Between the Lines

New High School Interns in Autodesk Portland Office

We are honored to have 3 college student interns and 9 high school interns from FIRST Robotics FRC Teams this year working on software in our Autodesk Portland office. They are once again working on the Autodesk Synthesis software that is free and open for FIRST FRC Robotics teams to use to simulate their code and import their robot design before competition. It is an amazing project and fun to play based in Unity. From left to right: Kira is... Read more →

Meet Project Discover for Dynamo

My colleague Kean Walmsley announced on his blog Through the Interface on the new Project Discover for Dynamo out of Autodesk Research and is ready to be tested. It is a tool that we used to perform generative design in the AEC design for our Autodesk Toronto office including predicting the natural light rays into offices to assist in office location based on employee preferences (video Generative Design for Architecture: Autodesk MaRS Office). Read Kean’s overview in his blog post... Read more →

Got My Bags Packed for My Mars Condo!

A great story of smart young minds tackling a challenge put forth by NASA helped AI SpaceFactory Win NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for additive constructed habitats. NASA awarded AI SpaceFactory $500,000 for the successful construction of a 15 foot Mars habitat with three windows named MARSHA. Read more →

Realtime Revit BIM Models in Unity in Just One Click

Today, the awesome fi9ne folks at Unity announced the collaboration with Autodesk for a Revit importation product named Unity Reflect. Unity provides a platform for all sorts of immersive 3D possibilities in AR/VR and more that have bent my mind at times. Now with Unity Reflect you can import your Revit BIM 3D model in one click. Get a hands on look at Autodesk University London in just two weeks! https://unity.com/event/au2019 “Announcing Unity Reflect, a new product for architects, building... Read more →

RawR See a T-Rex in Stunning 3D Detail - without being eaten

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with a panel of Smithsonian employees of the Digitization Program Office and they let me know of an amazing reality capture project that went live just yesterday. It is stunning in detail and fascinating information. You can also download the 3D model data and then 3D print your own although at a smaller than life size. Tyrannosaurus rex This T. rex skeleton was unearthed in Montana beginning in 1988. It is posed over... Read more →

Interested in Artificial Intelligence for Engineering– Attend our Engineering Summer School 2019

Autodesk is hosting an immersive event in Toronto to help students and professionals acquire expertise in state-of-the-art AI methods and techniques. autode.sk/2PUKipw Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Engineering Summer School 2019, hosted by Autodesk, is a two-week event that brings together a talented group of engineering graduate students and industry professionals to acquire expertise in state-of-the-art AI methods and techniques, with the focus on deep learning and reinforcement learning. While there has been a significant resurgence of AI technologies, other scientific... Read more →

AEC Hackathon This Weekend in Seattle

Starting tomorrow, another (41st actually) AEC Hackathon will be held this time in beautiful Seattle Washington and I will be participating. The AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) Hackathon was created to give those designing, building, and maintaining our built environment the opportunity to collaborate with cutting edge technologies and its developers and designers. It has quickly become a community of innovators that include all elements of the built environment, not just AEC all around the world. Please join all of us... 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 →

Introducing Arnold 5.3 with Arnold GPU Public Beta

So many updates to the Arnold renderer that all add up to realistic 3D renderings and eyeball melting graphics. Arnold now brings artists the power and flexibility of CPU and GPU rendering in a single renderer! Introducing Arnold 5.3 with Arnold GPU in public beta Arnold 5.3 with Arnold GPU in public beta will be available for download on March 20, 2019 as of 12 noon PT / 3pm ET. Arnold is available as a standalone subscription or with a... Read more →

See Some Portland Startup Pitches Today on Pi and PIE Day

On this Pi day (3.14 etc.) I hope you will join us on the PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment) Demo Day livestream at 2PM Pacific Time on March 14, 2019. Tell everyone there is plenty of room on our livestream from Aladdin Theater in sunny Portland Oregon. https://bit.ly/PIEDD2019 We love Pi and PIE! Update: PIE Demo Day 2019 replay is already available. Just in time for some weekend binge watching. https://bit.ly/PIEDD2019 Read more →

Startups in Autodesk's Portland Office

Autodesk has provided space and resources to a local Portland startup incubator organization named PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment) to run a startup incubator in our Portland office named PIE Shop. Read more →

Autodesk Launches Construction IQ – AI to Reduce Construction Risk

Increase your project’s intelligence and reduce risks by using some artificial intelligence trained using machine learning models from data from over 30,000 projects. Autodesk just introduced Construction IQ in a public preview where an artificial intelligence service works with Autodesk’s BIM 360 project management platform. ”Formerly known as Project IQ, Construction IQ for quality and safety analysis started in private preview in 2016. Altogether, the algorithm was developed with 150 million construction issues and checklist observations. Subcontractor assignments and historical... Read more →

