Through the Interface

Determining AutoCAD’s status bar coordinates using .NET

This came up during an internal discussion and I thought it worth sharing here. It’s easy enough to use a point monitor in AutoCAD to determine the current cursor location, but how do we make sure it’s in the current User Coordinate System (UCS) and that we adjust for object snapping (osnap)? To keep the code simple I’ve been a little lazy: I’m just adding an event handler as a lambda, without worrying about removing it. Also, to avoid a crash when you switch to the New Tab page or a new document and back, the code swallows an... Read more →

The Force Awakens in AutoCAD

Some of you may remember this series of posts from the beginning of the year (I also mentioned it in the last post). It showed how you might use AutoCAD and .NET (in this case via F#) to animate the Star Wars opening crawl for the first 6 movies. Back then I said I’d update the video series to include Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, once it was released. Today is that day… due to some bizarre accident of international scheduling, I got to see it two days ago, here in Switzerland. I took a few snaps... Read more →

Merry Christmas from Through the Interface!

Last year I posted a holiday card serving up random links to posts from this blog’s full archive (prior to that post). This year I wasn’t feeling particularly inventive and so thought I’d rustle up a quick version that shows a random post from the subsequent year. Which may well be more useful: people typically find their way to code-centric posts using search and are hopefully interested in random links to more topical posts. Here is the 2015 version of this card, in any case: Looking back, I started the year with a series recreating the Star Wars opening... Read more →

Autodesk Memento now available for Mac

My favourite mesh generation and manipulation tool, Autodesk Memento, is now available (in Beta) for the Mac. I’ve been part of the Alpha programme for the OS X version for some time: admittedly not very actively, but I did install a number of builds and report an error or two. I’m very happy to see the Mac version is now joining its Windows sibling in Beta. Both versions can be downloaded and installed from this page. The model shown at the top of the page is of coral – I downloaded it from the bottom of the Memento download... Read more →

Project Draco: animate your sketches and drawings using an iPad

Autodesk Research has launched a new app via Autodesk Labs called Project Draco. Here’s a description of this innovative tool: Draco is an iPad app from Autodesk Research that makes animation as easy as sketching, without the complications of timelines, scripting, and key-framing. The interface of Draco leverages users’ intuitive sense of space and time. Compared to traditional 2D animation tools, it provides a simple interface allowing users to add a rich set of subtle, continuous animation effects quickly and without technical knowledge. By enabling the creation of dynamic (animated & interactive) media with sketch-based interfaces, our goal is... Read more →

Hands on with HoloLens

One of the highlights of last week’s Autodesk University was the chance to experience a prototype integration of Fusion 360 with Microsoft HoloLens. Here’s a video showing something of the integration as well as a vision of future functionality: To give HoloLens a try at AU 2015, you had to register for a specific timeslot during the 3-day event: the one that suited me was on Wednesday afternoon, after my last solo speaking engagement but before my last panel session. It turned out they were over-subscribed and a little behind – and they were understandably prioritising Autodesk customers in... Read more →

The AU 2015 Exhibit Hall

As mentioned in the last post, although I’d visited the Exhibit Hall at Autodesk University a couple of times during the prior days, it was really on Thursday that I spent the most time there. One of the highlights, for me, was in the hall leading to the Exhibition Hall itself: the AU Hive. This is the project I’d been introduced to when visiting the Applied Research Lab on Pier 9. It was an interesting experiment in how humans and robots – coordinated by a “controlling intelligence” – could achieve more together than they could separately: to build a... Read more →

The AU 2015 Blogger Social

Now that the dust has finally settled on Autodesk University 2015, I thought I’d write a couple of posts about some fun I had on Wednesday and Thursday. At this year’s event I had classes to deliver on both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings (at 8am and 10am, respectively). This is probably due to the fact I’d requested 90-minute timeslots and they quite sensibly schedule the longer sessions before noon and shorter sessions after it. Which all makes perfect sense. But it also meant that I didn’t “let my hair down” properly until Wednesday night, by which point I’d finished... Read more →

Autodesk gets serious about web-services: Forge

I’m finally on my way home from AU 2015. As usual, the three days of AU were a completely whirlwind: I feel like someone pressed the fast-forward button and I entered into some kind of hyperlapse state. So not much chance to blog and tweet, sadly: too much time spent interacting IRL. Which is very welcome, of course: these interactions are so very valuable, and help drive activities through the rest of the year. Anyway, as alluded to in the last post, I wanted to make sure people were aware about one of the big announcements from this year’s... Read more →

Autodesk University 2015: the story so far

What an AU! Over the years I’ve settled into a rhythm that works well for me, with respect to attending AU: I fly in on the Saturday before the event – from Geneva via London Heathrow – and so have the Sunday to decompress before the ADN day on the Monday. This year the DevDay was focused mainly on Autodesk’s burgeoning PaaS layer – with significant focus on Fusion 360, too – with much of the “general design” content covered in a breakout in the afternoon. If you’re an ADN member, I do recommend checking the material online –... Read more →