Through the Interface

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 →

Save the date: Autodesk DevCon in Munich on September 11-12

The dates and location were announced for the SF edition of the Autodesk DevCon 2023 a few weeks ago, and now it’s Europe’s turn. Join the Autodesk team in Munich on September 11th and 12th at the Holiday Inn Munich-Westpark. Registration hasn’t yet opened, so right now it’s just about putting the dates in your diaries and (potentially) planning travel/accommodation. I expect to come across to be there – it’ll be great to catch up with everyone! As I couldn’t remember the location, off the top of my head, I went ahead and searched my Google Photos for the... Read more →

Register today for Autodesk DevCon 2023 in SF

An Autodesk DevCon is coming back to San Francisco in 2023! It will be held on September 6th and 7th at Pier 9, between the Klamath Ferry and our Technology Center. Photo © The Bay Area Council Foundation It’s worth noting that there is a fee to attend the event (this is currently $150 but will increase to as much as $300 on the day of the event). Space is limited, given the venue, so it is worth registering as soon as you know you can attend – there’s a very good chance that we won’t have tickets left... 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 →

The Forge Data Day in Munich

Today I’ve been in Munich for the inaugural event in the Forge Data Days tour. As I decided to attend at fairly short notice, I didn’t even look into flights: flying from Geneva or Zurich to Munich is expensive at the best of times (considering the distance), and with less than a week of advance notice it would have been ridiculous. So I took the bus, which cost about $20 each way. It’s an hour and half to get to Zurich from my place, and the direct bus to the centre of Munich took another four hours. Not bad,... Read more →

Come to the Forge Data Day in Munich on Tuesday!

I talked recently about the first in-person event tour that’s been held for Forge developers in at least a few years, this time focused on the new Forge Data offering (including the Data Exchange API that’s now in public beta). At the time I wasn’t sure which event I’d attend: there’s an in-person (finally!) Forge Accelerator next to the Barcelona event, which made that one especially interesting, for instance. In the end the timing for the Munich event worked best. I’ve now booked my hotel and bus ticket, and I’ll be there for the first event in the global... 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 →

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 →

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 →

Watch the recordings from SimAUD 2021

As mentioned last week, this year’s Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) was held on Friday and Saturday of last week (with some pre-conference workshops on the Thursday). Autodesk has supported SimAUD since its inception – in fact a number of the people who started the conference were working for Autodesk Research at the time – and we continue to be a proud sponsor of the event, I’m pleased to say. It’s great that our sponsorship helped this year’s SimAUD be free to attend, as it encouraged record numbers of registrants (500+!) and attendees. If you... Read more →

Attend SimAUD 2021 for free

This year’s Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) is starting on Thursday April 15th and runs through to Saturday April 17th. Thanks to sponsorship, people can attend this year’s SimAUD completely free, although people are being encouraged to donate their normal registration fee to either offset carbon emissions or to encourage the next generation of simulation experts via Girls Who Code. I really like SimAUD – I attended a physical event at TUDelft in 2018 and was involved in the Generative Design track in 2020 (and I have to say that given its size and nature... Read more →

AI in AEC 2021

Next week the Finnish Association of Civil Engineers (RIL) is holding a virtual conference on the use of Artificial Intelligence in Architecture, Engineering and Construction called AI in AEC 2021. The agenda looks really compelling. These are the presentation tracks, to give you a sense for the topics covered: Data Driven Design Generative Design Impactful AI Project Management Natural Language Processing Smart Buildings Circular Economy Data Analytics Quality Control & Verification Autonomous Construction There are three keynote presentations: two at the opening of the conference at 10am CET on March 24th, while the third (which I’ve been asked to... Read more →

DevDays Online 2021

At the beginning of March our Developer Advocacy and Support team will be running its annual series of DevDays Online events. The first week will focus on public information – mainly news related to the Forge platform – while the second week will be for Autodesk Developer Network members, and focus mainly on our desktop products and APIs. You can find more complete information here, and register via the links below: For everyone March 2 – DevDays Keynotes – Jim Quanci March 3 – Forge API update – Augusto Goncalves March 4 – Autodesk Construction Cloud and API update... Read more →

Get the latest information on Project Dasher at this week’s KEA BIM Café Talk

I’ve been invited to talk about Project Dasher at the KEA BIM Café Talk on Wednesday of this week. Many thanks to Aske Strandberg for organising and moderating this event. It’s being held online (of course) at 4pm CET on Wednesday September 16th. The session is primarily targeted at students from KEA – the Copenhagen School of Design and Technology – but guests are very welcome. If you’d like to join, feel free to sign up here. I’ll be sharing a number of really cool enhancements I’ve been making to Dasher during the pandemic-related travel ban – only some... Read more →

Dreaming of AU and Forge Accelerators

This has been a strange week, at least in terms of dreams. I mentioned earlier in the week (on Twitter and LinkedIn) that I’d had a dream about Autodesk University where I was only partially present: I was running between meetings while everyone else was having fun attending sessions and hanging out at social events. I also noted this wasn’t so very different from reality (at least the way I perceive it), but that’s just me playing the victim. I love AU even if it’s always a bit hectic. I have a feeling this dream was probably triggered by... Read more →

AEC Hackathon, CanBIM recordings & AU class voting

This post is a bit of a grab-bag of various event-related topics. The first one (chronologically, if not in terms of the title above) is the availability of session recordings from the recent CanBIM event: “The Future of Work: Designing Resiliency and Building Work Safety Post-COVID”. My own session was entitled “Using Generative Design and Digital Twins to Improve Occupant Well Being”. As it was the first session of the day – with a new web streaming platform – there were a few teething issues for the sponsor’s introduction (and the session auto-closed a little too promptly, which meant... Read more →

The Autodesk University 2020 proposal deadline is coming fast!

I’ve just realised that time is running out for people to submit their class proposals for AU 2020. The deadline is on June 22nd, which is this coming Monday. From my side I’m almost certainly going to submit a class to discuss the details of the work we’ve been doing on post-COVID return-to-workplace efforts. Essentially digging into how we’ve used the Space Analysis package to implement metrics that make sense for this type of analysis. If you’re thinking of submitting something, but haven’t yet put pen to paper (or rather fingers to keyboard), then I suggest giving it some... Read more →