Through the Interface

The Autodesk App Store hits 3 million downloads

Some months ago I received a question from a developer about the Autodesk App Store: he questioned whether it was worth investing the effort of placing his product there. While this is clearly something that people have to decide for themselves, the numbers are certainly indicating it’s valuable: the App Store team tells me they’ve just hit the “3,000,000 downloads” mark (and may by now have also hit the “3,000 apps” mark, too). For many developers this is proving to be a very valuable mechanism for reaching Autodesk customers around the world. If you’re interested in learning more about... Read more →

An online hackathon for BIM 360

If you’re working in the BIM space and are thinking about developing a cloud-based application that works with BIM 360 and Forge, there’s an online hackathon that may be of interest to you. In fact it may well be of interest even if you’re not thinking of building such an app in the immediate future: these events are a great opportunity to learn about Autodesk platform technology and consider whether it might be useful at some point down the line. The hackathon kicked off a week ago on August 1st and runs until September 30th. You have until then... Read more →

The Autodesk App Store Forge and Fusion 360 Hackathon

Hot on the heels of our own, internal Hackathon (although, strictly speaking, this one started before it) there’s another external Hackathon running until the end of October. This one’s about developing apps using Forge or Fusion 360 and submitting said apps to the Autodesk App Store. The event really has two distinct parts: A series of webinars and Q&A sessions where you can learn about Forge and Fusion 360 development These are free and open to all: there’s absolutely no commitment needed to attend An online Hackathon with a financial incentive for you to submit your Forge or Fusion... Read more →

Securing your AutoCAD app using .NET

Many, many thanks for the congratulatory messages I received after my last post, whether via this blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or email. I was genuinely overwhelmed by the response! :-) Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time: a common question I’ve seen, over the years, is about how best to implement copy protection or licensing in your application. While this post doesn’t fully address that requirement, it does show you how to use a REST API to check the user entitlement for your application via the Autodesk App Store (formerly known as Autodesk Exchange Apps). This... Read more →

Fusion 360 Hackathon

There’s another online Hackathon in town, this time for Fusion 360. It’s running from September 23 to October 30, 2015, so a reasonable period during which you can create your first Fusion 360 app using JavaScript, Python or C++. I don’t know much about Fusion 360 development, but I’m looking forward to learning more during this event. This is a great chance to start working early on with one of Autodesk’s hottest new platform technologies. And to get Autodesk not only to help you with your development, but also to compensate you for your efforts! (You can receive $500... Read more →

The millionth download from Autodesk Exchange Apps

Quite a milestone has just been passed: more than a million apps have now been downloaded from Autodesk Exchange. The store has been running for a little over three years and is apparently home to over 1,800 apps in 14 languages that are available for download in 191 countries. Wow. Be sure to check out Autodesk Exchange Apps for AutoCAD, the largest of our various stores. Here’s a quick video celebrating this momentous event: I’m about to head home from Singapore after a great week at the Autodesk Technical Summit 2015. I’ll try to share some impressions once I’m... Read more →

Reminder: Exchange Apps Hackathon this weekend

There’s still time to participate in the Autodesk Exchange Apps Hackathon, a virtual event taking place this weekend (September 20-21). The point of this event is to encourage developers to post apps to the Autodesk Exchange Apps store, and we’re even paying cool, hard cash ($50 or $100, whether free or paid) for each app that gets published. Presentations and discussions will include: How to architect your app for Exchange: How to build your AutoCAD® app How to build your Autodesk® Revit® app How to build your Autodesk® Inventor® app How to build your Autodesk® 3ds Max® and Autodesk®... Read more →

Autodesk Exchange Apps Hackathon 2014

After the initial Autodesk Exchange Apps Portathon was held last year, the ADN team is running a similar – but expanded – event, the Autodesk Exchange Apps Hackathon, on September 20-21. There’s more information available on both Jeremy’s blog and the ADN DevBlog, but here’s a quick summary of the salient points: Free to attend Open to anyone, anywhere (it’s a virtual event) Lots of great presentations on app development The ADN team will also be available to provide support You earn money for apps you get published $50/$100 for published free/paid apps, up to 5 per company Additional... Read more →

Some useful webinars

Back in May I pre-announced a couple of webinars that I thought to be of interest to readers of this blog. The first was about ReCap, the second was about posting apps to Autodesk Exchange. The ReCap webinar was actually the beginning of series: at the time of writing five have now taken place (recordings are available for the first four) and two are remaining. Tomorrow’s webinar on “Capturing 3D reality data by flying a camera on a UAV” looks very interesting: after eventually managing to catch up with the edX class I signed up for on “navigation for... Read more →

