Through the Interface

Integrating Hyperion's volumetric room heatmaps into Dasher – Part 1

Today’s post is a follow-on from the first part where we looked at integrating Hyperion sprites into Dasher. (The posts are independent, though, so you don’t have to read the first one if you’re only interested in integrating heatmaps.) I was supposed to publish this at the beginning of the week, but I ended up getting bogged down by a couple of urgent projects – both of which I’m happy to say have led to me making some interesting enhancements to Dasher, which is, at least, something. Anyway, the topic I wanted to share is the approach for integrating... Read more →

It’s officially available: Data Visualization Extension for the Forge Viewer

The big news from this week (for me, anyway, aside from a very enjoyable Star Wars Day, yesterday) is that Project Hyperion has been released officially to the public as the Forge Viewer’s Data Visualization Extension. All you need to do is to use it is to start making use of the Forge Viewer from v7.42 (it is available in earlier versions, but this is the most complete version) and then take a look at the extensive online documentation. Congratulations to the Hyperion team for this major milestone! The work that has been done by that team to engineer... Read more →

Integrating Hyperion sprites into Dasher

As mentioned on Monday, I’ve been having lots of fun getting Hyperion to work inside Dasher, this week. All good preparation for the AU class I hope will be accepted for this year’s conference. Right now I have sprites working, which is an important first step (and doesn’t actually involve any of the more gnarly, data-related issues I expect to have when w tackle surface shading/heatmaps). In this post we’re going to step through the main steps taken to make this happen, but also to describe some of the important changes that were needed to make it all work... Read more →

My AU 2021 class proposal on integrating Hyperion with Dasher

On Friday I went ahead and submitted my one and only class proposal for the all-digital Autodesk University 2021. Let’s hope it gets selected. In case you’re interested, here’s the content of the proposal: Title: Dasher and Hyperion: using Data Visualization in a Forge viewer application Class ID: SD500020 Product(s): Forge Topics: Building Information Modeling (BIM), Building Operations, Internet of Things (IoT), Software Development Session Description Autodesk Research started Project Dasher in 2009 to explore the possibilities around integrating IoT data with BIM. In 2016 it was ported to work on the Forge platform, to understand the feasibility and... Read more →

Come work on Hyperion to help drive Data Visualization with Forge

The Forge viewer team is seeking to hire a San Francisco-based Senior Product Owner for Project Hyperion, the technology being made available as the Data Visualization Extension. (If you’re not familiar with the term Product Owner then in fairness you’re probably not a good fit for this position – the successful candidate will have PO experience – but here’s a link that may be of interest to you if you want to understand more about what’s involved.) This team is part of our Engineering organisation, but there are certainly connections to the work we’re doing over in Research: they... Read more →

Forge Viewer Data Visualization Extension now in public Beta

Last week Autodesk’s Developer Advocacy and Support team organised their second Forge Accelerator where developers could prototype Digital Twins using the Forge viewer’s Data Visualization Extension (codenamed Hyperion). The first of these Accelerators was back in December: while these virtual Accelerator events are currently held monthly, the Hyperion team needed some time to integrate the feedback from that event, so this was really only the second opportunity to focus on this new capability. I was a little busy last week (mainly with attending and speaking at the AI in AEC 2021 conference, which I found very interesting), so I... 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 and another "Build Your Own Dasher" Forge Accelerator

I’m currently up in the mountains with my family, enjoying the annual school closure for the kids’ “ski week”. I recognise we’re especially lucky, this year, given that a) Swiss ski resorts are open and b) our kids are at school physically rather than remotely. Spring seems to be hitting early, this year, but even if the snow’s a little soft, the sun is very welcome. Here’s a shot where we’re sitting at the top of a run as a rescue helicopter takes off (this is never good to see, but it is often impressive): Yesterday we went to... Read more →

Enhancing exploration of sensor data inside Dasher

I added a “simple” feature to Project Dasher (although it’s not live just yet) the other day, that I think is worth sharing some information about – especially as from a UX perspective it’s completely hidden and amounts to an Easter egg. For a particular project I’ve been searching through sensor data for time periods that tell an interesting story. In Dasher the simplest way to explore the data for one or more sensors (as you can add multiple sensors to a single chart by holding down the Shift key when you click on a sensor) is to use... Read more →

Animating stacked heatmaps in Dasher

Last week I mentioned some feedback I’d received from our HCI & Visualization team regarding the possibility of animating the heatmaps in the Types By Level UI. (Prior to this the Types By Level feature has really just been a legend for quick access to per-level heatmaps: I stopped short of attempting to animate the individual heatmaps while the timeline is playing.) For some background, the Types By Level feature is a stack of “cards” that each displays data from a particular sensor type for a specific floor using a 2D heatmap. These cards are rendered as individual textures... Read more →

Adding dividers to Dasher’s Types By Level UI

Last week I had a valuable discussion with members of our talented HCI and Visualization research team. They had reached out with the offer to perform “live science” review session for other teams’ research projects – with a particular focus on Human Computer Interaction and Visualization, of course – and I jumped at the opportunity. We sat down and talked through some of the recent work that had been done in Project Dasher to implement a multi-level UX that allows users to go from a top-level summary view to bring up individual 2D heatmap panels and a central 3D... Read more →

