Through the Interface

Come work at Autodesk on the Tandem team!

Photo credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R13688 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 I’m really happy to see that the Tandem team is hiring. And they’re hiring into a really varied set of roles, so hopefully there’s something in this list for everyone. :-) Customer Adoption Specialist Principal Software Developer Senior Software Developer UX Designer Senior UX Designer Technical Program Manager I’m pretty sure that all these positions are “remote-ready”, although I believe from a timezone perspective the Eastern US is strongly preferred for at least the engineering-centric roles. I may have that wrong, of course, and I’ll be sure to come back and... Read more →

Frustrated by travel restrictions? Join the last virtual Forge Accelerator of 2021!

The subject is basically a perfect description of my own situation, today, but I thought there might be others out there in the same boat (as it were). I have a feeling that more people will end up being stuck at home over the next few weeks, whether they like it or not. From my side I was very much looking forward to a trip to the UK, next week, where I’d have had the chance to catch up with my UK colleagues for the first time in-person in probably 2 years. And to join for the team Christmas... Read more →

Using VASA with FormIt via Dynamo – Part 2

In the last post we looked at using VASA from within Dynamo for FormIt to solve mazes generated by a cool plugin created by Brett from the FormIt team. The Dynamo graph we saw used VASA in “3D mode” – where the voxel height is higher than 1 – but that came with the added need to create a floor for the maze (something that isn’t too hard, as we know the exact dimensions and location of the maze). In today’s post we’re looking at how VASA might be used to perform pathfinding operations at the urban scale, taking... Read more →

Using VASA with FormIt via Dynamo – Part 1

In this recent post we looked at FormIt’s JavaScript API and learned how Brett Garrison was able to use it to develop a Maze Generator plugin. In this post we look at one way to find solutions for the mazes generated by this plugin using VASA from Dynamo. When I first started looking into VASA with FormIt, Rhys Goldstein sent across a Dynamo graph he’d used to grab contextual building geometry from FormIt – to create a voxel model of the space – and then send the pathfinding results back afterwards. I’ve adapted this graph to work with the... Read more →

Want to see Dasher inside Tandem? Tell us what you need.

The Autodesk Tandem team has just launched their Customer Research Program. This is the perfect way to engage with the Tandem team and let them know what features you might need from your future digital twin infrastructure. In particular, if you’re interested in seeing features from Project Dasher show up inside Tandem – via what I referred to in a recent post as “Dasher inside Tandem” – then this is your chance to be heard. Related to this topic, I came across a funny meme recently on Twitter. I couldn’t find it again, so here’s my attempt at reproducing... Read more →

Autodesk FormIt and its JavaScript API

A few weeks ago I started taking a closer look at Autodesk FormIt, mainly with a view to understanding how it might integrate with VASA. FormIt is a multi-platform (which I believe in this case means Windows, iOS and web) conceptual design and analysis tool. I haven’t really followed the development of FormIt, over the years, so if you’re interested in learning more about that then I suggested heading over to the product team’s blog. If you want to get started with using FormIt, then this Primer seems helpful. Two things in particular had me intrigued about FormIt: its... Read more →

Getting ready for Tandem: a call to action for Forge developers

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time exploring how Project Dasher might make use of the platform capabilities of Autodesk Tandem. This is just one effort connecting the two projects, and the one I tend to think of as “Tandem inside Dasher”: the Tandem team is looking what makes sense in terms of “Dasher inside Tandem” (i.e. which Dasher features it makes sense to surface in Tandem for their customers). As I’ve hopefully said before, Autodesk Tandem fills a really important gap in the process to build out a model-centric digital twin: Project Dasher project was never intended... Read more →

Streamlines in the Forge viewer

One more feature inspired by Project Dasher has made its way into the Forge viewer’s Data Visualization Extension (Project Hyperion): streamlines. This is something I’ve talked about a few times in the past, and I’m happy to see it make its way into the Forge platform. Streamlines are a great mechanism for indicating movement – of people or assets – through an architectural space, or perhaps something like a toolpath in a manufacturing context. The way we implemented them originally inside Dasher wasn’t ideal, in all fairness: I used the MeshLine.js library to be able to display lines with... Read more →

Forge and digital twins at Autodesk University 2021

I’ve finally found the time to view the main information from the recent Autodesk University event, and thought it worth highlighting what I consider to be some of the “big ticket” items, especially from my own – somewhat Forge- and digital twin-centric – perspective. First-up, Forge was everywhere in the keynotes. If it wasn’t previously clear that Autodesk is serious about becoming a platform company, it should be from the messaging at this AU. On a side note, there are a number of internal organisational changes that have happened/are happening at Autodesk to accelerate this shift, so I’m currently... Read more →

Learn Forge website now available in English, Japanese and Chinese

While I was away on vacation I received the news that the excellent learnforge.autodesk.io website – a great resource for learning how to develop software that uses Autodesk Forge – has been translated into Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. This will be of great use to customers and would-be Forge developers who are keen to learn more about the platform but have a better grasp of Japanese or Chinese than English. If you have more requests for languages (I know at least one more is in the pipeline), then please post a comment and I’ll pass it on... Read more →

