Through the Interface

Creating the AutoCAD 2019 brand imagery

For the latest release of AutoCAD a new set of imagery was created. This is the first major evolution of the AutoCAD product brand in several years: our Brand Strategy & Design group recently shared some material about the work they do that I thought would be of interest to readers of this blog. Many thanks to Sabrina Humphreys and Bonnie Cha for contributing the content for this post. The last major redesign happened for the AutoCAD 2014 product family, and was used until AutoCAD 2018. Here’s what the team said about this effort (I’ll share their words verbatim... Read more →

A new way to visit this blog: keanw.com

When I first started this blog, back in 2006, I used our (back then) Autodesk-recommended blogging platform, Typepad. When configuring the blog I had in the back of my mind that I’d end up putting it on a custom domain of some kind (perhaps Shaan Hurley’s autodesk.blogs.com), so I chose to use a blog-specific subfolder (through_the_interface) beneath the main through-the-interface.typepad.com site. I did this for a good reason, but it did result in pretty monstrous URLs for this blog. And I didn’t end up using a custom domain, after all, so we all ended up being stuck with big... Read more →

One man’s trash… digitizer pucks!

After recent posts about digitizing tablet overlays and a trip down memory lane on AutoCAD rearchitectures, today’s giveaway follows this retro theme. Francesco Tonioni discovered a box of digitizing tablet pucks hidden away in a cupboard. I have no idea whether there is anything useful in having these without a tablet itself (presumably the tablet itself is fairly passive, but I’m not clear on exactly how they work) but I’d be more than happy to send any or all to someone who wants them. Drop me an email if they interest you! If you’re interested in knowing which connector... Read more →

A brief history of rearchitecting AutoCAD (or the importance of R13)

Over the weekend I received an email from Jürgen Becker. It came with this image, which certainly brought back memories. The email referred to our recent trip down memory lane… I read your last post and remembered a poster. Do you remember that release, it was terrible? This is one of my favourite “chat over a beer” topics, and one that seems relevant to where we are today with Fabric, so I wrote Jürgen a quick note to say that I’d reply via my blog. Here is that reply. R13 was bad, but it had to happen I joined... Read more →

One man’s trash… AutoCAD R14 and 2000 digitizing tablet overlays

Firstly, I’d like to thank the few people who engaged on the last One Man’s Trash, which was clearly (but hopefully not too clearly) an April 1st prank. I’d have expected more people to “bite”, but then it was posted over the weekend, so perhaps not that many people saw it. Or perhaps it was obviously just for fun, in which case I hope people appreciated it at some level. Anyway, today’s giveaway is fo realz, yo. An old friend and colleague in our Localization department, Paul-Henri Arnaud, dug out a number of digitizing tablet overlays dating back to... Read more →

Checking out the world’s first 3D printed steel bridge at MX3D in Amsterdam

In a recent post I mentioned a trip to Amsterdam to visit with Van Wijnen and MX3D. The press embargo has now lifted on MX3D’s bridge – as you can see from a slew of recent articles – so I can now share a bit more information about that part of the visit. During that week I spent 2.5 days at MX3D, mostly to participate in discussions about how best to instrument the bridge with sensors. Autodesk started our collaboration with MX3D around the vision of using generative design for the creation of the bridge’s form… during the last... Read more →

One man’s trash… a very special giveaway

It’s really proving to be a fun series, as we recycle the contents of the closing Autodesk Neuchatel office. So far we’ve given away a couple of RS-232 breakout boxes, a signed copy of The Autodesk File and a (so far unclaimed) patch panel punch down tool. Today we’re offering a very special item to readers of this blog. It’s one of Autodesk Neuchatel’s best-kept secrets – not even all of our local employees know about it – but up on the roof of the building in Puits Godet we have a hot tub. And it’s awesome – a... Read more →

Simulate and control industrial robots with a new open source plugin for Autodesk Maya

Colleagues in Autodesk’s Office of the CTO (OCTO) – who work in the robotics lab on Pier 9 – have just released the code for a new tool called Mimic. Mimic is an open source plugin – with the Python code posted on GitHub – that allows you to simulate and control the use of a number of industrial robots (including various robots from ABB and KUKA). Here’s a screenshot: I’m really happy to see OCTO releasing open source projects in this way. If you’re interested in contributing to the project, be sure to check out the developer notes.... Read more →

