Between the Lines

Autodesk University 2013 Live Streaming

If you can't attend Autodesk University 2013 in person next week in Las Vegas, please join us online for live streaming of the opening and closing keynotes, innovation forums, and selected classes. Be part of the conversation during the event... Read more →

Blogger & Social Meetup #BSM360

The Blogger & Social Media Meetup aka BSM360 invite emails have all been sent out to those that RSVP'd, and nobody was denied their golden ticket. There will be 155 people meeting up Monday night 8pm for beer, wine, soda, h2o, and pizza but the main focus is networking and socializing before Autodesk University 2013 kicks off the following morning. This annual event is going back to the roots of the Blogger Social and that is a room where everyone mingles and meets instead of getting lost in corners of a restaurant. Holding this in a conference center room also means we can have more people allowing everyone that wanted to attend. The meetup includes bloggers, social media, Autodesk discussion group Expert Elites, Autodesk Beta and Labs members, and some Autodesk employees. To provide some creative fun and introduce attendees to each other we asked them to create 8-1/2 x 11" paper mug shots with a photo of themselves, their blog URL, social media accounts, Expert Elite skills, QRCode, and anything else so we can get to know you. They could even create a couple mug shots as the mug shots will be taped on the walls of the meetup room. Just be creative and have fun. Make sure to bring cards and make connections with others as I am certain friendships and future collaborations will be formed based on past Blogger Socials. Thanks Paul Munford of the The CAD Setter Out blog for the CADAROO! See you soon! -Shaan Read more →

Autodesk University 2013 Flickr Photo Group

Autodesk University 2013 officially begins in just a couple days. I will begin to post photos to the AU 2013 Photo Group Pool and my Flickr Photostream of behind the scenes, the people, and everything related to the big event starting this upcoming Sunday. When you arrive at AU 2013 you can view and also post your own Autodesk University 2013 photos in the AU 2013 Photo Group Pool http://www.flickr.com/groups/au2013/ for everyone to see. Flickr is free and a great way to share your photos as well as view other attendees photos. Remember to keep your photos tastefully related to AU 2013 and of course g-rated. You can also post photos to Instagram with the hashtag #AU2013 but Flickr allows higher resolution and easier to find the photos in one place. You can also share videos from AU 2013 using Autodesk's Socialcam app for Apple iOS and Android. Hope to see you at Autodesk University 2013! Read more →

Autodesk University Contest - The Answer Is Outside

Spreading the word to those in the US and Canada for an Autodesk University contest announcement by Scott Sheppard of It's Alive in the Lab blog. The Answer Is Outside The Autodesk University conference is happening December 3-5 in Las... Read more →

BatKid's Key to Gotham City

A gWhat an amazing story of San Francisco going all out for a child's Make a Wish. News coverage of this heartwarming event: Video by SF Chronicle: http://vimeo.com/79541124 Watch Make-A-Wish Turn San Francisco Into BatKid's 'Gotham City –Thewire Batkid's Make-a-Wish Transforms San Francisco Into Gotham - ABC Batkid: Thousands cheer on pint-size superhero –SFGate Kudos and good karma to fellow Autodesk team members Arthur Harsuvanakit, Evan Atherton, and Maurice Conti of the Office of the CTO aka "OCTO" as well as Autodesk for getting involved when asked by the mayor. As I have said before many times, Autodesk does indeed have a heart and a soul. Also big thank you to everyone involved in this from the people of San Francisco to the Make a Wish organization. Making an sick child's dreams come to reality does more than just provide a fun memorable day for everyone. Read more →

Are you Ready for Autodesk University?

It is actually difficult to believe AU is just 6 days away, or 4 days if you are signed up for the pre-conference events like the CAVE Conference. I have just returned from a special work project that limited my ability to stay in touch over the past couple weeks but I will explain all the wet & wild details in the very near future. More posts on AU details coming today such as the Blogger and Social Meetup aka BSM360 and the place to share your AU photo memories on Flickr. Stay tuned to this blog for live news and images from the AU halls with a quick wrap up of the days highlights. I absolutely can't wait to see everyone in a few days. All the walking to events, classes, and the exhibit hall will help you work off that Thanksgiving turkey meal. Read more →

Science Can Be Fun!