At the Forge Hackathon, counting down to AU2021

While I’m unlikely to be present for much of next week’s Autodesk University event – all being well I’ll be in Sardinia – I have been feeling the excitement mount ahead of it. Mainly from attending the Forge Hackathon, which is now nearing it’s climax. The event kicked off with a really interesting event held via SpatialChat. I hadn’t used it before, but was immediately hooked. There were different rooms (fine), but even within a single room you could have private conversations by moving off into a corner. The sound increases as you get closer to a sound source,... Read more →

Build your first Digital Twin at the upcoming Forge Hackathon

Other that my regular foolings-around with ancient tech, I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog in recent weeks. That’s all about to change, though, as we enter the busy period leading up to Autodesk University 2021. For one I have some interesting learnings I thought I’d share from some of the foundational work I’ve been doing on Dasher’s codebase, but there are also some interesting updates for people performing analyses of 2D (and 3D!) spaces. Fun stuff! First though, it’s worth reminding people of the Forge Hackathon that’s around the corner. It starts in just a couple of... Read more →

A new brand for a brand new Autodesk?

I’m sure many of you will already have seen Autodesk’s exciting new brand identity. To get a sense of what’s behind it, I recommend heading over to our Brand Hub, where you can get much of the background. It’s a very interesting read. Employees and partners have had some time to digest this change – and presumably start stocking up on black printer ink ;-) – and I fully admit that it took me a little while to “get” it. If you find it a bit too different, I do recommend giving it a few days/weeks to settle in.... Read more →

A new face in the Autodesk Tandem team

My friend and colleague Hali Larsen has joined the Autodesk Tandem team as a Product Manager focused on connected workflows and sustainability. This is huge news, for lots of reasons: for several years Hali played an absolutely instrumental role in Project Dasher – in many ways she was our de facto PM, but also worked through many gnarly issues related to bespoke configuration for various Dasher pilot projects. Hali has a wealth of experience working with customers in this space, and also knows where most of Dasher’s skeletons are buried, so she is the right person to take on... Read more →

Going viral during a pandemic

I’ve been getting quite a bit of unsolicited email of late. It started with this one, in late July: Hi Kean, Did you know that a QR code of your email address is currently being circulated all around the globe in a viral meme? Cheers, It came with a couple of images attached: Perhaps somewhat rudely I largely ignored it, as I thought it was some elaborate spam or phishing attempt. I did scan the QR codes and found some curious things encoded: my email address, the URL to blogs.autodesk.com, my old Autodesk office phone number, the location of... Read more →

AU 2021 update & MX3D on the AU blog

The count-down to Autodesk University 2021 continues, with registration for the event now open. I’ve gone ahead and registered, as I expect many of you will at some point during the remaining 54 days. It’s free, after all, and I’m sure will have lots of great content, as usual. Be sure to put the dates in your calendar – October 5-7 for the Americas, October 6-8 for EMEA & APAC, October 13-14 for East Asia. The timing of this year’s event – being several weeks earlier – means that it falls during our children’s half-term break. This year –... Read more →

Dynamo 2.12, MaRS v3 and the future of Space Analysis

The latest update to Dynamo Core (which for now you can use via Dynamo Sandbox) has some really interesting enhancements, both in terms of usability and performance. Check out Sol Amour’s two blog posts that introduce Dynamo Core 2.12. As it had been a while since I’d tried the MaRS graph in a new drop of Dynamo, I went ahead and loaded it. I immediately noticed a couple of things: it was referencing an old, now-deprecated version of the Solar Analysis package, so I updated to the latest & greatest version on my system and then reloaded the graph... Read more →

Using the Forge viewer? It’s time to switch to SVF2!

The big news on the Forge side of things over the last few weeks is probably the official release of SVF2. This is a more efficient streaming format the Forge viewer (from v7.25 onwards) can consume. We’ve been using SVF2 (which was previously known as OTG) for the last couple of years inside Project Dasher, and it’s been brilliant. If you’re interested in the technical details on SVF2, be sure to check the blog post that announced the SVF2 Beta from late last year. Just for instance, we’ve seen significant performance improvements from using SVF2 for our public demo... Read more →

Come and work for Autodesk Research in Pier 9!

San Francisco’s Pier 9 has got to one of the coolest Autodesk office locations to work from. You have access to all kind of cool technology, and it’s also full of pretty cool people, too. As a reminder, here’s an old post that shows the office, and here’s another that introduces the work we did there to prototype technology for the MX3D bridge. If this is the kind of work environment that gets you excited, then you may be even more excited to hear that our team is hiring for Senior Web Developer (someone with full stack development skills).... Read more →

Registration is now open for Autodesk University 2021

I’m a little late to the announcement party on this one – as I was busy gushing about the MX3D bridge, last week – but it does still feel like it’s worth posting a reminder to people. While it may seem like a long way away – as the event itself is in early October – it certainly doesn’t hurt to register early for AU, even when it’s free, virtual and with no restrictions on the number of participants (at least none that I’m aware of). The Forge team, for instance, has a number of plans to engage with... Read more →