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On March 22, 2014, a large landslide in Oso, Washington killed 43 people and destroyed dozens of homes. Heavy rainfall in the previous days and weeks had saturated the soil on a hillside over State Road 530 and the Stillaguamish River. This eventually triggered the slide, burying approximately 1 acre below in 30 to 70 feet of mud, soil, and rock debris. Shortly after the mudslide, the Field Innovation Team (FIT) sent a team to support first-responders in finding innovative... Read more →
I posted some of these these pages from old drafting standards on a Throwback Thursday two weeks ago, and people loved them, so I will share more of the timeless words of wisdom from the Drafting Time Machine. This is from a Drafting Standards Manual from Ralph M. Parsons Company in 1975 and were titled the Basic Dozen. Enjoy this Basic Dozen Tip on drafting from 1975: Point 5 Use Dotted Lines to Clarify Although the illustrations and terminology may... Read more →
Autodesk Memento becomes Autodesk ReMake and has formally graduated to a commercial Autodesk product! Autodesk ReMake turns reality data into hi-resolution 3D meshes for design & engineering workflows and so much more. It has been a long journey to this point and many new features and great feedback along the way from Memento users. http://Remake.autodesk.com Read the message from the product manager and Mother of Memento Tatjana Dzambazova. Memento graduates to Autodesk ReMake! Mammoth skull was being worked on by... Read more →
If you want to be a speaker at AU 2016 you now have only 5 more days to get your proposals in by May 27, 2016. ”Join industry leaders and Autodesk users from around the world, November 15-17, 2016 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. (That's 2 weeks earlier this year!) Share your innovation, spread your inspiration, and attend AU on us.“ Submit your Proposals Now AU 2016 Proposal Guide Proposal Worksheet Autodesk University online Read more →
I found these in my old CAD and Drafting standards boxes and had a good chuckle and thought I would share on this Throwback Thursday. Read more →
I thought I would share the following photo I took today while working on a project near Death Valley California. It was hot, but so beautiful. While I am sharing a photo of the hot desert, I might as well as add for contrast last weekends hike in Oregon’s Opal Creek.I wished I could have swam in that creek today with the heat of the Southern California desert. Read more →
If you have Autodesk product questions, we have answers. Join the big Autodesk answer day tomorrow online and speak with people from several Autodesk product teams. What: Autodesk Answer Day – You have questions, we’ve got answers! Date: May 18th, 2016 Time: 6am to 6pm Pacific Time Products: AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, Civil 3D, Revit, Inventor, and Vault. http://autode.sk/answerdays Read more →
Over the past two weeks we have had some changes like the username and password split into two steps in the Autodesk community sign in process that impacted projects for users of Autodesk Beta and Autodesk Labs. My colleague Scott Sheppard detailed the issue in a blog post Changes to the Autodesk Feedback Community Login Process are In Progress. It was initially a fairly bumpy change as we were unaware of the changes coming. Since the change we have been... Read more →
Check out what my good friend Sly Lee and his non-profit scientific organization The Hydrous are doing to help educate people and make sure there are coral reefs for our children and their children. Coral reefs are often referred to as the rainforests of the sea. They occupy less than 0.1 percent of the ocean floor but provide a habitat for 25 percent of the world’s marine species. And like rain forests, coral reefs are at severe risk due to... Read more →
“Computer-gaming pioneer Arthur Samuel once defined “machine learning” as “a field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.” But for some people, the meaning takes a negative turn—as in what happens in dystopian movies after computers have conquered humanity. But the future of machine learning doesn’t have to be a doom-and-gloom scenario. Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski—who pursues innovative ideas on the horizon rather than trends of the moment—envisions a more positive outcome for humans... Read more →
PowerPoint Karaoke is where a person volunteers (or volunteered) to get in front of a group of people to speak for 3-5 minutes to 10 PowerPoint slides they have never seen before. Sounds fun for the audience right? Believe it or not It is even more fun for the presenter. The slides are created to be funny and stump the person making the result entertaining and a challenge to try to speak a compelling and consistent themed presentation. I first... Read more →
Join Autodesk CEO and Chief Maker extraordinaire Carl Bass for a live Instructable session on how to build an autonomous go-kart at the Maker Faire Bay Area. Carl, his son and some friends have rigged their electric go-kart with the guts of a drone, and now it can be driven remotely. Check it out in person at MakerFaire Bay Area 2016! Carl’s session: http://makerfaire.com/maker/entry/55314/ Read more →
I just finished moving this week into the SW Hills area of Portland and wanted to pass on a great free resource to those living in the US. This is the best way I have ever found to get to know your neighbors and keep the pulse of your neighborhood like any crime, who found a dog, who has furniture for sale, neighbor needing assistance, what is that funky smell, who has extra garden veggies to give away, who is... Read more →
Last week on May 3rd, 2016, Autodesk Chief Technology Officer Jeff Kowalski presented at the re:publica 2016 conference in Berlin Germany. https://re-publica.de/16/session/shape-things-come “We humans co-evolve with our tools. This is an ongoing dynamic with key inflection points throughout history, such as the move to agriculture, and the Industrial Revolution. We’re in another major inflection point now, focused on how one of our most powerful tools, the digital world, is expanding into a new realm, the physical world. While until only... Read more →
This is the unofficial fun holiday May the 4th. This is the day you find out all the Star Wars movie fans and others make every Star Wars related pun or reference they can like the famous Star wars line “May the Force Be With You” as “May the 4th Be With You.” I wanted to share with you the work of the top Star Wars fan on my team Evan Atherton who created an award winning short video about... Read more →
This weekend over 600 teams of high school students competed in St Louis Missouri for the FIRST Robotics 2016 world championship. FIRST 2016 Winning Teams: Team 120 – Cleveland's Team Team 330 - The Beach Bots Team 1086 - Blue Cheese Robotics Team 2481 - Roboteers Congratulations to all FIRST participants, students, mentors, schools, teachers, volunteers, parents and sponsors. See you next competition season! Read more →