Through the Interface

Swissbau 2020

Bright and early, yesterday morning, I hopped on a train (well, a couple of trains) to get across to Basel for this year’s Swissbau, the bienniel construction-related trade show held in Switzerland, and apparently one of the largest in Europe. I’d never been before, but thanks to social media I’d compiled a list of people to see there, and had even coordinated to meet up with my friend and fellow blogger, Jeremy Tammik. There was quite a bit going on at Swissbau, even outside the exhibition hall. At one point I saw some people performing while suspended from a... Read more →

Visually clustering the contents of models in the Forge viewer

Some of you may already have seen Augusto’s tweet showing the “Visual Clusters" Forge viewer extension that has been developed by the BIM 360 Design team. It really is super-cool: the extension takes the content of the model loaded in the Forge viewer and clusters it spatially based on the value of the various items’ category property. The extension was first published in v7.6 of the Forge viewer, so it’s been around a little while. If you don’t have a Forge viewer application to test it out with, fear not! Petr Broz has added the capability to load extensions... Read more →

Back home and Happy Holidays!

After getting back to Bangalore from Pune, I did end up having to spend the best part of Wednesday morning dealing with more Indian bureaucracy. The bank I was in was going through its annual archival process, which meant the floor soon filled with papers… … and then boxes containing them. This brought back memories, as it was Writer Relocations who handled our move to India, back in 2003. After this I was able to head across Bangalore to meet with an old friend, Lokessh, for lunch. Lokessh works just off Queen’s Road, in the old centre of the... Read more →

Bangalore

On Wednesday morning I headed off at the crack of dawn to Geneva to fly back out to India. The sun was coming up across the lake – and the Alps behind it – as the train flew towards the airport. I changed flights in Heathrow, heading onwards to Bangalore. For once I had a World Traveller Plus seat – and a bulkhead, to boot – which I definitely enjoyed. The only downside was the combination of my aging Bose noise-cancelling headphones giving up the ghost partway through the flight with a tantruming toddler across the aisle from me.... Read more →

Geometry Systems and the Refinery Primer

I mentioned last time that I was expecting to publish some posts about Autodesk University 2019 material I found particularly compelling (now that I’ve had the chance to consume some). I didn’t get to watch as many recordings as I’d have liked – for now – but I did manage to watch the rest of a class of which I only caught the first few minutes before having to run to another meeting in Las Vegas, my friend Lorenzo Villaggi’s session on Geometry Systems. There are two main pieces to generative design systems – at least in the way... Read more →

My AU 2019 classes

The Autodesk University elves have been working day and night over the last few weeks to prepare 674 AU class recordings for posting to web. Some of my classes were livestreamed, this year, so I have already posted recordings for these. This post is just me gathering the various recordings together in a single post. Before that, though, I did promise a festive photo for each of the coming posts. Here’s one I took this morning, when we woke to find that St Nicholas had passed by the house. The feast of St Nicholas – which is celebrated throughout... Read more →

Reliving AU in Amsterdam

As the festive season is upon us, I’ve decided to start each post with a seasonal photo. Here’s me with a reindeer/dog (reindog?) in the lobby of the hotel we stayed at in Hoofddorp. As mentioned in the last post, Sander Lijbers made the most of my vague suggestion to meet with a customer or two during my visit to the Netherlands by inviting many of the accounts he manages to a one-day event in our Amsterdam office. Everyone accepted – with some even flying in from the UK – so we had a really good, engaged group! Sander... Read more →

Free webinar series on Forge Design Automation for AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor and 3ds Max

The Forge team has published details of a series of free webinars coming up over the next few weeks that take an in-depth look at the various Design Automation APIs for AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor and 3ds Max. Here are the dates and presenters for the various versions of the Design Automation API. All times are 8am Pacific. December 5th, 2019 | AutoCAD | Albert Szilvasy December 10th, 2019 | Revit | Sasha Crotty December 11th, 2019 | Inventor | Andrew Akenson December 12th, 2019 | 3ds Max | Kevin Vandecar For more details and to register, head on over... Read more →

Wrapping up Autodesk University 2019

Wednesday and Thursday were my busy days at this year’s Autodesk University in Las Vegas. After a breakfast meeting with a colleague from Toronto, I had my first class of AU2019 to deliver. It was a live-streamed class that was focused on advanced visualization (primarily of IoT data) using the Forge viewer. Somewhat unfortunately the class was scheduled at the same time as the AEC mainstage (more on this later), but that basically just meant that the room wasn’t completely full and that most of the attendees were Forge-focused. As it was live-streamed the class recording is already available:... Read more →

Forge DevCon and AU 2019 Day 1

On Saturday I headed over to Las Vegas for Autodesk University 2019. The journey started with the train to Geneva. From there it was a short flight to London, which amazingly arrived 30 minutes ahead of schedule. I had a 3-hour connection at Heathrow, so my old friend Simon picked me up from T5 and we had a nice pub lunch at The Ostrich Inn in Colnbrook before he dropped me at T3. And people say that Heathrow airport transfers aren’t enjoyable! It was a really strange onward flight to Las Vegas. I’m so used to this flight being... Read more →

Not coming to Las Vegas? Watch two of my AU2019 sessions from the comfort of your armchair

