Through the Interface

Controlling Philips Hue lights from Dynamo Studio

Now that we’ve seen a couple of posts showing how to query information about Hue lights via a Philips Hue bridge from Dynamo Studio, it’s time for the really fun stuff: controlling lights from Dynamo. To make this happen some changes were needed to the zero-touch node that talks to the Philips Hue API on behalf of Dynamo, mainly to allow the setting of a light’s properties. The Philips Hue API allows this to be done either via Hue, Saturation and Brightness or by the XY offset in the CIE colour space. I ended up exposing the ability to... Read more →

Accessing Philips Hue lights from Dynamo Studio – Part 2

In the last post we looked at some initial code to get basic information about the lights connected to a Philips Hue bridge. In this post we’re going to extend the code to expose more information but also to query the bridge repeatedly, allowing the graph to display the latest light colours as they change. Here’s a view of the updated graph. A few things have changed: firstly the Bridge object exposes some new information – in our case we can see the names of the lights, but we could also access the names and IDs of the various... Read more →

Accessing Philips Hue lights from Dynamo Studio – Part 1

I mentioned in a recent post that I was chewing on how design apps might connect with building automation systems to display data via lights. My first step along this path was to see how Dynamo Studio might connect into my home’s Philips Hue bridge and get information about the “smart” lights it contains. To do this I created a zero-touch node in C# that calls into the Philips Hue API exposed by my local bridge. (To make this piece work you need to follow the steps on this page that show how to create an authorised user ID... Read more →

It’s time to Play!

There’s a new WebGL-based technology being developed by Autodesk and it’s completely awesome. And you can request access to it today. Project Play has been in development for some time. It has some shared lineage with the Smithsonian X 3D Explorer – although I’m not sure to what extent, if any, they share code – and it’s the viewing technology used by millions (?) around the world to explore the ReCapped Apollo 11 Command Module. But this technology is about way more than just viewing static models. It’s a full node-based editor that allows you to create rich 3D... Read more →

Securing your AutoCAD app using .NET

Many, many thanks for the congratulatory messages I received after my last post, whether via this blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or email. I was genuinely overwhelmed by the response! :-) Here’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time: a common question I’ve seen, over the years, is about how best to implement copy protection or licensing in your application. While this post doesn’t fully address that requirement, it does show you how to use a REST API to check the user entitlement for your application via the Autodesk App Store (formerly known as Autodesk Exchange Apps). This... Read more →

Controlling robots from inside AutoCAD – Part 3

After seeing how we can use Cylon.js to control Sphero’s Ollie and BB-8 robots from a browser, and then using the same mechanism from inside a custom AutoCAD command, today we’re going to drive these cute little bots based on AutoCAD geometry. The idea is that we’ll decompose regular curves – whether lines, arcs, polylines or splines – and use the “segments” as movement instructions for our robots. The approach is simple enough: we’ll iterate along the length of each selected curve and generate a set of instructions – really just a set of angles – for the associated... Read more →

Controlling robots from inside AutoCAD – Part 2

After looking at how to control robots using Cylon.js in the last post, in this post we’re going to get that working inside AutoCAD. For now with just a command that allows us to move the robots – in a future post we’ll analyse geometry and use that to specify the movements. The “controller” code we saw in the last post needed a little updating for use in this way. I went ahead and stripped out the keyboard-related code – as we’re using behind a web-service – and added the capability to control individual robots. We want to be... Read more →

Visualizing the AutoCAD I/O API

I’ve been working with AutoCAD I/O quite heavily over the last week or two – mainly spending time fleshing out my Jigsawify web application well in advance of AU2015 – and came across this helpful trick for visualizing an OData-based REST API graphically: you can copy and paste the XML schema for the AutoCAD I/O API into a file and then load it into the handy XOData tool. Here’s what was generated (after a little editing from my side for layout): I’m making pretty good progress using AutoCAD I/O from Node.js – which is interesting as I can now... Read more →

Running custom .NET code in the cloud using AutoCAD I/O – Part 4

Now that we’ve introduced how the CRX will be loaded by AutoCAD I/O – via an Autoloader bundle – we’re going to take a look at the code needed to create and test our Activity using it. As a starting point – and as mentioned last time – you should get hold of the code in this sample on GitHub and copy & paste the (C# & XML) code we’ve seen in the last two posts into their respective files. The code we’re going to see in today’s post belongs in Client\Program.cs. We’re very much tailoring the existing implementation,... Read more →

A fun, collaborative VR tool: can you Vrok-it?