For six decades and three generations, the Leakey family has dedicated themselves to uncovering, understanding and promoting the story of our origins. They have been systematically discovering evidence of our ancestry in East Africa. The Leakey team have collected thousands of fossils of human ancestors and other animals, as well as stone tools and other artifacts that are stored permanently in the National Museums of Kenya and at the Turkana Basin Institute (www.turkanabasin.org). Aware of the general inaccessibility of these national treasures in their current locations, Dr. Louise Leakey, a third generation of the ‘fossil hunter’ family, took it upon herself to find a way to make them globally accessible for educators, kids, and science enthusiasts. Inspired by the possibilities presented by new capture and digitization technologies, about two years ago Dr. Louise Leakey began a fruitful collaboration with Autodesk (www.autodesk.com). Together, the team captured 3D digital models of the most significant fossils, and built a beautiful, interactive web site to host them. Read more →

Ask the Smithsonian Laser Cowboys Anything on Reddit

How do you digitize the Smithsonian artifacts in 3D? Ask the Laser Cowboys right now on Reddit! http://s.si.edu/1hLnOD3 I am here with Smithsonian's 3D capturing experts the "Laser Cowboys" Adam Metallo and Vince Rossi, 3D Program Officers, Smithsonian Institution Digitization Program at the famed Smithsonian Castle in Washington DC for a Reddit AMA session. The Reddit AMA session will run until 1PM Eastern today Friday November 15th,2013. Adam and Vince use many 3D capture techniques such as laser scanning, microCT, photogrammetry and more to capture the objects and collection at the Smithsonian. Read more →

New Version of Autodesk 123D Catch Released

You can capture objects in the real world as 3D textured using using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod with greater precision and iOS7 compatibility with the new updated version of 123D Catch and still free. The last major update of 123D Catch mobile was November of 2012. New features available include: New guided capture, Photo Compass, helps you shoot the perfect photos for your capture. The app also flashes stabilization and low light/under exposed warnings to help the user get the best capture possible. More detailed and spectacular photorealistic 3D models. An updated gallery that streams lightning fast, so you can browse captures without waiting for downloading. Easier options to share, comment, like, and follow other users and their captures in the Gallery with the tap of a finger. And a new icon ;-) There is still the professional version of Recap Photo http://recap.autodesk.com/ which provides more power and precision. To download the app, visit: http://autode.sk/18pe3Rl Cheers, Shaan Read more →

Smithsonian's New x3D Explorer Announced

Autodesk has been working with the Smithsonian for over a year to bring some of the collection to more people by digitizing the objects in 3D and placing on the web to explore since only about 1% of the entire collection of over 130 million objects are ever on pubic display. Today the Smithsonian's Secretary Wayne Clough announced the new Smithsonian x3D Explorer. Many technology partners worked with the Smithsonian to capture and present the first objects of the collection including many iconic objects. The Smithsonian x3D Explorer allows users in a web browser (WebGL based) to interact with the objects like the Wright Flyer, US President Lincoln life mask, Amelia Earhart's flight suit, Whale Fossils from the desert in Chile Cosmic Buddha, and ranging in scale from an Embreea Orchid to the CasA Supernova Remnant and even 3D print some of them. The objects were laboriously digitized in 3D by the Smithsonian using many different technologies like laser scanning, micro-ct, and photogrammetry. No more "don't touch" warning signs or wondering what the object looks like on the other side or on closer inspection. This is an exciting new compliment to the physical exhibit collections in museums allowing people all over the world to explore and learn or even 3D print your own copy for yourself or classroom. I hope you will have a look at the amazing objects in 3D set free from their exhibits and glass cases for you to enjoy and explore. Try the functionality in the Smithsonian x3D Explorer powerful features like the ability analyze the objects with different surface colors, surface contours, take measurements, share your objects, and learn about the fascinating stories from the museums curators about the object. Not only can you interact with the objects but you can take guided tours of key areas in the Smithsonian x3D Smithsonian x3D Explorer Powered by Autodesk http://youtu.be/wW5uDfl23-4 The Smithsonian x3D Explorer Getting Started http://3d.si.edu/article/getting-started Read more →

Smithsonian X 3D Conference to be Webcast November 13th

The Smithsonian X 3D Event is this week in Washington DC. Autodesk is a very proud sponsor of this special event that will amaze and change the way you may experience museums and research in the future. The Smithsonian X 3D event is now sold out to attedning in person but there will be a live webcast at 3d.si.edu as well as the event archived for later viewing. Autodesk's very own Amar Hanspal, Senior Vice-President of Information Modeling and Platform Products and Brian Matthews, Vice President and Group CTO, Reality Capture will be speaking at this event Read more →

