Through the Interface

AU 2023 class materials: Monitoring and Visualizing Data from the MX3D and Dar Smart Bridges

After yesterday’s post pointing folks to the material for my first class at AU 2023, here’s the material for the second one, which I co-presented with Pete Storey. I only have this photo from outside the classroom for this session: But I did get to hang out with Pete before we flew back to our respective European ports on the Thursday after AU was over. Here's the summary without audio: Here’s the material posted for the class on the AU website: Class recording Presentation slides Handout Read more →

AU 2023 class materials: Channeling Minecraft to Analyze Architectural Spaces with VASA and Dynamo

The recordings and other materials prepared for the two classes I helped present at AU 2023 are now available online. In today’s post I’ll point you to the first class, entitled "Channeling Minecraft to Analyze Architectural Spaces with VASA and Dynamo". This one was one of the first sessions of AU 2023, and had a very good crowd in attendance. Here are a few photos from the live session. Thanks again to Fernando Malard for snapping them. I already posted a quick summary of the content (without audio) - here that is again. Here is the material posted for... Read more →

Capturing the human experience of the built environment

Now that the dust has settled on another Autodesk University (the best one ever?) it’s a good time to revisit what brought our team to AU, this year. I realize that I've posted a lot of pictures of people wearing helmets and high visibility vests without really explaining what it was all about. Our team at Autodesk Research has been very focused on understanding the human experience of the built environment, with the ultimate goal of making our software tools better at helping our customers design human-centric spaces. Spaces that emphasize occupant well-being in its various forms. Humans are... Read more →

AU 2023 Day 3

The last day of AU started, once again with me checking out the Sphere. I have to say that since the Las Vegas Grand Prix has been getting really close the quality of the content has become a bit meh, at least from my perspective. (I think I really like the AI-based art rather than endless commercials for brands I don't care about.) The expo opened earlier on Day 3 - at 10am - and with no general sessions to compete with the flow of people to the stand - and the participation in the study - was very... Read more →

AU 2023 Day 2

My second day at this year's Autodesk University started with another lovely sunrise. After breakfast I spent an hour or so writing my Day 1 blog post in the Community Zone before I realised a queue was forming to enter the general session. I wandered over and joined it - quite near the front - and chatted with a number of people who were clearly very excited about listening to the day's guest speaker. Here are the people waiting in the Community Zone for the general session to open its doors. I found a single seat free in the... Read more →

AU 2023 Day 1

After a great trip to Stanford on Friday, we had some last-minute preparation to do for our AU exhibit at Pier 9 on Saturday morning. We headed into the office - after having to explain our way through a security cordon along the waterfront due to APEC 2023 - and printed out a bunch of legal waivers for study participants to sign. It seems APEC will be impacting our SF employees, with the offices being closed during the AU week. Enough people had warned me about craziness at SFO that I ended up at the airport well ahead of... Read more →

In SF ahead of AU 2023

On Wednesday I headed back across to Zurich airport to fly to San Francisco for a few days ahead of Autodesk University 2023 in Las Vegas. The flight was direct and largely uneventful: I didn't sleep but did feel moderately sane when I arrived in SF. I hopped on BART from the airport to Embarcadero - it's really the best mode of transport if you arrive around 5pm. My room in the Hyatt has a view across SF’s financial district. Here’s a picture I snapped before sleeping... … and one on waking. I always like seeing the view towards... Read more →

Final preparations for AU 2023

On Wednesday I’ll be flying out to San Francisco for some meetings ahead of Autodesk University 2023 in Las Vegas. It’ll actually be quite nice not to be completely jet-lagged for the first two days of the conference - although as my first class is at 8am on Monday morning it wouldn’t be the worst thing to be a bit jet-lagged, honestly. Things are coming together, although there’s still some work to be done: From Steps to Stories is debuting tonight in Toronto, so we’ll have a good sense of any issues with the larger-scale exhibit ahead of it... Read more →

Using VASA with Forma - Part 3

I was sure this series was finished - as indicated in the last post which talked about both VASA’s pathfinding and visibility from a point inside Forma, after having talked about a manual approach for connecting the two tools - but I did leave the door ajar to me finding something else to talk about on this topic. Sure enough, I got thinking about the missing “big ticket” item that VASA is able to implement with relatively low effort: visibility from a direction (as opposed to from a point) which can simulate things like shadows cast by direct sunlight.... Read more →