Through the Interface

Floppy Friday #58

I almost thought today’s episode wasn’t going to happen. I started checking the directory listings for a few floppies, and suddenly things started to fail. I couldn’t read any at all, and ended up trying a series of combinations of different computers, floppy drives and cables, all with similar (bad) results. I went back to cleaning the drive heads (once again – this was the first thing I tried) and eventually things started to work in time for me to record the episode. Totally surreal! I can only blame those nasty gremlins who clearly enjoy haunting 1980s equipment. Anyway,... Read more →

Come work at Autodesk on the Tandem team!

Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R13688 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 I’m really happy to see that the Tandem team is hiring. And they’re hiring into a really varied set of roles, so hopefully there’s something in this list for everyone. :-) Customer Adoption Specialist Principal Software Developer Senior Software Developer UX Designer Senior UX Designer Technical Program Manager I’m pretty sure that all these positions are “remote-ready”, although I believe from a timezone perspective the Eastern US is strongly preferred for at least the engineering-centric roles. I may have that wrong, of course, and I’ll be sure to come back and... Read more →

Frustrated by travel restrictions? Join the last virtual Forge Accelerator of 2021!

The subject is basically a perfect description of my own situation, today, but I thought there might be others out there in the same boat (as it were). I have a feeling that more people will end up being stuck at home over the next few weeks, whether they like it or not. From my side I was very much looking forward to a trip to the UK, next week, where I’d have had the chance to catch up with my UK colleagues for the first time in-person in probably 2 years. And to join for the team Christmas... Read more →

Floppy Friday #57

In this week’s episode we mostly played Summer Games II. It’s not exactly how I expected things to turn out, but there you go. It’s also a game I’d already played back in Floppy Friday #32 – I knew it looked familiar! (sigh) – but I chose a different set of disciplines to be awful at. Apart from the javelin, as I seem to love failing at that one. I’m pretty sure I fluffed selecting nationalities in exactly the same way, too, but hey. We did get a little time to play a couple of other games – Commando... Read more →

An interview and an anniversary

Recently Mayur Mistry from Engineering ArchiTECHure asked me to join him for a YouTube livestream. Mayur often holds his interviews over the weekend, but he very kindly accommodated my schedule and held the session during the week. So while it was “live”, it wasn’t at the usual time for Mayur’s subscribers and the discussion remained very much between the two of us. I’ve seen some really good sessions on his channel – several of his guests have prepared extensive material to show – so my apologies if you’re expecting something more formal: we just chatted for an hour. Many... Read more →

Using VASA with FormIt via Dynamo – Part 2

In the last post we looked at using VASA from within Dynamo for FormIt to solve mazes generated by a cool plugin created by Brett from the FormIt team. The Dynamo graph we saw used VASA in “3D mode” – where the voxel height is higher than 1 – but that came with the added need to create a floor for the maze (something that isn’t too hard, as we know the exact dimensions and location of the maze). In today’s post we’re looking at how VASA might be used to perform pathfinding operations at the urban scale, taking... Read more →

Using VASA with FormIt via Dynamo – Part 1

In this recent post we looked at FormIt’s JavaScript API and learned how Brett Garrison was able to use it to develop a Maze Generator plugin. In this post we look at one way to find solutions for the mazes generated by this plugin using VASA from Dynamo. When I first started looking into VASA with FormIt, Rhys Goldstein sent across a Dynamo graph he’d used to grab contextual building geometry from FormIt – to create a voxel model of the space – and then send the pathfinding results back afterwards. I’ve adapted this graph to work with the... Read more →

Floppy Friday #56

In this week’s episode we play 4 games on a Commodore 64, loaded from 5 1/4” floppy disk. We started with a game I had high hopes for – coming from Gremlin Graphics, and being based on a series of “fighting fantasy” gamebooks (although not the Steve Jackson & Ian Livingston ones, it seems) – called Blood Valley. We then played Pac-Land, an interesting game called ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighter) and then Thrust II. Here’s the cover art for this week’s selection: The folks at Zzap! 64 magazine loathed Blood Valley ... … and tolerated Thrust II: As mentioned... Read more →

Want to see Dasher inside Tandem? Tell us what you need.

The Autodesk Tandem team has just launched their Customer Research Program. This is the perfect way to engage with the Tandem team and let them know what features you might need from your future digital twin infrastructure. In particular, if you’re interested in seeing features from Project Dasher show up inside Tandem – via what I referred to in a recent post as “Dasher inside Tandem” – then this is your chance to be heard. Related to this topic, I came across a funny meme recently on Twitter. I couldn’t find it again, so here’s my attempt at reproducing... Read more →

A video on pathfinding with VASA

Rhys Goldstein has published the second part of his informative video series on using the VASA (Voxel-based Architectural Space Analysis) package with Dynamo. The first part was an overall introduction to the package while this part dives into pathfinding, taking a close look at samples that show how it might be used in both 2D and 3D. While the overall video is really interesting – some of you might find it a bit long at 43 minutes but it’s quite watchable at 2X and is packed full of useful information – one of the sections that stood out for... Read more →

