Between the Lines

Solutions for Remote Collaboration in Design and Manufacturing

There is a great resource for those that need some assistance in learning how to remotely collaborate effectively, remote solutions, get Autodesk licenses, and more in a video playlist. Working remotely and especially collaborating with others from home requires some adjustments but it doesn’t have to be a challenge. Many solutions for such setup are either already available to current Autodesk customers through Autodesk Account or can be accessed via the Extended Access Program. The list of collaboration products available... Read more →

Dieter’s Guide to the AutoCAD Customer Galaxy

Today I was fortunate to participate with about 70+ other employees in celebrating and wishing the best of retirement to a long time AutoCAD team member and passionate customer advocate for 32 years Dieter Schlaepfer. Dieter has been involved in many things at Autodesk over 32 years but primarily learning and training then in the 22 years I have known his in the technical publications roles. He was always trying to find out from customers how we can communicate feature... Read more →

Evil Scammers – Be Aware and Be Vigilant

Be aware there are many scams out there trying to take advantage of the challenging COVID-19 and economic uncertainty and confusion with very convincing phishing emails to get you with a fake Amazon or bank email to give up your login and passwords on a fake sign in page. Another scam is criminals taking advantage of the overwhelmed unemployment system as I found out when some criminal fraudster filed a unemployment claim using some of my details. I have had... Read more →

Creative 3ds Max Tutorial and 3ds Max Roadmap

In social media recently, I noticed Paul Neale had posted a creative training infographic on 3ds Max Animation Tools (short list) and thought it would be great to share out. http://paulneale.com/osl-tips-and-tricks/ Want to know where 3ds Max is going or added in recent updates? Check out the 3d Max roadmap. makeanything.autodesk.com/3DSMAX Read more →

Some Portland Zen

Wishing you a happy Earth Day, the 50th Earth Day. Right now everyone can use a little peaceful zen garden therapy in their life, especially now with the uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 shuttering all but essential services. In Portland we have world famous and locally beloved treasure of the Portland Japanese Garden, but it too has been closed due to the pandemic. But now you can explore much of the garden in 360 views and enjoy exploring some... Read more →

Requesting a Home Use License for Remote Work

As part of our ongoing effort to assist our customers who are now working remotely, we sent an email communication on Tuesday, March 31 to customers who rely on network servers for software access to remind them of our Home Use license policy. A Home Use License allows you to use your software from home as long as your subscription or maintenance plan is active, and until they return to the workplace. For subscriptions with single-user access (named user) Install... Read more →

10 Best Practices to Support a Remote Workforce

In these challenging times, those of us now working from home can always use good resources and best practices to ease the transition and be productive, as productive as we can possibly be given each of our unique situations. Our Autodesk CIO Prakash Kota wrote a good article outlining 10 best practices for a remote workforce that may assist you and your teams. 10 Best Practices to Support a Remote Workforce—and Ease Stress—During COVID-19 Read more →

COVID-19 Design Challenges – Call To Action

My longtime friend and Autodesk colleague Kean Walmsley and I have been talking about ways Autodesk technology might assist our customers, and even us at Autodesk in these changing times or the “new normal”. How might we evaluate social distancing, points where people could congregate or HVAC flows all based on best health and safety practices being publicly discussed in this potential new normal environment when many self isolated communities slowly phase back in public settings and buildings. I would... Read more →

Enter the AEC Excellence Awards 2020

Do you have an outstanding architecture, engineering, or construction project that deserves recognition? Showcase it to the world in the AEC Excellence Awards 2020. Enter now: autode.sk/34DBTOC Don’t miss the opportunity to showcase your outstanding design and construction projects. The call for entries opens on April 15, 2020. Deadline for submission is June 10, 2020. https://youtu.be/LSC8yxbvJVQ Read more →

Setup BIM 360 Projects Programmatically – Open Source Release

There is a new Open Source Tool from our Autodesk Global Consulting Delivery to address a common request from our customers requiring a way to automate setting up BIM 360 environment users and projects. The BIM 360 project setup tool sample was first created by Oliver Scharpf from our Global Consulting Delivery team to solve this need. The tool was released by Autodesk to Open Source for everyone to use. Use this command line tool to setup BIM 360 projects,... Read more →

Making your voice heard as an Autodesk Inventor User

If you are a user of Autodesk Inventor, the Autodesk Inventor Team wants to hear from you in many ways as well provide some information on what their plans are in future releases of the product. Inventor Team member Loren Welch Sr Product Manager for the Inventor product line at Autodesk wrote a nice blog post on all the ways you can get your feedback to the product team and participate with others on future Inventor needs. There is also... Read more →

Thank You

Thank you to all the medical first responders doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and researchers battling the COVID-19 pandemic head on in a heroic effort. I worry about my friends who are doctors and nurses every single day. Also a big thank you to store workers and delivery people that without them so many would not be getting things they need to get by. So many good people out there helping so many with their hard work and risk. To my... Read more →

Ways to Contribute to Combating COVID-19

Have you wanted to get involved in helping with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) efforts? Autodesk has detailed some of the ways you can help others around the world out, as we all need to work and help each other to get through this difficult time. Engineers Collaborate to Combat COVID-19 Open-source design efforts Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies, is a key group that is crowdsourcing solutions to address the diminishing stock of medical equipment around the world. They are mobilizing thousands... Read more →

Revit 2021 - What's New

If you use Revit or considered it for your architectural design & BIM projects, you will be interested in the new release that dropped today. Long time user request of Slanted Walls generative design included with Dynamo 2.5 High fidelity PDF MEP enhancements New Europe data center And much much more Read and Watch all about Revit 2021 on the Revit Blog Students and Faculty also get most of our Autodesk products including Revit for 3 years free at https://education.autodesk.com/ Read more →

Opportunity to Ask Autodesk Experts - Every Tuesday

Ask Autodesk Experts about working remotely and collaboration with our products during Community Office Hours, every Tuesday! Learn more about Autodesk Office Hours: autode.sk/2R5eSOY Read more →

Solar System Drawn to Scale in AutoCAD DWG

An oldie but a goodie! Back in AutoCAD version 2.18 (circa 1985), Autodesk placed a sample drawing with AutoCAD named the Solar.DWG to demonstrate the precision of AutoCAD back in the early eighties. AutoCAD was based used 64bit floating point precision and the most accurate back then. With this Solar DWG you can see our solar system in 1:1 scale in kilometer units. This would not be a good DWG to plot/print 1:1 full scale. You can zoom all the... Read more →