Augmented Reality - The End of Paper Drawings on the Construction Site

Not quite yet, but things are continuing to move that direction with this weekends announcement of the new Microsoft HoloLens 2 augmented reality (mixed reality) headset. The ability to have more portable compute power as a heads up display overlaying information like construction drawings or a BIM model in context will change construction and manufacturing as well as other industries and things in daily life. Microsoft HoloLens 2 hands-on: A giant leap closer to mixed reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqFqtAJMtYE This AR is... Read more →

Industrialized Construction Is Growing and Needed

Yesterday I attended the 2019 Industrialized Construction Forum held by Stanford University Center for Integrated Facility Engineering. This was a packed event attended by by not only academia, but industry. The presentations, panel discussions, and conversations with attendees were very good and thought provoking on the impact and changes to construction and our built world in the near term and long term future. Some of the technologies and considerations involved society, AI/ML, robotics, offside prefab, modular construction, skyrocketing costs from labor and materials, and sustainability. My big takeaway is that Industrialized Construction “IC” may be the best solution to solving the limited resources, reducing carbon footprint, addressing the global housing shortage, and overcoming the labor shortage in the construction industry. We at Autodesk couldn’t agree more in doing More, Better, with Less. Read more →

FIRST FRC PNW Robot Scrimmage

This weekend there was a scrimmage for Pacific Northwest FIRST robotics FRC teams held in Corvallis Oregon . My team 1540 Flaming Chickens of Catlin Gabel were there with their 2019 competition robot named, Phineas. FIRST Robotics FRC Teams started designing, fabricating, and programming for this years challenge just about 6 weeks ago. Team 1540 Flaming Chickens design in 3D using Autodesk Fusion 360. The goal of the scrimmage was to test the robot on a competition field and see... Read more →

Generative Design Field Lab in Chicago – Come Visit

Generative design is here to stay, so we made a place for it: Introducing our new Generative Design Field Lab in Chicago. https://autode.sk/2N56Lil “Every new technology comes with a learning curve, but we don’t want that to keep our customers from exploring what’s possible with our tools. We believe every manufacturer should be able to consider new and better ways to make things, and that’s why we’re opening a new public workshop space—Autodesk’s Generative Design Field Lab—in Chicago to show... Read more →

Design Automation for Revit - Public Beta

If you have wanted to read, write, and modify data from Revit without installing Revit from within the the Forge cloud platform, then today is your lucky day. The Revit Design Automation API was just launched as a public beta. “Today we’re announcing the availability of Design Automation for Revit as a pubic beta. Using Design Automation, you can create, edit, and extract data from Revit models without a local Revit install. Because Design Automation is a cloud service, you... Read more →

Rats in Autodesk Portland Office

Well, this is Portland Oregon and yes we are weird or uniquely creative including the placement of small toy ponies attached to old city horse hitching rings and yarn or knit bombings of local statues. In the Autodesk Portland office some of the weird fun culture crept in to our new Portland office in the East stairwell. In this stairwell there are crevices in the brick where there old janky spooky stairs were mounted and then removed to put nice... 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 →

Smart Reuse of Olympic Infrastructure Could Bring Home the Gold for Host Cities

There is great article just published on possible ways LA could lead the way in hosting the 2028 Olympics and provide the model for future host cities to have less negative impact short and long term. “So what if LA could solve its existing infrastructure issues and become a test case for post-Olympic civic success?” https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/olympic-infrastructure/ Read more →

Pi Day for PIE

If you are located in beautiful and innovative Portland Oregon and love new technology from startups then you should absolutely RSVP and mark your calendars for Pi Day 2019 and the PIE Demo Day 2019. PIE is the Portland Incubator Experiment and all about nurturing startups and their founders. We believe in PIE so much we provide space in our Autodesk Portland office for the PIE Shop incubator currently with 7 startup companies and also PDX Women in Technology (PDXWIT)... Read more →

Autodesk Generative Design Beta for AEC – Project Refinery

At Autodesk have used our generative design for architecture and layout to design our MaRS office in Toronto and an intelligent flow and layout for Autodesk University, now we are making it available as a beta publicly for you to try it and provide your requests and feedback. “Project Refinery is an Autodesk generative design beta for the architecture, engineering and construction industry that gives users the power to quickly explore and optimize their Dynamo designs. Project Refinery not only... 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 →

Forge DevCon Keynote 2018

The Forge DevCon was held on the first day of Autodesk University. The keynote was great and you can now watch it on YouTube. It was apparent from the Forge DevCon they will need to expand the are as it was packed with Forge developers,partners, customers, and employees this year and many amazing 3rd party solutions built upon Forge being shown. Forge DevCon Keynote 2018 “Watch the full Forge DevCon keynote from November 12, 2018. Featuring Jim Quanci, Brian Roepke,... Read more →

Reimagining the Future of Making

Automation Helps People Live and Work Better “Humanity inevitably needs, desires, and demands more. At the same time, it must also confront the reality of less—fewer natural resources, less space, and fewer skilled construction and manufacturing workers than the world needs.” “Automation also helps companies stay ahead of their competitors, but more important, it encourages and supports the imagination that moves humanity forward. Better cities, better buildings, better things, better work: Reimagining the model for automation can balance the inevitability... Read more →