Floppy Friday #55

In this week’s episode we look at 5 more Commodore 64 games loaded from floppy disk. Things kick off with Shadow Dancer, which seems like a very playable side-scrolling fighting game. We then try a logic/puzzle game called Sliding Skill before loading a German-language steam engine simulator (how cool is that?) called Dampfmaschine. We then play a game called Billiards or Pool (not sure which, to be honest) and then wrap up with a fun little game called Lazy Jones. Here’s the cover art I could find for this week’s episode – I couldn’t find anything but screengrabs for... Read more →

Autodesk FormIt and its JavaScript API

A few weeks ago I started taking a closer look at Autodesk FormIt, mainly with a view to understanding how it might integrate with VASA. FormIt is a multi-platform (which I believe in this case means Windows, iOS and web) conceptual design and analysis tool. I haven’t really followed the development of FormIt, over the years, so if you’re interested in learning more about that then I suggested heading over to the product team’s blog. If you want to get started with using FormIt, then this Primer seems helpful. Two things in particular had me intrigued about FormIt: its... Read more →

A video introduction to VASA

Rhys Goldstein, the researcher behind our 2D and 3D Space Analysis toolkits, has recorded a great video introduction to VASA (an acronym for Voxel-based Architectural Space Analysis). It steps through how to install the VASA package inside Dynamo and then create a simple voxelisation of Dynamo geometry. Rhys also shows how to load and run the samples provided with the package, and takes some time to step through – and then dissect – the main overview sample. Here it is: If you don’t have time to spend 23 minutes watching a video, it should be quite watchable at higher... Read more →

Floppy Friday #54

In this week’s episode we play five more games loaded from a single floppy onto a Commodore 64. This week’s selection was actually really interesting, I found: we started with an action adventure called Olli & Lissa: The Ghost of Shilmore Castle, part of a series that apparently did quite well when released as budget titles. From there we loaded a game called Toddler, which I believe was also released as The Equalizer (I guess it sounds more compelling… it’s certainly a much more 80s name!). We loaded a Breakout clone called Krakout, which had fun floating faces. Next... Read more →

Getting ready for Tandem: a call to action for Forge developers

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time exploring how Project Dasher might make use of the platform capabilities of Autodesk Tandem. This is just one effort connecting the two projects, and the one I tend to think of as “Tandem inside Dasher”: the Tandem team is looking what makes sense in terms of “Dasher inside Tandem” (i.e. which Dasher features it makes sense to surface in Tandem for their customers). As I’ve hopefully said before, Autodesk Tandem fills a really important gap in the process to build out a model-centric digital twin: Project Dasher project was never intended... Read more →

Floppy Friday #53

In this week’s episode we start with a few obscure German games (no offence to my German friends – this is a snap judgment based on a few web searches), called Katz und Maus and then Rudi the Rat, before finding a floppy with some more interesting fare: River Raid, Sub Hunt and Raid over Moscow. As usual my ability to play these various games was highly variable, but hopefully you’ll get a sense of – and perhaps even some nostalgia from seeing – how they play. Along the way we opted not to load Batman (seen in episode... Read more →

Streamlines in the Forge viewer

One more feature inspired by Project Dasher has made its way into the Forge viewer’s Data Visualization Extension (Project Hyperion): streamlines. This is something I’ve talked about a few times in the past, and I’m happy to see it make its way into the Forge platform. Streamlines are a great mechanism for indicating movement – of people or assets – through an architectural space, or perhaps something like a toolpath in a manufacturing context. The way we implemented them originally inside Dasher wasn’t ideal, in all fairness: I used the MeshLine.js library to be able to display lines with... Read more →

Floppy Friday #52

In this week’s episode we once again play some more games on a Commodore 64 that we find on random floppies. We start with a game I remembered we hadn’t had time to try last week, which turned out to be International Karate. As the directory listing stated “Seite A” (“Side A” in German), I decided to flip the floppy and see what was on Side B. Well, it had some real crackers (mostly cracked crackers, in fact) such as Enduro Racer, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Yie Ar Kung-Fu II and Tetris. A fun episode! Here’s the cover art for... Read more →

Forge and digital twins at Autodesk University 2021

I’ve finally found the time to view the main information from the recent Autodesk University event, and thought it worth highlighting what I consider to be some of the “big ticket” items, especially from my own – somewhat Forge- and digital twin-centric – perspective. First-up, Forge was everywhere in the keynotes. If it wasn’t previously clear that Autodesk is serious about becoming a platform company, it should be from the messaging at this AU. On a side note, there are a number of internal organisational changes that have happened/are happening at Autodesk to accelerate this shift, so I’m currently... Read more →

Learn Forge website now available in English, Japanese and Chinese

While I was away on vacation I received the news that the excellent learnforge.autodesk.io website – a great resource for learning how to develop software that uses Autodesk Forge – has been translated into Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. This will be of great use to customers and would-be Forge developers who are keen to learn more about the platform but have a better grasp of Japanese or Chinese than English. If you have more requests for languages (I know at least one more is in the pipeline), then please post a comment and I’ll pass it on... Read more →