Through the Interface

Creating a 3D viewer for our Apollonian service using Android – Part 1

In the last post, we looked at an approach for bringing data from our Apollonian web-service into a Unity3D scene. Our next “off piste” look at consuming data from this web-service is on the Android platform. This is my first serious attempt at mobile development (ignoring some fooling around I did with Embedded Visual C++ for Windows Mobile, way back when) although I have spent some time looking at WinRT (which basically means I’ve now built a Windows Phone 8 app, I suspect :-). So why did I choose Android, rather than iOS? No real reason: I have both... Read more →

Calling a web-service from a Unity3D scene

As mentioned in the last post, today we’re going to have some fun pulling data from our recently-implemented, cloud-based web-service into the Unity3D game engine. My intention, here, is to reinforce the fact that exposing web-service APIs really does give you broader reach with your technology. In this case, we’ll be calling our web-service – implemented using F#, which we could not have included in our Unity3D project – inside a game engine that could be hosted on any one of a wide variety of operating systems. A few words on Unity3D: according to its web-site, Unity3D is “a... Read more →

Calling a cloud-based web-service from AutoCAD using .NET

A quick recap on the series so far… after introducing the benefits of moving application functionality to the cloud, we spent a couple of posts taking algorithms we’d previously hosted directly inside an AutoCAD and moving them to live behind a locally-hosted web-service. We then took a step back and talked about some issues around architecting applications for the cloud before we went on to make use of our web-service inside AutoCAD. And, most recently, we looked at how to move our web-service from a local system to be hosted in the cloud. And a quick aside, as I... Read more →

Announcing DevBlogs from ADN

I’m very happy to announce the creation of a series of new blogs by the Autodesk Developer Network team, marking a significant shift from the team creating material that’s only available to ADN members (i.e. DevNotes behind the ADN extranet) to creating material that’s available to everyone. The first two are available now: AutoCAD DevBlog Infrastructure Modeling DevBlog (You’ll find the ADN team has been generating material for some time, building up a decent head of steam before launching publicly.) To explain a bit of the background to these posts, check out Stephen Preston’s welcome post. Expect more of... Read more →

Using Windows Azure Caching with our ASP.NET Web API project

As mentioned in the last post, while working on deploying our web-site and its related services to Windows Azure, I started to chew on the economics of Azure hosting. This is especially relevant as I start to see my free 3-month subscription’s resources being burned through by all of you checking them the links in the last post. ;-) Here’s what I found… “extra small” instances are a mere sixth of the cost of “small” instances (not taking into account the 6-month pre-purchase discount on small instances, admittedly), which got me thinking: if I can reduce the resources needed... Read more →

Hosting our ASP.NET Web API project on Windows Azure – Part 2

In the last post, we added a Windows Azure deployment project to the ASP.NET Web API project we created previously. In this post, we’re going to go ahead and publish our project on Windows Azure. To get this started, we right-click the deployment project in Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer and select “Publish”… … which brings up the “Windows Azure Publish Sign In” dialog. At this stage, you probably don’t yet have an Azure subscription. Whether you do or not, click the link on the dialog to proceed: If you don’t yet have a subscription, it’s at this point that... Read more →

Hosting our ASP.NET Web API project on Windows Azure – Part 1

Having built our local ASP.NET Web API project and consumed its data inside AutoCAD, we’re now ready to deploy our web-service to the cloud. In this first part, we’ll look at some background information on Azure, in particular, and then get ready for the publishing process, which we’ll complete in the next post in the series. Choosing a provider As is obvious from the title, for these posts we’re going to use Windows Azure. Alternatives such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) capabilities related to hosting ASP.NET – you basically get the ability to deploy Windows Servers... Read more →

DevCamps reminder

As mentioned in this previous post, this year’s DevCamps are now looming. In particular, there are just a few more weeks left before the early bird discount expires – be sure to sign up soon (if you’re planning on attending, that is :-). Here’s some more information on these events from the ADN team: Join us at Camp this Summer! Announcing Autodesk AEC DevCamp (June 6-7) and Manufacturing DevCamp (June 13-14)! Register by April 30th to get the $100 early bird discount! DevCamps are held every other year where software developers like you can learn to get the most... Read more →

Consuming data from a RESTful web-service inside AutoCAD using .NET

Consumption seems to be a relevant topic, coming after the long Easter weekend here in Switzerland… I was laid up with gastric flu on Monday: after having consumed large amounts of food with friends on Saturday and Sunday, I ended up eating nothing for the whole day. I managed to put the finishing touches on the previous post in this series, but beyond that I was pretty useless. Anyway, back to the point. We’ve looked at the trend of moving to the cloud, and the steps for creating and implementing a RESTful web-service using the new ASP.NET Web API.... Read more →

Architecting for the Cloud

After introducing the (apparently somewhat charged, judging from the comments) topic of moving application functionality to the cloud, and then looking at the steps of creating and implementing an ASP.NET Web API project, we’re now going to take a brief step back before looking at how we can effectively make use of the data provided by these web-services inside AutoCAD. If you’re looking to assign blame (not that any is needed ;-), it’s Scott McFarlane’s fault we’re taking this brief backwards step: Scott raised the excellent point – which really needs addressing sooner rather than later in this series... Read more →

Exposing a RESTful web service for use inside AutoCAD using the ASP.NET Web API – Part 2

In the last post, we looked at the core technology we’re going to use to expose our web-service, along with the basic project set-up. In today’s post, we’re going to flesh out this project and see the web-service in action. At this point, I should point out that I've switched back across for VS2010 for the purposes of this post (and its immediate successors), as it really will simplify the eventual integration with Windows Azure. Before we dive into the implementation of our web-service, here are a few words on what we’re after… We want to implement two web-service... Read more →

Exposing a RESTful web service for use inside AutoCAD using the ASP.NET Web API – Part 1

As promised, here begins the technical portion of the series on moving application functionality to the cloud. As suggested, we’re going to take code from a couple of previous posts and put it in the cloud (although not immediately – first we’re going to move it to a local web-service, consume that in AutoCAD, and then look at our various cloud-hosting options). So why did I choose these two pieces of code, in particular? A couple of reasons: firstly, they both implement “behind-the-scenes” algorithms that are independent of AutoCAD – a typical piece of business logic that companies might... Read more →

Adding snapping to the AutoCAD MRU browser using WinRT

I visited another Windows 8-related conference in Zürich, yesterday. Despite much of the content being repeated from the last one I attended, I actually found it really useful: having spent time working with Windows 8 and WinRT over the last few weeks, I found I got more out of the demos and could also ask more intelligent questions of the Microsoft personnel in attendance (thanks for all your help, Ronnie :-). And there was some new content I hadn’t seen, previously: I managed to sit in briefly on an Azure session (which was admittedly a bit too IT-centric for... Read more →

360 convergence

This is all very exciting: given the recent launch of a number of “360” products by Autodesk – including Autodesk 360, Autodesk PLM 360 and Autodesk BIM 360 – it looks as though we’re about to enter a strategic relationship with Microsoft to make Autodesk products interoperate seamlessly with their industry-leading games platform, the Xbox 360. It’s as yet unclear exactly what this means for the two companies and their respective 360 products, although I’m hopeful that some of the work I’ve been doing to prototype the use of Kinect and Metro with our products is going to be... Read more →