Running Autodesk Applications in My Web Browser

The Office of the CTO is trending all over the web and social media this week due to one announcement! Tuesday we made a joint announcement with Amazon, Mozilla and Otoy about Autodesk desktop applications running through the browser. In short, we announced technology that lets customers fire up a Web browser, connect to an Amazon Web Services G2 instance, and run Autodesk Inventor, Revit, Maya and 3ds Max off the instance through the browser. Autodesk announced this under the brand umbrella of Autodesk Remote. Autodesk Remote is the name of the our remote computing initiative and it’s also the name of the PC-to-PC/iPad client that we launched earlier this year. The Amazon instance doesn’t have a brand name. Both are powered by OTOY’s ORBX encoder, with the distinction being that Autodesk Remote is peer-to-peer via the Autodesk Remote client; the Amazon instances are hosted and connect to any computer (PC, Mac or Linux) via the browser. ORBX.js is the javascript decoder. 30-day trials of Inventor, Revit, Max and Maya are pre-installed on the Amazon Instances.Your files can be stored on Autodesk 360, Dropbox, Google Drive, wherever you want. I get to take it for a test drive! Today and late into tonight I was delighted to be able to get my hands on this technology preview and run the four Autodesk applications over the web with nothing but HTML5 in a web browser. Look ma, nothing to download, install, or plugins required! That's' right there was no catch and nothing to download or install as stated I just fire up my web browser like Firefox and Chrome with HTML5 compatibility and ran full versions of Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Inventor, Maya, and Revit. So how is this different from other remote access applications out there? This technology allows hardware GPU acceleration and also since these Windows 2008 server machine instances are on the Amazon Web Servers along with modified Kepler Grid GPUs from Nvidia, I have one hell of a powerhouse machine that I can access anytime from almost any device. I can use Autodesk 3ds Max or Inventor from a MacBook Air. This my friends is what many with graphics hungry applications have been searching for, a scalable cloud GPU. The cloud based CPU cores have been around awhile now but those involved with graphics are more interested in GPUs and being able to use them in a cloud infrastructure where you can scale fast in a burst as needed unlike your local machine. I can just grab a new machine or device and fire up a HTML5 browser like Firefox and get to my desktop and run powerful applications without downloading or installing anything but a browser and also not sacrificing performance due to the local device hardware. I also wonder aloud if this will reduce the need for native platform applications if you can access them from most devices. For example I can run Revit on a Mac now without sacrificing performance. I have noticed just testing today that the performance is about 30fps but the absolutely amazing part is the remote instance itself and how responsive it is in graphical operations like rendering and working with huge files.The remote machine instance actually renders frames in a test animation I ran about 4 times faster than my beefy local machine can. Read more →

Autodesk University Veterans - We Need Mentors for AU2013

Become an AU 2013 MentorWe are looking for those that have attended Autodesk University a couple times and know all the secrets to surviving, thriving, and getting the most out of AU to mentor newbies to AU. Please join me as it is a great deal of fun and I was a mentor last year and all my pupils survived AU2013 and the epic party. Sign up to be an AU Mentor now! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AU-Mentor More information on AU Mentors is posted on the AU Blog http://au.typepad.com/au/2013/10/step-up-to-the-plate-become-an-au-mentor.html Cheers & See you very soon at AU 2013! Shaan Read more →

Ask Autodesk's Dr. Jordan Brandt, Anything on Reddit

Autodesk's own Dr. Jordan Brandt, Mfg. Tech. Futurist (@gordobia on Twitter) , participates today November 6th, 2013 at 2:00pm PT (5pm ET) in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AmA). Ask him about 3D printing, robotics, the Hyperloop, or anything. http://www.reddit.com/user/JordanBrandtFuturist/ Read more →

Autodesk Labs Project Shapeshifter

Project Shapeshifter allows you to create geometry easily in your web browser using base shapes and sliders to manipulate the geometry to something unique. After you are done you can export as OBJ file to use in another application or 3D print. It is seriously easy and fun. Read more →

2013 AUGI Top Ten Wish List - Call for Submissions

AUGI (Autodesk Users Group International) is asking for members to submit their Autodesk product wishes to be voted on by AUGI members using their new AUGI Wish List System. Top wishes are provided to Autodesk at Autodesk University to encourage for future product development. AUGI basic membership is free. Read more →

On the Cutting Edge of Research with Lidar

We are blasting at the future using laser & light beams at Autodesk to capture our physical world in 3D for many innovative uses. Here is the great article by ReadWrite features Dr. Aaron Morris of Autodesk and the future possibilities of Lidar. Seven ways 3D Lidar is transforming our physical world: autode.sk/16aKQ14 Read more →

Friday Flashback – Run 1980s Software

I have my own private time machine on my laptop I still run AutoCAD 2.18 from 1985/86 using a Virtual Machine running a 10Mb DOS partition. It is pretty amazing to try and use 1980 software today especially AutoCAD 2.18 without the UNDO command, Autosnaps, real time pan and zoom and so much more. You really realize how far CAD and design software has come. In AutoCAD 2.18 it was the first release with AutoLISP and only had 90 commands. I run AutoCAD 2.18 on a virtual machine of DOS 5 and a 10Mb disk size maximum otherwise AutoCAD 2.18 will not run. Apparently in 1985 the idea of a hard disk larger than 10Mb was crazy talk. Here are a couple more screen shots and a quick video: AutoCAD 2.18 Start MenuAutoCAD 2.18 and Space Shuttle Sample Drawing If you want to try running Windows 1.0 or 1980 software for Apple check out these crazy web hosted virtual machines of software. Perhaps I should see about placing AutoCAD 2.18 in a web based virtual machine for people to try. Read more →