Through the Interface

Come and see From Steps to Stories in Toronto and Las Vegas

I’m very excited that our partners at The Bentway have announced the upcoming exhibition they’re hosting that will showcase work being done by Autodesk Research. Here is some information on The Bentway from their web-site: Anchored under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and guiding its complex future, The Bentway is a growing public space, and much more. We are a new type of civic organization: a not-for-profit, powered by vital partnerships with the City of Toronto, residents, supporters, artists, city-builders, and dreamers. The Bentway is a creative catalyst rooted in experimentation, leading a creative movement to re-imagine the opportunities of urban... Read more →

Preparation for AU 2023

It has been a really busy but important week for our team. We had a fantastic virtual offsite where we spent a significant amount of time using LEGO to conceptualise some of our planning for the coming year. A friend of mine was all set to become a LEGO practitioner - to assist with team-building events - before the plans were de-railed by the pandemic… independently my colleague Dagmara suggested we try “Serious Play” for this offsite and I said yes before she’d finished her sentence. We’ve made great strides for our upcoming exhibition in Toronto (formal announcement coming... Read more →

Getting to Know Autodesk Research

A number of colleagues from Autodesk Research have participated (as have I) in an activity to help people learn more about our organization, who we are are and what we do. Here’s the video about me: It’s part of a playlist on the Autodesk Research YouTube channel, so you can hopefully see the others once mine has played (or just skip mine to watch the others :-). If you’re interested in getting to know more about our work, then I also recommend visiting the Autodesk Research blog. There are posts on there highlighting work by interns who have recently... Read more →

Autodesk DevCon 2023 in Munich - Part 1

This is a two-part series covering last week’s Autodesk DevCon in Munich. I ended up choosing to write the series chronologically - so readers get a sense of the event’s flow - and found it was long enough to split into two: there was just so much to talk about! On Sunday of last week I once again hopped on the train to Zurich and then the Flixbus to Munich, heading across for the European instance of this year’s Autodesk DevCon series. Children in Bavaria headed back to school last week, so there was quite a lot of traffic... Read more →

AU class registrations so far

As mentioned in the last post, it’s now possible for people to sign up for their AU classes. And it’s really worth taking the time to do so, as some classes are filling up quickly. Despite being held at a ridiculously early time on the first day of the conference, my first class is already 88% full, for instance (there are 141 registered and the capacity of the room it’s currently assigned to is 160). I see that 300+ people have this session in their list of favourites, so if you do want to attend then I recommend signing... Read more →

Sign up for AU 2023 classes today!

AU 2023 class enrollment is now open for non-Autodesk attendees to register for their favourite sessions at the upcoming Autodesk University. (Autodeskers will get to do so nearer the event, once our customers and partners have had their pick.) I’m in the midst of preparing content for my two sessions. Thankfully I have friends like Jacob Small who send occasional suggestions, such as this one Jacob sent through for the VASA session: xkcd.com/2821 Don’t be at all surprised if we end up featuring some logic to help people use VASA’s pathfinding to route via ice cream stands. Keep them... Read more →

Introducing Central64: an open source implementation of central pathfinding

I’ve posted in the past about work done by Autodesk Research – in particular by Rhys Goldstein – to implement a more natural-seeming (but still direct and efficient) pathfinding algorithm. This is the algorithm at the heart of our Space Analysis package, and you can find details on how it works in these previous posts: A paper on our space analysis algorithm in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research Explaining how path counting helps simulate natural navigation Visibility in space analysis: an explainer The above posts reference these articles/papers that have been published elsewhere: Path Counting for Grid-Based Navigation... Read more →

Autodesk University 2023 plans

I’ve just come back from 2 weeks off work. We didn’t go very far, but did enjoy the Swiss countryside, as well as the national day on August 1st. Anyway, it’s back to the grindstone, with some looming deadlines around preparing content for AU 2023. The class schedule is now live, so you can head on over and search for or browse your favourite classes. Be sure to bookmark any that interest you, as you’ll be able to register from August 24th. Here are the two classes I’ll be presenting as primary speaker: My first class is bright and... Read more →

The public demo of Project Dasher is going offline

This milestone has crept up on me, over the last few months. I guess I’ve been putting off thinking – and blogging – about it. Earlier this year we made the decision to wind down development and support of the time-series database that serves as the back-end for Project Dasher. (Fun fact: this project was originally codenamed Blitzen – the name of a reindeer that was part of the “back-end” for Dasher on Santa’s sleigh – and eventually became known internally as Data 360.) Anyway, it was time to wind it down, both because of the widespread availability of... Read more →

Visiting the MX3D bridge in Amsterdam and playing football in Munich

After a really interesting few days in Delft at CAAD Futures 2023, on Friday morning my daughter and I headed to Amsterdam on our way to Munich. The main goal of visiting Amsterdam was – of course – to visit the MX3D bridge, particularly as it’s due to be decommissioned later this year. (I know, I know: it doesn’t seem as though the bridge has been there long, but the permit was a limited one – appropriate for a temporary art installation – and there seems to have been some resistance to the project from a local heritage preservation... Read more →

