Through the Interface

The NEST building’s HiLo roof

This week I was supposed to be back in Zurich for a couple of days, visiting the NEST building on Tuesday and the ETH campus on Wednesday. As it was, though, I managed to pick up Covid at last week’s TechX event in Atlanta, so I ended up staying at home feeling sorry for myself. I haven’t had particularly bad symptoms, thankfully: neither headaches nor fever, just mainly a heavy cough and a bit of brain fog, both of which are thankfully clearing up now. Given the value of last week’s event I’d certainly say that getting it relatively... Read more →

TechX 2022 in Atlanta

On Monday I flew from Geneva to Paris and then changed flights to head across to Atlanta for TechX 2022. TechX is Autodesk’s annual internal technology geekfest. This year’s TechX – the first in-person event since 2019’s in New Orleans – has been held in the Atlanta Hilton. I have a room that’s on a high floor, and as I’m waking up with jetlag for the first time in nearly 3 years, I managed to see the view across the city as the sun came up. The mornings have kicked off with keynote sessions. Andrew Anagnost, our CEO, showed... Read more →

Three AU proposals to vote for and a deadline reminder

It’s the last few days to submit your class proposals for Autodesk University 2022 in New Orleans. The Call for Proposals closes on April 15th. I’ve now submitted three classes, myself, and would greatly appreciate you voting for the one(s) you would like to see part of the event. This is whether you intend on being there in-person in New Orleans or not: the vast majority of classes will either be livestreamed or recorded and made available on-demand for virtual attendees. Here they are. Voting is open until April 25th. Voxel-based Architectural Space Analysis inside Dynamo Building Digital Twins... Read more →

Forge Data Days coming to a city near you

Now that I’ve recovered from this week’s trip to Paris – and from both the pleasure and the shock of seeing people physically in meatspace – it’s time to look ahead to another trip. The Developer Advocacy and Support team have announced a new worldwide event tour where they’ll be talking to people about the upcoming Forge Data platform. Here are the dates that were confirmed at the time of writing this post: Europe May 31st | Munich, Germany June 2nd | Gothenburg, Sweden June 7th | Birmingham, UK June 9th | Milan, Italy June 14th | Barcelona, Spain... Read more →

BIM World Paris 2022

On Monday I hopped onto the train to Geneva and from there onto the TGV to Paris Gare de Lyon. I was in Paris for BIM World, where we displayed the Dar 2m Smart Bridge. It was my first time seeing the bridge in person, which was a really exciting moment for me. After checking into a very nice little hotel in the 6th arrondissement I headed to the conference centre to help with the setup. The bridge was already unboxed and hooked up when I arrived. Pete Storey had some wires to connect to get it up and... Read more →

BIM World Paris is next week

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ll be in Paris next week for BIM World on April 5th and 6th, 2022. The 2m Dar Smart Bridge has apparently arrived in Paris from Dubai, so once a few legal formalities have been completed it should be on-site at the event. I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks – and performs – in person, especially when connected to Dasher! Autodesk will have a fairly significant presence at BIM World, by all accounts. I’ve done my best to pull together the various activities (beyond whatever’s happening at the booths on... Read more →

Vote on my (and others') AU 2022 class proposals

I’ve gone ahead and submitted two class proposals for Autodesk University 2022. If you think they should be part of this year’s event, I’d certainly appreciate you voting for them: Voxel-based Architectural Space Analysis inside Dynamo Autodesk Research first created the Space Analysis toolkit - and its accompanying Dynamo package - to support 2D generative design workflows such as those used during Project Discover for the architectural layout of Autodesk's Toronto office. VASA - short for Voxel-based Architectural Space Analysis - takes these techniques to the next level, allowing the geometric exploration of architectural spaces in 3D for activities... Read more →

Autodesk University 2022 will be in New Orleans

The Call For Proposals for Autodesk University 2022 is now live, and with it the news that this year’s event will be in The Big Easy, the beautiful city of New Orleans. I was last there for our Autodesk-internal TechX event in 2019. Here are a few snaps from back then: It was a good time, and I very much hope I get the chance to return in late September (the conference is being held from the 27th to the 29th). As mentioned recently, submitting your proposals early – the deadline is April 15th – will give you more... Read more →

The recording of the March Tandem webinar

Last week’s webinar – where I was kindly invited by the Autodesk Tandem team to join them to talk about Autodesk Research’s explorations into the potential for Digital Twins in the AEC space, specifically through Project Dasher – has now been posted via the In Tandem website (under Resources). It’s also on YouTube, so you can watch it directly over there. One really interesting section was Tim Kelly’s demo (starting around the 26-minute mark) of work the Tandem team has been doing to integrate Dasher-like capabilities into the product. Really exciting stuff! Here’s a preview of that segment of... Read more →

Reminder: join the Autodesk Tandem webinar today to see the future of connected Digital Twins

Today I’ll be speaking with Tim, Bob and Adam from the Tandem team about the work we’ve been doing in Project Dasher and how this is influencing their own offering, moving forward. The webinar is today (March 9th, 2022) at 4pm GMT | 5pm CET | 11am Eastern | 8am Pacific. If you’ve read this post in time, sign up here! Read more →

Walk across the Dar Smart Bridge at BIM World Paris for free!

