I’ve submitted three sessions for this year’s Autodesk University:
Getting to know AutoCAD's Plugins of the Month (a 60-minute virtual class, session ID 1681)
Synopsis:
The Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) team has been publishing "Plugins of the Month" on Autodesk Labs for over a year. Each of these plugins extends an Autodesk products in a useful or interesting way, and is provided with full source code! Attend this session for an introduction to the various AutoCAD plugins that have been published (with a brief mention of those published for other products). We will take a detailed look at the source code of a few of the most popular plugins, to help explain their architecture and implementation.
Learning objectives:
- Understand the reasons for the "Plugin of the Month" initiative
- Get to know the various plugins that are available, as well as how to install and use them
- See how to run the plugins from the Visual Studio debugger to aid learning
- Gain familiarity with the structure of the plugins' source projects, to help with extending them for your own purposes
- Understand the mechanics behind a few of the published plugins
Target audience:
AutoCAD users with an interest in learning more about programming, and how they might use .NET to tailor AutoCAD to their specific business needs.
Point clouds on a shoestring (a 60-minute lecture, session ID 1670)
Synopsis:
Always wanted to play around with point clouds but your boss won't buy you an expensive laser scanner? Come along to this entertaining session to see how it's possible to use *free* technology - such as Microsoft's Photosynth - to generate 3D point clouds from 2D photographs. See a live demonstration of a real-world object being "captured" using nothing but a digital SLR and brought into AutoCAD 2011 as a 3D point cloud. We will also spend some time looking at AutoCAD 2011's point cloud capabilities and the state of "reality capture" technology in the industry. A separate session by the same presenter in the Customization & Programming track will take a look under the hood of the technology shown in this session.
Learning objectives:
- Understand how free services such as Microsoft's Photosynth can generate 3D point clouds from sets of 2D photos
- See how you can bring community-generated point clouds into AutoCAD
- Watch the process of capturing a point cloud from a real-world object simply by taking and uploading a set of photos
- Learn about AutoCAD 2011's point cloud capabilities
- Get to know more about the state of the industry regarding "reality capture" (laser scanning, photogrammetry, etc.)
Target audience:
Anyone interested in learning about point clouds and seeing how they can be generated and used - for free - with tools such as Microsoft Photosynth and AutoCAD 2011.
Integrate F# into your C# or VB.NET application for an 8x performance boost (a 60-minute lecture, session ID 5899)
Synopsis:
Come to this session to understand how F#, the new programming language from Microsoft, can be used to achieve huge performance gains in applications managing multiple, asynchronous tasks. We'll start by taking a look at the architecture of the sample shown in the "Point clouds on a shoestring" session, understanding how the application was designed to download and process multiple "point cloud" files from Microsoft's Photosynth web service. We'll see how the introduction of F# into this application boosted the performance by 8 times. While taking a look under the hood of the "Point clouds on a shoestring" application, we'll discuss the benefits of using the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) when designing a modern GUI. We'll also spend time looking at additional techniques such as the use of an advanced browser component to monitor HTTP traffic during a browsing session and isolating a modeless UI in a separate executable to increase portability across 32- and 64-bit platforms.
Learning objectives:
- Find out how to combine C# and F# in the same .NET application
- Understand how F# can be used to speed up parallel or asynchronous tasks
- See the benefits of using WPF to create a modern graphical user interface
- Learn how the csExWb2 component can be used to monitor HTTP traffic during an embedded browsing session
- Get a feel for the "reality capture" capabilities of services such as Microsoft's Photosynth
Target audience:
VB.NET/C# developers who are interested in learning about the benefits of F#. Attendees of the "Point cloud on a shoestring" session who are not programmers themselves but are interested in a deeper look at the application should be prepared to sit through some in-depth technical discussions.
If you find these topics interesting, and are eligible to vote for online classes (and I admit I’m not sure on the eligibility criteria), please do so at the online voting site, which will remain open until this Friday, May 21st.
