Between the Lines

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 →

Innovation Stations Open at OMSI

On Friday evening I attended the grand opening at the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) for the new Center for Innovation - Innovation Station exhibit in the turbine hall. OMSI's Center for Innovation is using our community's creativity and design thinking to solve global problems. And its fun! Tinkercad was also released for a new group of kids and adult visitors of OMSI on Friday as part of the new Center for Innovation exhibit. Children and adults alike... Read more →

Spotted a Wooly Mammoth and You Can Too

Last week I was working in Washington DC meeting with some customers and partners including my longtime friends and digitization heroes at the Smithsonian Digitization Program Lab. While there catching up on all the cool projects for the Smithsonian and talking about our several years as partners on the https://www.3d.si.edu/ and the Apollo Command Module capture, I spotted a 3D print of the Smithsonian's mammoth at small scale. It wasn't full scale 1:1 3D print of their mammoth skeleton as... Read more →

Autodesk Make It Real challenge

Make sure to check out the Autodesk Make It Real challenge. This challenge gives students and educators in the US and Canada a chance to win a makerspace for their school. It is open until 2/4/19. Please spread the word to schools that you know located in the US or Canada. Read more →

Autodesk Proudly Supports STEAM Education

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Spend your #HourofCode this week using Tinkercad and coding with Autodesk Tinkercad Codeblocks: autode.sk/2OIfaHC “No experience preferred All you have to do is start” Read more →

Premiums Instructables for Teachers and Students

Students & teachers get free premium Instructables memberships! Take online classes & explore educational projects. Examples of Instructables for teachers and students: 100 STEAM Projects for Teachers Instructables for Young Engineers If you are not aware, Instructables is a gem for learning how to make almost anything. With step by step instructions called Instructables you lean how to do everything from science projects to building a boat and even to baking a rainbow layered cake or building a campfire or... Read more →

Autodesk ReCap Helps Preserve & Share the Story of the Antikythera Shipwreck

Autodesk ReCap helps preserve & share the story of this shipwreck with 3D models & 3D printed artifacts http://autode.sk/2dpgn8q Read more →

Smart Materials

Max Moruzzi is the senior principal research scientist in our Autodesk Research and has authored an article for Techcrunch on how smart materials will change and reshape the world for better through design. This is another remarkable glimpse at the Future of Making Things. How Smart Materials Will Literally Reshape the World Around Us tps://techcrunch.com/2016/09/17/how-smart-materials-will-literally-reshape-the-world-around-us/ “The IoT may well be The Next Big Thing, but maybe the attention around sensors is misplaced… What if we didn’t even need embedded sensors... Read more →

Andrew Hessel–Reddit Ask Me Anything on Biotechnology

Andrew Hessel of Autodesk's Bio/Nano Research Group within Autodesk Office of the CTO recently held a very thought provoking Reddit Ask Me Anything session. Andrew if you have not met him, is a very unique and brilliant researcher in his field and here at Autodesk working on big issues that truly impact our world like finding technology processes to cure cancer, disease,and other big challenges faces us as a species. He refers to the brain as nothing more than a... Read more →

Fast Cars and Generative Design

Back in May of this year I had the pleasure to be in the hot and beautiful Southern California desert at Trona Pinnacles near Death Valley with a group of engineers, scientist, champion Baja 1000 champion race drivers, car builders, mechanics, designers, cinematographers, technologists, and more for a historic off road race car project test for a generative designed car, the Hackrod. The Hackrod was designed by Autodesk Dreamcatcher using design input and performance data from many types of sensors... Read more →

Monitoring the Worlds Coral Reefs Using Reality Computing

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 →

View the Zika Virus in the the Autodesk Research Molecule Viewer

This may be news to many if not most people, but Autodesk’s expertise and impact extends far beyond the traditional realm of design and into the life sciences research on computational & synthetic biology. The Bio/Nanotechnology Team has performed a great deal of research, and in the past year released a technology preview of the Autodesk Research Molecule Viewer. This cloud based 3D viewing tool is intended for scientist and researchers to use and extend to assist in the development... Read more →

Made In Space Additive Manufacturing Facility

Made In Space is developing manufacturing technologies that are enabling people to live and work in space. The Made In Space Additive Manufacturing Facility was launched on March 22nd, 2016 and arrived at the International Space Station on March 26th, 2016. This is a first step toward putting manufacturing systems on the Moon, Mars, and on deep space missions. Read more →

AMF in Orbit

The Atlas V launch vehicle lifts off from Cape Canaveral. Credit: NASA Congratulations to NASA, Orbital ATK, and Made in Space for launching the new 3D Printer Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) into orbit last night. It will soon arrive and be installed on the International Space Station and provide an upgraded 3D printing capability for use by the astronauts - and possibly you. Contained within the AMF is Autodesk Memento software. I have always thought our Autodesk products were out... Read more →

