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 →

3DS Max 2021 Rendering and Viewport Features

You can render me with a smile at all the improvements to the rendering and viewports in Autodesk 3DS Max 2021. If you have used 3DS Max and make amazing pixel candy renders, then you most likely know of “Master Zap”, Zap Andersson. Zap is one of the well known mad scientists of rendering technologies within the 3DS Max product team. Zap just posted a nice 18 minute overview video of the changes made to 3DS Max... Read more →

What's New in 3DS Max 2021

Autodesk 3DS Max 2021 is now released, see what's new. Bake to Texture Installer Scripting with Python 3 Arnold as the Default Renderer Physically Based Rendering (PBR) Improved Viewport Quality & Settings OSL Shaders File I/O Chamfer improvements Weighted Normals Modifier SketchUp Import Substance Update ProSound Improved audio support FBX Improvements 3rd Party Developer Tools Read the details and roadmap. http://makeanything.autodesk.com/3dsmax http://cganimator.com/unofficial-3dsmax-whats-new/ 3ds Max 2021 Help: What's New in 3ds Max 2021 Check out the 3DS Max 2021 launch video.... Read more →

AutoCAD 2021 Is Here - See What’s Inside

The new AutoCAD 2021 is here and the AutoCAD Team has released the details on what is inside. AutoCAD 2021 Is Here: See What’s Inside Automatic Insights Into Drawing History Quick Identification of Changes with Xref Compare Enhancements to Blocks Palette Improvements to Graphics Performance AutoCAD Web App and Google Drive Integration Take a Tour of AutoCAD 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-yK7vyJlM0&feature=youtu.be Download AutoCAD 2021 Today! Check out the new features in AutoCAD 2021 and AutoCAD LT 2021 by logging into your Autodesk... Read more →

Digital Planning Means Zero Impact for Porsche

For Porsche’s Complex Electric-Car Factory, Digital Planning Means Zero Impact “In September 2019, Porsche opened its most complex factory to date for manufacturing its first fully electric sports car, the Taycan. In the company’s hometown of Stuttgart, Germany, Porsche used digital factory planning to create a zero-impact facility where driverless transport systems help maximize flexibility. The challenges for planning the factory began with the site itself, which sits in a hilly urban area bordered by orchards. “These orchards are protected,”... Read more →

Autodesk 2020 Film and TV, VFX, Games, and Design Showreel

Its at times like these in the world we need to be distracted and inspired. Here is our latest Film and TV, VFX, Games, and Design Showreel by our customers for you to enjoy and tune the world out for four minutes. Autodesk 2020 Film and TV, VFX, Games, and Design Showreel https://youtu.be/P_gywq16GZc Read more →

One-of-a-Kind Learning Experience from Disney Imagineers

For those looking for more resources of good learning out there for their kids at home, here is a great one from Disney and the amazing learning resource Khan Academy. By the way, if you have older kids, all of Autodesk's software that Disney uses to design their parks, rides, and animated films are free to teachers and students around the world at https://www.autodesk.com/education/home with some curriculum. There is also the powerful but free cloud based Tinkercad for 3-100 year... Read more →

Saving Time on Bridge Design Using Design Automation

Beca and Autodesk developed a workflow to reduce design time for bridge design saving weeks of time. Beca is one of Asia Pacific’s largest independent advisory, design and engineering consultancies and looking for ways to better their design workflows to reduce time and result in the best solutions. “The deadline to deliver the design was tight, and Beca needed solutions that would enable its team to deliver the project on time. Additionally, the design project presented an opportunity for Beca... Read more →

Volunteer Design and Make Projects to Help People Breathe

Yesterday an acquaintance I know Gui Cavalcanti was recognized for participating in a volunteer open source effort to design breathing ventilators for those that may need them due to the COVID-19 virus. Its a blend of makers and engineers creating mechanical designs and the 3D printing parts. The Futuristic Solutions the Internet is Crowdsourcing to Cure Coronavirus – Newsweek “A Facebook group called Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies, which consists of over 13,000 members, is trying to find solutions to... Read more →

Autodesk Offers Free & Extended Access to Cloud Collaboration Products

In response to customer feedback, we're offering an Extended Access Program for several of our flagship cloud collaboration products to better support our customers during this challenging time. Learn more here: https://adsknews.autodesk.com/views/COVID-19 ”Customers & Partners Autodesk Offers Free & Extended Access to Cloud Collaboration Products (March 19) As Autodesk keeps a close eye on the impact the coronavirus (COVID-19) is having on our industry, we’re continuing to explore the best ways we can support our customers, flex to meet their changing... Read more →