It’s live! Our entry for the recent VR Hackathon in San Francisco has received a significant amount of spit and polish (OK, perhaps not the best mental image) over the last couple of weeks and is now ready for prime time (i.e. Beta testing ;-). Check it out at http://vrok.it! It should work well with Chrome, Firefox or Safari, although for best results I’d stick with Chrome on mobile devices. The term “vrok” is one I came up with on the trip back from San Francisco… it’s a combination of an invented acronym – Virtual Reality Online Collaboration –... Read more →

Building a web-based viewer using the Autodesk View & Data API – Part 2

In the last post we saw the process for getting content uploaded to Autodesk storage and translated into the format required by the Autodesk 360 viewer. In this post we’re going to show the steps to take that data and embed it in a “simple” HTML page. (Any complex capability in this page it’s due to the UI code that Dan Wellman kindly allowed me to borrow for the sample: otherwise what it does is very simple indeed.) There are, of course, more complex samples that the ADN team has developed to demonstrate the richness of the new View... Read more →

My first Autodesk 360 viewer sample

As mentioned last week, I’ve been having fun with Fusion 360 to prepare a model to be displayed in the new Autodesk 360 viewer. The sample is now ready to view, although I’m not yet quite ready to post the code directly here, mainly because the API isn’t yet publicly usable. Here’s the app for you to take for a spin, as it were. The Autodesk 360 Viewing & Data API is currently being piloted by a few key partners, and hopefully we’ll soon be broadening the scope to allow others to get involved (we first have to iron... Read more →

Creating an index of blog posts to launch Windows Live Writer

This one’s mainly for my fellow bloggers – especially those using the Typepad blogging platform – to help address a problem related to editing old blog posts using Windows Live Writer, a tool I can honestly say I can no longer blog without. Incidentally I’m now working with Live Writer 2012. With that said, it may also be of interest for people who want to programmatically query their favourite blogs and create offline indices into their posts. Maybe. :-) I use Live Writer primarily to author blog posts – which it allows me to do offline, something I find... Read more →

Autodesk ReCap Connect: a partner program for ReCap

It’s Good Friday, so much of the world will be offline today, but I thought I’d post quickly on some (good) news that may be of interest to people. The ReCap team has officially launched a new partner program. This provides access to a number of mechanisms for integrating with or harnessing Autodesk ReCap products and services. The Capture Codec Kit is primarily for importing custom point cloud formats – something important for hardware manufacturers, particularly – into Autodesk ReCap on the desktop. Embedded ReCap OEM allows generated or post-processed point cloud data to be brought into Autodesk’s design... Read more →

Ray-tracing Apollonian packings

Over the weekend I managed to complete the BerkeleyX Foundations of Computer Graphics class. This was really an excellent class, both in terms of the structure of the lectures and the homework assignments, which actually scaled in a non-linear way (the last assignment took as much time to complete as the previous three combined). But you were eased into it and didn’t strictly need to do the last piece of homework (which was to write a ray-tracer from scratch) to get a “pass” on the course. What’s nice about these MOOCs is that – in order to scale, putting... Read more →

AU 2012 class recordings now available online

This week has so far had an AU theme to it, just as last week we talked exclusively about Leap Motion and AutoCAD. Perhaps I’m sub-consciously shifting this blog to a weekly-themed format? Hmm. Like many of you, I’m sure, I received an email over the weekend to let me know that the recorded sessions from Autodesk University 2012 are now available online (for anyone with a valid AU online account). I wasn’t sure which of my sessions had made it up there from this last year’s event (thank goodness I rarely have to write cheques anymore), and so... Read more →

AU 2012 Handout: Moving code to the cloud – it’s easier than you think – Part 2

After introducing the topic – as well as creating our basic, local web-service – in the last post, today we’re going to publish our MVC 4 Web API application to the cloud and see it working from a number of different client environments. Preparing to publish to Azure Now that we’re ready to publish to Azure, we need to add a deployment project to our solution. Right-click “ApollonianPackingWebApi” in the Solution Explorer and select “Add Windows Azure Cloud Service Project”. This will add a new project into our solution. We can now double-click the entry under the “Roles” folder... Read more →

AU 2012 Handout: Moving code to the cloud – it’s easier than you think – Part 1

After posting the handout for my Wednesday class, now it’s time to start the one for Tuesday's - CP1914 - Moving Code to the Cloud: It's Easier Than You Think (I have a lot else going on on Tuesday, but this is the only class on that day for which I needed to prepare material). Attendance for both classes is looking fairly good: there are currently 138 attendees registered for the Cloud session and 62 registered for the one on WinRT. Why all this talk of the cloud? The software industry is steadily adopting a model commonly referred to... Read more →

Cloud & mobile series summary

As we reach the end of this long series of posts on moving code to the cloud – and a look at ways to use the functionality from a wide variety of applications, many of them on mobile devices – I felt it was worth putting together a quick summary post to reinforce the overall message (which may have been a bit lost in the sheer volume of information). Firstly, here are the posts in this series, including those looking at the original creation of the “desktop” application functionality: Creating the core desktop functionality Circle packing in AutoCAD: creating... Read more →

Creating a 3D viewer for our Apollonian service using iOS – Part 3

After starting the sub-series focused on iOS, I held off completing it until I could actually test the code on a physical iOS device. A big thanks to Andy Chang from our Toronto office for getting me set up with the ADP membership and my iPad 2 added to the list of usable development devices. I won’t talk about the steps needed to provision apps for iOS devices – there seems to be enough information available on the web for that – but I will say it ended up being less complicated than I expected. That’s not to say... Read more →