This is all very exciting. I’ve booked my TGV ticket for Paris to attend a physical, in-person event: BIM World Paris is being held on April 5th & 6th, 2022, at Porte de Versailles. Autodesk is sponsoring the event, and the Autodesk Research team will be using the opportunity to show off the work that was done on the 2m Dar Smart Bridge, something I’ve covered recently in some depth. I’ll be attending along with my friends and colleagues Pete Storey and Fikret Kalay. In preparation for the event, I’ve been remoting into the PC running the bridge’s “operating... Read more →

Autodesk University 2022 dates and CFP

The AU team has announced the dates for Autodesk University 2022: it will be held from September 27-29, 2022, and – barring some regression in the current health situation – in-person for the first time since Autodesk University 2019! I can also reveal that we’ll be meeting in a city that isn’t Las Vegas. (Sorry to not say more about this, but we’ve been asked not to talk specifically about where’s it’s being held, for now.) This is clearly earlier than the usual November/December timeframe, so the Call For Proposals (CFP) will logically be held that much sooner. In... Read more →

Join the Tandem webinar in March to see the future of Dasher

The Autodesk Tandem team have kindly invited me to join their regular webinar – coming up on March 9th – to talk about the history of Project Dasher and to participate in a more future-centric discussion with Bob Bray and Tim Kelly. Here’s the description of the webinar. Even I want to attend, it sounds so interesting! ;-) From the lens of a software architect, learn why digital twin is key to the future of build What will it take to win the digital twin race? Get a front row seat and join our very own Kean Walmsley, software... Read more →

Autodesk open-sources web-based USD viewing implementation

I’ve been part of Autodesk’s open source committee – responsible for driving and approving open source contributions by the company – as the representative for Autodesk Research for the last few years. One of the most interesting projects to come through the committee – at least from my perspective – has now been released into the wild: Autodesk’s Visualization team (who also develop the Forge viewer) has open-sourced an implementation of the USD toolkit that targets the web. For those of you unfamiliar with USD – and I’m talking about the file format, not the currency – it stands... Read more →

Learn about Autodesk Construction Cloud and its API

There’s a great opportunity coming up in March to learn about building software that works with Autodesk Construction Cloud: the ACS Integration Partner Summit 2022 is being held on St Patrick’s Day, March 17th. Here’s some information on what to expect from this event: Autodesk Construction Overview Hear about Autodesk's construction platform vision, including recent business updates and a technical overview of the breadth of supported construction workflows. Autodesk Construction Cloud Platform, product, and Forge API updates A large focus will be on Forge APIs. We will discuss recently released APIs that allow you to deliver new features and... Read more →

Building the 2m Dar Smart Bridge

Colleagues in Autodesk Research have been working with Dar Al-Handasah on a project to 3D print a series of footbridges with integrated sensors. It’s similar in some ways to MX3D’s Smart Bridge Amsterdam, but printing with plastic rather than steel. I’ve talked about the bridge at a couple of events, now, so I thought it was time to share some more information about this fascinating project. My role in the project is, once again, fairly minor: I’ve been helping with the visualization of sensor data from the bridge inside Dasher (more on that later on), but it’s been fun... Read more →

The NEST exhibit at the new Autodesk Gallery

Last week this announcement was made that included a video showing off the sparkling new Autodesk Gallery at our 1 Market Street office in San Francisco. There’s a lot of inspiring content in the new Gallery – for instance it showcases the results of Autodesk Research’s collaboration with NASA JPL, the generatively designed interplanetary lander, and the scanning robot from Forge partner Scaled Robotics – but I wanted to highlight a project that I’ve participated in quite a bit, over the years, and I’m super-happy to see has a place in the stunning new Gallery: there’s a scale model... Read more →

The recording of last week's BIM Fórum Brasil event

Our friends at BIM Fórum Brasil have now posted the recording of last week’s event on Digital Twins. (If the last link says "We Couldn't Find This Page", just click on the Brazilian flag in the page header.) A big chunk of the session is in Portuguese, but my piece was in English. If you only understand English, I suggest skipping forward to the 20-minute mark. If you’ve heard me talk about this topic before, you might still want to check out the section on the Dar Smart Bridge project at the 35-minute mark. (Be ready to crank up... Read more →

Autodesk's 40th anniversary celebration

As I mentioned last week, Autodesk turned 40 yesterday. In anticipation of this milestone, Shaan Hurley and the Autodesk Community team organised a fun online get-together on Friday for people to join and get nostalgic about the good old days. Shaan asked me to prepare something Floppy Friday-related, so I went and created a Floppy Friday Zoom background that I used during the event. Here’s a GIF version, in case you’re interested. At its peak there were around 70 people in the call. It was so nice to reconnect with people after such a long time. It would have... Read more →

Autodesk is turning 40

As many of you will have heard on social media, Autodesk turns 40 this year. More specifically this coming Monday, January 30th, is the 40th anniversary of the original organizational meeting held at John Walker’s former home in Mill Valley, California. (You can find details in this recent post from John.) The anniversary of Autodesk’s official incorporation and initial stock distribution is on April 26th, but Autodesk as an informal entity already existed from the end of January. Although the company wasn’t called Autodesk at that point, as that wasn’t fixed until some time in April… among the other... Read more →