Hyperion at last week’s Forge Accelerator

Last week was a big week for the team developing the Data Visualization Extension (codenamed Hyperion) for the Forge viewer. And for the Dasher team, of course, who were very excited to see what our development partners can do with the new Dasher-like capabilities being built into Forge. As it’s still early days for the extension, the decision was made to limit the number of organisations (I won’t say companies, as a university was included) who would work with Hyperion to just 5. With hindsight this was a very wise decision, as there were a number of teething issues... Read more →

The MX3D bridge on Quarantime

My friend and incredibly inspiring former colleague, Mickey McManus, has been co-hosting a regular (I want to say weekly) live-streamed event under the name of Quarantime. They’ve just posted the 51st episode (which means they must be doing this more than once per week) which featured another friend and current colleague, Alec Shuldiner. Alec has been the real workhorse driving forward the MX3D Smart Bridge project and Autodesk’s involvement in it. He joined Quarantime to talk about the project in the context of our cities’ future digital infrastructure. Here’s a snapshot with Project Dasher as a backdrop: It’s really... Read more →

’Tis the season to build Dasher

During the last week the kids have been opening their Advent calendars, we had a visit from St. Nicholas (I’ve talked before about this central European tradition), and the Candy Cane accelerator has kicked off. All-in-all things are starting to feel very festive! (And yes, Dasher is one of Santa’s reindeer, so there’s that, too.) The accelerator has upwards of 30 companies and academic partners in attendance, with 5 or so of these focused on “building their own Dasher” using the upcoming Data Visualization Extension for the Forge viewer (Project Hyperion). Yesterday I presented a session on Project Dasher... Read more →

The Digital World: BIM

Tomorrow (or today for some of you) marks the start of a 3-day event – the Built Environment Summit – being run by BSI in the UK. Here’s the agenda for Day 1 (December 1st 2020, all times UTC/GMT): 09:00 - 09:10 Chairman's Opening Remarks 09:10 - 10:30 DFMA and IoT: What are the possibilities? 10:30 - 10:50 Morning Break 10:50 - 12:00 Build-by-wire: the future 12:00 - 13:00 Asset Performance Management: Who benefits? What could we expect? 13:00 - 13:30 Lunch Break [13:30 - 15:45 Product Data and Standardization] 13:30 - 13:50 Construction Innovation Hub and LEXiCON 13:50... Read more →

Build Your Own Dasher during the upcoming Forge Accelerator

Forge Accelerators have always been BYOD. First they were “Bring Your Own Device”, then (on going virtual) they were also “Bring Your Own Drinks” and now for the upcoming event – on December 7-11 2020 – we’re giving people the opportunity to “Build Your Own Dasher”. BYOD3! Attendees at the Candy Cane accelerator (love those codenames) will get early access to to the Forge viewer’s Data Visualization Extension – and the source code for the reference application that shows how to use it – which will greatly simplify the process of building a Digital Twin using Forge. (Something that... Read more →

My AU 2020 class Q&A

Yesterday evening was the Q&A for my Autodesk University 2020 class, Lessons from Project Dasher: Building a Digital Twin Using Forge. People registered for AU you can use the above link to access the recording for the next 30 days. Just click on the Join Now button: I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this session – having a full hour dedicated to questions! – but I think it went OK. There were a few speedbumps: the assigned moderator for my class was busy elsewhere and so only arrived partway through. It’s AU week, so I understood, and... Read more →

Autodesk Tandem and the Forge Viewer Data Visualization Extension

Yesterday was a great day for people interested in Digital Twins (among lots of other topics, of course). During the AU 2020 General Session and the AEC Keynote we heard about Autodesk Tandem, a new product and platform for creating Digital Twins from BIM. During the Forge Keynote, we heard about the Forge viewer’s new Data Visualization Extension, which simplifies the mapping of (for instance) sensor data into the viewer. I’ve had lots of questions already about how these announcements relate to Project Dasher and the work we’ve been doing in Autodesk Research. Some of these are covered in... Read more →

Fancy a chat during AU 2020?

And so it begins: today is the first day of Autodesk University 2020 (at least in the US), to be enjoyed (most probably) from the comfort of your home office or living room. We are now at well over 100,000 registrations, which is simply unbelievable. Many on Twitter are lamenting (or more likely relishing) the fact they’re not travelling to Las Vegas, dealing with jetlag, dehydration, cracked lips (viva los chapstick), lack of daylight (not good when dealing with the aforementioned jetlag), passive smoke inhalation, slot machine noise pollution and, yes, alcohol poisoning. I do miss the in-person contact... Read more →

Participate in Research at AU 2020

At our in-person Autodesk University events, it’s common for our R&D teams to interview customers and to brief them on ongoing research projects and upcoming product features. This is a really valuable part of our R&D process: this feedback helps us make sure that our products and services help the industry move forward by addressing real customer pain. This year is a bit different, of course: rather than hanging around the Idea Exchange – which I know many of us struggle to find time for – you can sign up for sessions via the AU website (or the links... Read more →