Through the Interface

One man's trash... an accessory to block a parallel port

Nate Moore discovered something in a desk drawer that we both thought worth posting: if nothing else because we’d love to find out what on Earth it’s for. It’s a “computer accessory” – these are literally the only words printed in its box – that looks like it fits a computer’s parallel port (back when computers had them). The fun thing is that the other side of the plug is sealed! Maybe you’re meant to pierce and wire in a cable? Or maybe it’s to terminate the port to avoid electrical discharge of some kind? If anyone has any... Read more →

Opportunities in the Forge team

There’s a lot of change going on, over in the Forge Partner Development team. This is the team of talented individuals who help customers and partners working with Forge – as well as members of the Autodesk Developer Network, of course. One of the team’s Senior Managers, Stephen Preston (who took over many of my former responsibilities when I left them in their pre-Forge days back in 2012, as well as doing a lot of other important work besides) is moving into the Forge Business Development team. Yes, so his new title will have just a one word difference... Read more →

One man's treasure... unboxing AutoCAD 2.6

This is a slightly anomalous post in the “one man’s trash” series, in that we’ve actually found something I can’t bear to part with. This was nearly the case for The Autodesk File 3rd Edition, but I did bring myself to ship that one off to Oregon. Today’s item, once again uncovered by Francesco Tonioni, is a boxed version of AutoCAD 2.6. It’s probably too heavy and fragile to ship around the world, but if I’m honest that’s only part of the reason. It’s just too precious! It’s the German edition, which for sure was localized from the English... Read more →

What’s next with Forge? We’re about to tell you!

Many of you have been using Forge services to good effect, whether the Forge viewer or the Data Management, Model Derivative and Design Automation APIs. There’s lots of really cool stuff you can do with Forge – we use it heavily in Dasher 360, for instance – but the existing services are largely engineered to deal with data created by existing desktop technology, i.e. they’re file-centric. The next generation of Forge web-services will help you and your customers move beyond files. Here’s a class from last year’s Forge DevCon that gives an introduction to two key technologies in this... Read more →

Creating the AutoCAD 2019 brand imagery

For the latest release of AutoCAD a new set of imagery was created. This is the first major evolution of the AutoCAD product brand in several years: our Brand Strategy & Design group recently shared some material about the work they do that I thought would be of interest to readers of this blog. Many thanks to Sabrina Humphreys and Bonnie Cha for contributing the content for this post. The last major redesign happened for the AutoCAD 2014 product family, and was used until AutoCAD 2018. Here’s what the team said about this effort (I’ll share their words verbatim... Read more →

A new way to visit this blog: keanw.com

When I first started this blog, back in 2006, I used our (back then) Autodesk-recommended blogging platform, Typepad. When configuring the blog I had in the back of my mind that I’d end up putting it on a custom domain of some kind (perhaps Shaan Hurley’s autodesk.blogs.com), so I chose to use a blog-specific subfolder (through_the_interface) beneath the main through-the-interface.typepad.com site. I did this for a good reason, but it did result in pretty monstrous URLs for this blog. And I didn’t end up using a custom domain, after all, so we all ended up being stuck with big... Read more →

One man’s trash… digitizer pucks!

After recent posts about digitizing tablet overlays and a trip down memory lane on AutoCAD rearchitectures, today’s giveaway follows this retro theme. Francesco Tonioni discovered a box of digitizing tablet pucks hidden away in a cupboard. I have no idea whether there is anything useful in having these without a tablet itself (presumably the tablet itself is fairly passive, but I’m not clear on exactly how they work) but I’d be more than happy to send any or all to someone who wants them. Drop me an email if they interest you! If you’re interested in knowing which connector... Read more →

A brief history of rearchitecting AutoCAD (or the importance of R13)

Over the weekend I received an email from Jürgen Becker. It came with this image, which certainly brought back memories. The email referred to our recent trip down memory lane… I read your last post and remembered a poster. Do you remember that release, it was terrible? This is one of my favourite “chat over a beer” topics, and one that seems relevant to where we are today with Fabric, so I wrote Jürgen a quick note to say that I’d reply via my blog. Here is that reply. R13 was bad, but it had to happen I joined... Read more →

One man’s trash… AutoCAD R14 and 2000 digitizing tablet overlays

Firstly, I’d like to thank the few people who engaged on the last One Man’s Trash, which was clearly (but hopefully not too clearly) an April 1st prank. I’d have expected more people to “bite”, but then it was posted over the weekend, so perhaps not that many people saw it. Or perhaps it was obviously just for fun, in which case I hope people appreciated it at some level. Anyway, today’s giveaway is fo realz, yo. An old friend and colleague in our Localization department, Paul-Henri Arnaud, dug out a number of digitizing tablet overlays dating back to... Read more →

Checking out the world’s first 3D printed steel bridge at MX3D in Amsterdam

In a recent post I mentioned a trip to Amsterdam to visit with Van Wijnen and MX3D. The press embargo has now lifted on MX3D’s bridge – as you can see from a slew of recent articles – so I can now share a bit more information about that part of the visit. During that week I spent 2.5 days at MX3D, mostly to participate in discussions about how best to instrument the bridge with sensors. Autodesk started our collaboration with MX3D around the vision of using generative design for the creation of the bridge’s form… during the last... Read more →

One man’s trash… a very special giveaway

It’s really proving to be a fun series, as we recycle the contents of the closing Autodesk Neuchatel office. So far we’ve given away a couple of RS-232 breakout boxes, a signed copy of The Autodesk File and a (so far unclaimed) patch panel punch down tool. Today we’re offering a very special item to readers of this blog. It’s one of Autodesk Neuchatel’s best-kept secrets – not even all of our local employees know about it – but up on the roof of the building in Puits Godet we have a hot tub. And it’s awesome – a... Read more →