Through the Interface

DGN clean-up tool on its way…

The first post I had planned for this week was to announce the availability of an officially-supported tool based on the code in this blog post from late last year. The tool was posted to the Autodesk web-site late last week. Over the weekend, Jimmy Bergmark pointed out an issue with the tool that led to me requesting that the tool be removed, for now: for certain linetypes based on DGN linestyles, the DGNPURGE command resulted in the linetypes having missing components when the drawings were reloaded. Jimmy kindly provided a DWG that helped identify the problem: my original... Read more →

Using Project Falcon with a ReCap Photo model – Part 2

In the last post we took a look at how we could make use of the .obj output from a ReCap Photo model of a car to perform virtual wind tunnel analysis using the standalone version of Project Falcon, a flow simulation tool currently on Autodesk Labs. This post extends (or forks) that workflow to achieve my goal of performing virtual wind tunnel analysis on a Morgan 3 Wheeler in the AutoCAD-based version of Project Falcon. After stitching a 3D scene from photos using ReCap Photo – and exporting it to .obj – we need to bring the model... Read more →

Using Project Falcon with a ReCap Photo model – Part 1

Here’s the thing. While it’s nice to be able to capture interesting-looking models with Autodesk ReCap Photo, what we really want is an output format that’s useable in other products. In my case, what I personally wanted to do was first hinted at in this post: display a model of the Morgan 3 Wheeler in a virtual wind tunnel using Project Falcon (a project on Autodesk Labs which is – at the time of writing – scheduled to run until August 30, 2013). So let’s take a look at the output formats of the ReCap Photo service and see... Read more →

7 years (and a day)

Another year has come and gone. I managed to miss the 7-year anniversary of “Through the Interface”: it’s only this morning that I thought to look back and check the day of the first post, and – sure enough – it was June 19, 2006. I have it in my head that it’s around late June (just as I know the anniversary of my joining Autodesk is sometime in late August), but I still managed to miss it. Ah well. So that’s that. Thanks to all of you who have contributed to the blog, whether via one of the... Read more →

Comparing 123D Catch with ReCap Photo

My apologies if you’ve reached this post while looking for a detailed comparison or analysis of these two products: this is just me sharing some anecdotal experience I’ve had of uploading – and working with – the same dataset in the two systems. The subject I chose for this comparison is somewhat strange, as it’s notoriously hard to use photogrammetry to reconstruct 3D models from cars: they’re generally too shiny. But while this particular car has plenty of shiny, its main body of paintwork is a gorgeous matte silver, so I thought I’d take a chance with it. I’ve... Read more →

Inserting a specific Excel sheet as an AutoCAD table using .NET

Last week I received the following question from Adam Schilling: I have enjoyed your posts on .net programming for datalinks. I have searched high and low and haven’t been able to find answers or any support to help me with a small issue. My code (much of which was based off of your posts from 2007) works fine, except I cannot get it to use a different sheet from the workbook that is select. Since the option to select a specific sheet is available when adding a link manually, I would think that it would be possible to programmatically... Read more →

Updated set of Leap Motion samples available

I’ve been beavering away in an attempt to streamline the AutoCAD-Leap Motion integration samples I posted last week. Here’s the updated project. This latest set generally gets better results than the last ones, and the LEAPEXT command certainly feels more snappy and accurate. I’m still trying to find out why the controller occasionally stops seeing my fingers – it could well be down to lighting or to the fact I’m using a Plexiglas surface about the device – but I’ll keep looking into it. I know it’s still likely to be a month or so before most of you... Read more →

Embedding a 123D Catch scene in an HTML page

A little over a year ago I first saw the HTML version of 123D Catch. My first thought was “that’s cool!” and my second was “I wonder whether you can embed the WebGL control to host a 123D Catch scene in an external web-page?”. Basically allowing bloggers – or people posting to forums, perhaps – to embed 3D content captured using 123D Catch in their pages, much as you would do with a YouTube video. At the recent technical conference in Boston, I asked someone about the feature. Sure enough it had been added some time ago (probably around... Read more →

Dunroamin

I’ve now finished my recent trio of long-haul trips: the San Francisco Bay Area in late April, Singapore in mid-May and Boston in early June. So I can take a breather for a few weeks (maybe even months), at least: I have no firm travel plans until AU, although no doubt something will come up before then. [For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the title of the post is a reference to a common British house name. In the UK people often name (or used to, anyway) their houses in this way to announce that they’re... Read more →

A different approach for using Leap Motion with AutoCAD

I mentioned a presentation I gave in Singapore a few weeks that talked about integrating Kinect and Leap Motion with AutoCAD. After the session I had a good conversation (in person and then by email) with Nagappan Nachiappan. Nagappan is a talented young software engineer working on AutoCAD’s JavaScript API, but has a strong interest in HCI (his final year degree project used computer vision techniques to implement a virtual mouse that moves with your hand). Nagappan was responding to concerns I’d raised about the ergonomic impact of hovering your hand above the device. His primary question was “can... Read more →

Strategic alliance between Autodesk and NetSuite

This isn’t new news – it was announced a few weeks ago at NetSuite’s SuiteWorld 2013 event – but I thought I’d mention it here mainly because of a personal connection of mine. The announcement was regarding a broad strategic alliance between Autodesk and NetSuite, as well as a specific technology integration between PLM 360 and NetSuite ERP. Here’s the on-stage announcement of the alliance which includes a pretty neat video (that I hadn’t seen before) introducing Autodesk technology to the ERP-centric audience: Here’s a demo of the technology integration between PLM 360 and NetSuite Manufacturing Edition. As an... Read more →

Money designed with AutoCAD

I'm currently in Boston for an internal technical summit where I'll be presenting sessions on Kinect Fusion and Leap Motion (which will the sessions I've submitted - and will hopefully get accepted - for AU 2013). I arrived a day early and rented a bicycle from the hotel, taking the opportunity to cycle through the MIT and Harvard campuses (both of which are in Cambridge, where the summit is taking place) and then on to downtown Boston. It was really great being back in Boston after probably five years - it's still one of my favourite cities in the... Read more →