Autodesk Exchange Apps webinar

A quick note to mention another webinar that’s happening next Thursday, this one on Autodesk Exchange Apps. AutoCAD’s (and a number of other Autodesk products’, of course) very own App Store is going from strength to strength, by all accounts: it’s had nearly 2 million visitors and upwards of 600,000 downloads, many of which have been paid for. There’s gold in them thar hills, AutoCAD developers! :-) Anyway, for more specific details on this webinar – which is being hosted by Jim Quanci and Stephen Preston from the ADN team – you can check Jeremy’s or Kevin’s blogs. Otherwise... Read more →

Reality Computing updates

I’ve pulled together a few miscellaneous updates that relate to Autodesk’s Reality Computing efforts, which – as I mentioned earlier – is a term that’s intended to include “Reality Capture” at the beginning, followed by “Reality Modeling and Analysis” and then “Reality Delivery”. Firstly, looking at the capture side of things… Photo on ReCap 360 (the new name for ReCap Photo) now has free and paid versions available. Although at the time of writing it’s still possible to make use of the soon-to-be-paid benefits for free, but do hurry! Preview mode – with up to 50 source images of... Read more →

Less than a week until the Exchange Apps Portathon

The clock is ticking… the Exchange Apps Portathon is being held next weekend, and it’s not too late to participate. If you’re not sure what this is all about, take a look at two previous posts about this event. In a nutshell: Autodesk is paying developers $100 for each of the first 5 apps that developers publish to Exchange Apps before the end of the weekend, and the DevTech team will be online for a solid 48 hours to help people get there. On a side note, the DevTech team now has a YouTube channel for their DevTV sessions.... Read more →

Reminder about the upcoming Portathon

A picture is worth a thousand words, so whatever your feelings about infographics this must be worth at least a hundred. ;-) Lots of people are participating in the previously announced Exchange Apps Portathon. You have 3 weeks until it starts, so it’s a good time to consider joining the fun. Here’s a note from Jim Quanci and Stephen Preston, describing the value of the event: At the risk of repeating what’s already been said: curated online marketplaces are becoming the preferred way for software users to find add-on functionality. This is also true of Autodesk software, with a... Read more →

Autodesk Exchange Apps Portathon: code for cash!

Another bit of news from while I was out on vacation – so my apologies if this is old news for you, personally – the ADN team is running a Portathon on September 13-14, 2013 to encourage developers to get their apps posted on Autodesk Exchange. You do not have to be an ADN member to participate and neither do you need to pay in any way (other than with your time and effort). In fact there’s even a financial incentive for participants: for the first 5 apps per developer that get accepted in the Exchange Store – and... 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 →

Autodesk Exchange Apps webinar

The ADN team has announced a free webinar (and free to all, not just to ADN members) on “How developers can ride and profit from the adoption wave of Autodesk Exchange Apps”, being held on June 13th, 2013. We’ve all seen how mobile-focused marketplaces such as Apple’s App Store and Google Play have revolutionised the way we find and use apps on these platforms. Apple and Microsoft have provided stores for users of their desktop operating systems to find apps that work there, too. As a large application vendor with a vibrant development community, we see an opportunity to... Read more →

APPHACK @ AU 2012, 2nd place: PhotoGeoDWG

I’ve talked a few times about the APPHACK held at AU 2012, as well as posting a photo of the contestants. One of the drivers behind this APPHACK – as well as the one that was held internally to Autodesk which resulted in the creation of apps such as the excellent “QR Codes” by my friend John Beltran – was to encourage development of apps for hosting in the Autodesk Exchange store. The first of the winning entries has now made it up to Exchange: PhotoGeoDWG from CAD Management Resources Inc. – the second place winner – is now... Read more →

Publishing apps on the Autodesk Exchange store

Stephen Preston recently posted on the AutoCAD DevBlog that the Autodesk Exchange store is now open – for anyone* – to submit apps for hosting by Autodesk. [* Hopefully this point is obvious: anyone can submit apps, but Autodesk clearly reserves the right to reject inappropriate submissions.] Exchange Stores are available for the following products: AutoCAD AutoCAD Architecture AutoCAD Civil 3D AutoCAD ecscad AutoCAD Electrical AutoCAD Mechanical AutoCAD MEP Autodesk Alias Autodesk Inventor Autodesk Inventor Publisher Autodesk Revit Autodesk Simulation Autodesk Vault As I’ve probably said before, these stores are a huge opportunity for developers to gain direct access... 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 →

TransTips now live on Autodesk Exchange

Just a quick update to let you know that – as a result of the steps we took to prepare and submit the application for consideration – TransTips is now live on the Apps tab of Autodesk Exchange, which means it can now be loaded more easily into AutoCAD 2012: This application was first posted on this blog, and has since become a Plugin of the Month on Autodesk Labs. If you'd like to see it in action (and in products other than AutoCAD), please see this YouTube video. Read more →