A New 3D Printer Heading to the International Space Station

Autodesk partner, friends, and Fusion 360 users Made in Space sent the first 3D printer designed for space 2011 is again sending a new updated 3D printer up to the International Space Station this Tuesday, March 22nd at 11:05 pm EST. Keeping with the long tradition of crazy NASA acronyms the 3D printer is named the “AMF” for Additive Manufacturing Facility. Made in Space is the cutting edge on additive manufacturing in space and it opens up many possibilities to... Read more →

Great First Day of REAL 2016

Yesterday was the fist of two days for the REAL 2016 conference in it’s second year. Being held at scenic Fort Mason there are about 900 attendees networking, attending presentations, and looking at exhibits and vendors.Autodesk was periscoping several of the presentations yesterday (https://www.periscope.tv/autodesk) and I was tweeting @shaanhurley and posting to Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shaanhurley/ live from the event. The night ended late with my good friends the Laser Cowboys of the Smithsonian Institution at a local In n Out Burger.... Read more →

Why the Fastest Route to Ocean Conservation - and Saving the Planet - Is Through Storytelling

(The National Geographic ship M/V Orion at anchor in Lissenung, Papua New Guinea during the TED Mission Blue II expedition. Photo taken by a DJI Inspire drone.) Maurice Conti “MC” a team mate of mine here at Autodesk in the Office of the CTO wrote a great article that was just published online. The article tells a great story on the importance of the ocean and how Autodesk is helping find ways to preserve and conserve this amazing and valuable... Read more →

The Hydrous Maldives 2015 Expedition

Such a visually stunning story with a very important educational angle about the ocean by Sly Lee and the 501 (c)3 non-profit organization The Hydrous. The Hydrous do what they proclaim by “communicating science beautifully.” They were recently in the Maldives in December 2015 and generated highly detailed 3D textured models of corals using Autodesk Memento to study changes occurring in our oceans. Here is one of the 3D coral models generated from photos in Autodesk Memento. Check out “The... Read more →

3D scanning Apollo 11 at the Smithsonian

Smithsonian and Autodesk employees conduct a 3-D scan of the spacecraft. (Matt McFarland/The Washington Post) Some of my Autodesk colleagues and the Smithsonian laser cowboys are capturing the Apollo 11 lunar module in 3D this week. Current Reality Capture and Computing technologies allow us to preserve and study the detail of an object from a small beetle to historic items such as the Apollo module or even the USS Arizona. Read more about this project in the Washington Post article.... Read more →

DNA Origami in the Shape of the Autodesk Logo

Autodesk Bio/Nano/Programmable Matter Group Team member Aaron Berliner published an Instructable on how he and colleague Joseph Schaeffer created a 2D Autodesk logo from M13 Bacteriophage DNA. Having met Aaron and seeing him programming the DNA in our Pier 9 lab was absolutely fascinating. The team in the lab are doing important research like looking to end cancer Finding and Curing Cancer - Research at Autodesk among other important research. Aaron is passionate about his research and you know someone... Read more →

Finding and Curing Cancer - Research at Autodesk

One of the most surprising things people find when l;earning about Autodesk and some of the projects we are involved in are the Bio/Nano research projects. Most expect Autodesk to have the cutting edge design related technology and research, but science and research that could lead to a therapy to end cancer cure is completely unexpected. We have several health science related researchers at Autodesk and we have a research lab located in our Pier 9 space in San Francisco.... Read more →

Share 3D in the New Autodesk Memento Gallery

In the past 24 hours Autodesk has launched a new Memento Gallery where you can publish your Autodesk Memento 3D models for others to view or even download. I published models up there to test it and it works very well. How to publish tot the gallery: Create or load a model in the free beta of Autodesk Memento for Windows (Mac version in testing now) I loaded a model of a Sea Cockroach I created from a series of... Read more →

WTH Wednesday - 3D Sea Cockroach

Recently I visited Colleen Flanigan an artist working to save the Mesoamerican reef and some marine biologists at the UNAM University in Puerto Morelos Mexico. While there I saw a skeleton of what was called a “sea cockroach” or “sea roach” which appeared similar to a slipper lobster and was about 8 inches in length. I was there training scientists on how to capture objects like corals as 3D models for study using only a camera. I photographed the sea... Read more →

Wind Flooding Crocodiles Corals Training - Amazing

I have been traveling a fair amount recently and about to enjoy some Summertime with my young daughter. I just returned from a work project in Mexico helping to train artists and scientist using Autodesk Memento to digitally capture corals and sculptures in 3D. While in Mexico a big storm hit the day after I arrived bring high winds and flooding leading to power outages and preventing me from some work related SCUBA dives on the worlds second largest barrier... Read more →

Worlds Oldest Tools Discovered

The oldest stone tools known to man were found in remote Northern Kenya. The tools date back 3.3 million years. My friend Dr. Louise Leakey documented the excavation and tools using Autodesk technology to share the discovery with the world. These historical findings are detailed in an article published last week in Nature Magazine (May 20, 2015). Now, through the power of Autodesk technology, people all around the world will have the chance to share in this major scientific discovery.... Read more →