Or at your desk, or from the train. Just please don’t watch them while driving. Anyway, the point is that this year two of the three sessions I’m presenting at Autodesk University 2019 are part of the event’s livestream schedule. The first is on Wednesday at 10:30am Pacific: The second is on Thursday at 3pm Pacific (I have a 15-minute segment at some point during the hour timeslot): I’m not sure what’s happening with my third class – which is focused on Project Rediscover – but if that doesn’t end up getting recorded I’ll make sure equivalent material is... Read more →

Project Rediscover - version 2 of the MaRS graph is now available for download

In advance of next week’s AU2019 class entitled “Hands-on with Project Rediscover: generatively designing Autodesk Toronto's office”, I’m happy to announce that version 2 of the MaRS graph is now available for download. (Many thanks to Simon Breslav for all his work on the graph, as well as to both Simon and Rhys Goldstein for their hard work making Space Analysis what it is: a cornerstone of Project Rediscover.) While version 1 was about “getting something out there that works”, the focus for version 2 was to have something that’s more discoverable and understandable. We’ve done a few things... Read more →

Counting down the days to AU2019

I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my material for Autodesk University 2019. To encourage a few last-minute sign-ups, here are a few teaser GIFs from my classes. The first is from the class on Project Rediscover (which is apparently now full at 109 sign-ups, so in quite a small room). I used Capturefinery to create a GIF of quite a large Refinery study, but this time highlighting the congestion in a more 3D context. The second is from the class on Project Dasher – and using Forge for advanced data visualization – which still has 36 spaces in... Read more →

Generative Design for AEC on Redshift

There's a new video on Redshift highlighting the work being done by the Refinery team, as well as some use-cases for Generative Design in the AEC space. Check it out! Here’s the article with the video and its transcript. I really like the way the animations illustrate some possibilities for the technology. Here’s one relating to stadium design: I also saw a more complete article has been posted giving useful context regarding the video about the GD residency in Toronto I shared in this previous post. Something else to check out, when you get the chance. From my side... Read more →

Knee-deep in AU prep

Things have been quiet on this blog, since my return from Scotland. Mainly because I’ve been heads-down dealing with preparation for Autodesk University 2019, which I’d love to say was on the horizon, whereas it’s – more accurately – coming at top speed around a nearby streetcorner. In less than 3 weeks many us us will be flying to Las Vegas for the latest installment of my favourite annual conference. Today was the deadline for AU speakers to submit class handouts: I managed to submit something for both my classes, so I can now switch focus to the various... Read more →

BILT and the Highlands

After the pre-BILT Hackathon on Wednesday, there were still three full days of the main conference to be experienced in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. My family was with me – at the start of our 2-week Scottish adventure – so I wasn’t planning (or able) to spend the full 3 days at the conference. I did make it along to the opening keynote, however, which was largely run by Marcus Fich, who introduced two Danish psychologists who talked about (among other things) our response to stressful situations. It was a very different and interesting session. After that I... Read more →

The DBEI Generative Design Hackathon in Edinburgh

On Wednesday morning I headed off, bright and early, to the Generative Design Hackathon that had been organised by DBEI prior to this year's BILT Europe in Edinburgh. I wandered past the local church in Bruntsfield: The walk to the conference centre led me via the canal: I arrived at EICC, the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, which is also hosting this year's BILT Europe over the coming days. Proceedings were kicked off by Wesley Benn, Executive Chairman of DBEI: He introduced the teams: And the judges: While Hypar's Anthony Hauck introduced the expert users (myself included): As well as... Read more →

Autodesk’s third Soirée de l’Excellence Française in Paris

On Wednesday morning I hopped on the train to Paris, once again, this time to present at Autodesk France’s third “Soirée de l’Excellence Française”, an invitation-only VIP event for AEC customers in France. (I’d have blogged about it beforehand if the event was open to all, of course.) I arrived at la Gare de Lyon, as usual, and found an interesting art exhibit outside. I walked next door to the citizenM – part of the chain of hotels I’ve stayed at for AU London, the last two years. It’s a fun place to stay, although the switch to turn... Read more →

Looking back at the GD for AEC Residency; looking forward to the DBEI Hackathon

The Toronto team has posted a nice video looking back at July’s Generative Design for AEC Residency: It was clearly an interesting event – I do hope I’ll get to attend the next one. Here’s a still I extracted that shows Sol Amour, Dynamo’s Product Manager, hacking away at Python inside Dynamo. The Python node is big enough to be clearly visible on the video (the code itself is not, but I’m sure it’s about to do something cool). I’m starting to think about next Wednesday’s DBEI Hackathon, which has the theme “Generative Design in Practice” and so I’m... Read more →

There's still time to register for the Forge DevCon @ AU Germany

For those of you who haven’t yet signed up, there’s still a little time left to register for this year’s European Forge DevCon being held on October 14th 2019, just ahead of AU Germany on October 15th-16th. Once again both events are being held in Darmstadt (a nice town close to Frankfurt, for those who don’t know it). While AU Germany is primarily a German-language event, the Forge DevCon pre-conference is always in English. There’s a modest attendance fee for this year’s event: it costs 160 € per person, for which you get a gourmet dinner, snacks, drinks and... Read more →