CAAD Futures 2023

On Tuesday night my daughter and I headed to Geneva to hop on a plane to Amsterdam Schipol. We were quite lucky with our arrival: we were able to get out of the airport and onto a train to Delft within 20 minutes. On arriving in Delft we headed to our Airbnb, managing to avoid being hit by bicycles. We came across some interesting structural work being down on a nearby bridge. After dropping our bags, we headed out for dinner with my old friend Pete Storey, who kindly popped over from Utrecht to meet us for a bite... Read more →

Checking whether your class proposals have been accepted for Autodesk University 2023

Just a quick note to say that you can now log in to the Autodesk University website (this guidance has changed, please see below) from today – June 23rd – to see the status of your class proposals and learn whether or not they were accepted for AU 2023 in Las Vegas. I was very happy to learn that the two proposals I submitted this year were accepted: I’m sure there’ll be an email sent very shortly, but I just thought I’d share this in case anyone’s impatient to find out their situation relative to classes at this year’s... Read more →

CAAD Futures 2023 at TU Delft from July 5-7

For the last few years I’ve been on the scientific committee for a conference called CAAD Futures. My involvement began with the 2021 edition of the conference: I reviewed several papers submitted to the conference and also ended up being invited to talk during one of the conference’s workshops (it was called Beyond generative Computer Aided-Architectural/Urban Design (CAAD/CAUD) and was hosted by Todor Stojanovski). That last edition was held in Los Angeles – and the workshop hosted in Stockholm – but I only participated remotely. This year’s edition is being held in Europe, at TU Delft in the Netherlands,... Read more →

Visibility in Space Analysis: an explainer

Our resident spatial-analyst-in-chief, Rhys Goldstein, has gone and done it again. After his very well-received Medium post explaining grid-based pathfinding was published in Towards Data Science, Rhys has now had a follow-up post published that explains our work on visibility. And it’s fantastic! Assessing visibility and pathfinding in 2D and 3D spaces are really cornerstones of our work to assess how occupant-centric prospective building designs are likely to be. This is a critical capability for us in our day-to-day work, but it's also very interesting from an algorithmic perspective and Rhys's article helps create awareness of these techniques with... Read more →

It’s the last day to submit class proposals for Autodesk University 2023

The CFP period for this year’s AU has simply flown by – mainly because it’s turned out to be a busy period between personal milestones and work travel – and today (May 15th) is the last day to submit your proposals for the event. Over the weekend I went ahead and finalised last-minute changes to mine and clicked submit. The titles (as shown above) are: Monitoring and visualizing data from the MX3D and Dar Smart Bridges Channeling Minecraft to analyze architectural spaces with VASA and Dynamo Both are variations on proposals I submitted for last year’s event (but obviously... Read more →

TechX 2023 in Dallas

Last week I was in Dallas, Texas, for TechX 2023, Autodesk’s annual internal event for technical and design staff. As the technical content shared at the event is company confidential, I’m mostly sharing pictures of people I had the good fortune to hang out with, during the course of the week. There was quite a bit of “real” work going on, too, though, so hopefully you won’t come away with the impression that it was just a week-long party. Ahem. As there’s no direct flight to Dallas from Switzerland, I chose to fly via Heathrow from Geneva on the... Read more →

Putting the TechX in Texas

I’m packing my bags soon for another trip across the pond for our annual, Autodesk-internal geekfest, TechX 2023. This year’s event is being held in Dallas, Texas, a city I haven’t visited in perhaps 20 years. I’m sure a lot has changed – we’ll see! Photo credit: Robert Hensley, CC license. In any case TechX isn’t about the venue – or even about the technical content, which, while often really interesting, is also watchable remotely during and after the event – as much as the chance to (re)connect with people. In that sense it’s similar to the Autodesk University... Read more →

Streams are live in Autodesk Tandem!

Today is a big day for Autodesk Research – and the Dasher team, in particular – in that the path started back in 2009 has now led to Autodesk Tandem integrating core IoT-centric capabilities in their production digital twin offering. Congratulations to my old Dasher colleague, Hali Larsen, and the rest of the Tandem team! This is all really exciting. :-) (For more information about the historical connection between Dasher and Tandem, this post from back in January might be helpful.) But anyway – today is all about Tandem. The feature is looking really good, presumably at least partly... Read more →

Submit your class proposal for Autodesk University 2023 today

It’s that time of year again: the Call for Proposals for AU 2023 is now open! This year’s event is back in Las Vegas – it’s being held at The Venetian from November 13th-15th. Interestingly this is a Monday to Wednesday slot, presumably to avoid overlap with the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix. I expect it’s going to be very hard to find a hotel room in Las Vegas after AU is over, this year! I always find that the best way to be sure to get to AU is to get a class accepted, something that didn’t... Read more →

Lighten Up! at EPFL

After an interesting start of the week in Copenhagen, I hurried back to Switzerland on Thursday afternoon to attend the opening of an exhibition and a following full-day symposium with many of the artists involved. The exhibition in question is called “Lighten Up! On Biology and Time” and is at the intersection of Art and Chronobiology. It’s running at the EPFL Pavilions until the end of July. The opening was in the Rolex Learning Center on the EPFL campus, and the auditorium was nicely full. In his keynote address Till Roenneberg had everyone close their eyes – a risky... Read more →