. A technical evaluation shows that Magic Finger can accurately sense 22 textures with an accuracy of 98.9%. We explore the interaction design space enabled by Magic Finger, and implement a number of novel interaction techniques that leverage its unique capabilities. Read more →

Autodesk BIM Blog en Français

Autodesk BIM Blog en Français Read more →

AutoCAD Hotfix to correct issues w/ 3Dconnexion devices

Autodesk has released a hotfix for AutoCAD and the 3Dconnexion devices. Zoom speed varies in perspective view Pivot point position is far from the model causing the model to go off the drawing area when rotated High zoom out speed after zooming in a small area of the drawing This hotfix applies to the following products: AutoCAD 2013 AutoCAD LT 2013 AutoCAD Architecture 2013 AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 AutoCAD Electrical 2013 AutoCAD Map 3D 2013 AutoCAD Mechanical 2013 AutoCAD MEP... Read more →

Get Up & Ready with Autodesk Products

I wanted to share a nice blog resource for Autodesk product users. This blog is especially great for keeping up on setting up and configuring Autodesk software. The blog is named “Up and Ready” and authored by Autodesk support employees. Read more →

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Service Packs for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT for Mac

Autodesk has released for download Service Packs to make AutoCAD 2013 for Mac, AutoCAD LT 2013 for Mac, and AutoCAD 2012 for Mac compatible with the latest version of Apple’s OS X 10.8 otherwise known as Mountain Lion. There are several other fixes included to improve the products stability and performance that have been reported to Autodesk Support as well as sent in using the CER reports. Read more →

DesignScript Available for Download via Autodesk Labs

Are you expert enough for an early version of DesignScript? DesignScript is a language intended to help designers build and analyze complex geometric models that would be difficult to model with interactive techniques. It includes a scripting language for exploratory programming. DesignScript is intended to be used by designers with little previous programming experience. Please give it a try. Users running AutoCAD 2013 on a 64-bit Windows 7 system can provide feedback in a variety of ways. via labs.blogs.com This... Read more →

Autodesk 123D Makes it on The Top 10 Tech Breakthroughs of 2012

Autodesk’s 123D series of free consumer products like 123D Catch made it into Popular Mechanics Top Ten breakthroughs of 2012 article! Read more →

The Autodesk BIM 360 Glue Mobile App is Now Available for the iPad

Autodesk has just released the Navisworks mobile app Autodesk BIM 360 Glue for the iPad free on the Apple app store. Read more →

52 Days Until Autodesk University 2012

The days remaining are counting down fast until Autodesk University 2012. The time remaining for an early registration discount of $500 is going even faster with only 10 days remaining to the October 15th deadline. Read more →

Lynn Allen's Most Popular AutoCAD Tip Ever!

We've all done it - we've reached up to hit the Escape key in AutoCAD - only to find ourselves staring at the AutoCAD Help screen! Aaaaaargh! How did that happen? Well we were reaching for the Escape key - and that pesky F1 key got in the way. via lynn.blogs.com This is a very common request to change the behaviour of the F1 key to an escape instead of Help. Read more →

Cancer Sucks

This month is Breast Cancer awareness month and the reason for this post being in the color pink. For all my women readers, please make sure to get regularly checked for this preventable and treatable cancer. Every Month should be cancer awareness month. I have lost friends to cancer from brain cancer, testicular cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic, colon, and skin cancer or had several go through tough treatments. I bet there isn't one person who has not had a family member or someone they have known affected by cancer in some way. Hopefully the day comes wheen there are preventitive cures for all cancers. Be a part of the solution and donate to legitimate cancer research. I even shaved my head to raise funds in 2009 for the Susan G Komen Cure for Cancer Fund. -Shaan Read more →

Which Way Next Interview with Louise Leakey at Singularity University

Singularity University just posted a YouTube link of a recent interview of world renowned paleontologist, and friend Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute. The interview was by Singularity University faculty chair member and fellow Autodesk employee Jonathan Knowles. Read more →

How to Get Notified When an Autodesk Product Update is Released

Do you update your Autodesk software with service packs (SP)? If you don’t, you should consider to do it. Autodesk releases a service pack to fix and enhance their products. There are defects and problems that are discovered after the products have been released. Read more →

Autodesk Adds Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software

The news just broke this morning that Autodesk has acquired some assets of HSMWorks Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software. This is really getting many in manufacturing industry excited on Twitter as this was the perceived gap in the manufacturing software portfolio of Autodesk. For those not aware of what CAM is, it is the machining, milling, and CNC machine programming portion of manufacturing and an integral part to the manufacture and design of many manufactured parts. Read more →