Beyond BIM: adding campus or city views to Dasher 360

Those of you who have followed the progress on Dasher 360 will be aware that it currently works with a single building (or other) model. It’s always been our intention to go “Beyond BIM” (both in terms of addressing the needs of other industries but also scaling up to look at sites and cities) but over the last few weeks we’ve made a big push, making our first real forays into this new territory. Here’s a sneak peek at a campus view in Dasher 360 that integrates an additional Forge viewer control (this might also use a 3D mapping... Read more →

The future of AutoCAD

Yesterday was a big day for the AutoCAD product. A multi-year engineering project – started in the AutoCAD team way back when I was part of it – culminated in its first deliverables getting into the hands (or, in this case, browsers) of customers. The AutoCAD team has been working on a project codenamed “Fabric” for the last several years. It's has been a huge amount of work – something I’ll hopefully get into in a future blog post – but it’s finally bearing tangible fruit. In broad strokes the work was to take the core of AutoCAD and... Read more →

Blown away in Amsterdam

I was a little torn about my plans for this week: the Forge team is running a packed Accelerator in Munich, so it would have been great to have spent my week over there. As it happened I ended up coming to the Netherlands, instead, to meet with two incredibly innovative companies, Van Wijnen and MX3D. Despite missing the Accelerator the timing was actually pretty ideal: it proved possible to spend a day and a half with Van Wijnen at Autodesk’s office in Hoofddorp before coming into the city to join some of my Autodesk colleagues – Alex Tessier,... Read more →

One man’s trash… a patch panel punch down tool

As we continue clearing out cupboards and desks in the Neuchatel office, another potential treasure was uncovered by Francesco Tonioni. It seemed like a very interesting – and probably very useful – tool. We weren’t at all sure what it was until Hashim Mundol recognised it from a previous life. He identified it correctly as a patch panel punch down tool that’s apparently used by network technicians to wire network cables into patch panels. I have no idea if it’s something a reader of this blog might find useful. If so, drop me a mail with your name and... Read more →

Tickets are now on sale for AU London 2018

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s AU London. Until April 30th you can get the earlybird discount of £160 on the regular price: for the next several weeks the price is £540 + VAT instead of £700 + VAT. I’ll be attending – and speaking at – this year’s AU London. I’ll be presenting a session entitled “Using Forge to Connect BIM to the Internet of Things” on June 19th at 3:25pm. Here’s the class description from the AU London website: Autodesk Research has been working on the display of building performance data in a rich 3D... Read more →

One man’s trash… and the winner is…

Many thanks to all of you who responded to the last “one man’s trash” post offering a signed copy of The Autodesk File for one of the people answering John’s question correctly: What was the first Autodesk product which, after having been sold, was subsequently discontinued? The answer is, of course, AutoScreen. Of the 15 people who responded, 7 gave the correct answer (the other popular – albeit incorrect – answers were MicroCAD and Lightscape). John’s “bonus points” question really had people scratching their heads: What was the original in-house name for the product eventually introduced as AutoSketch? (In... Read more →

Celebrating a 20-year journey

When I first visited Neuchatel I instantly fell in love with the city. This was back in the summer of 1995, during my second round job interview for Autodesk. From that moment I knew I wanted to live here, but it was only in early 1998 that I had the chance to do so: a colleague had moved across to San Francisco to join the Kinetix development team, which left a Swiss-based vacancy in the European Developer Support team. I was thrilled to have the chance to move across and fill that role. During my first few weeks in... Read more →

One man’s trash… a copy of The Autodesk File signed by John Walker

I know this one is going to be extremely popular with the readers of this blog. While starting the clear-out of her bookshelf, a colleague in the Neuchatel office, Maria Elena Santoyo Torres, found a copy of The Autodesk File in book form. I hadn’t realised it had been bound into a book, so this was really exciting to me! I admit to having been more than a little tempted to hang on to it for myself. Ah well. (For those of you who are new to this series, we’re using this blog to give away interesting items we’ve... Read more →

Taking a (very cold) breath

It’s been a busy couple of months since getting back from our big trip (which, while incredible at many levels, was in itself not really a relaxing experience, all things considered). So in some ways it feels like a good time to take a break, especially as the kids have the week off school. We took the chance to head up to the Bernese Oberland for a bit of skiing and snowboarding, as we often do at this time of year. I’m working a bit in the mornings and the evenings – I have a few important projects to... Read more →

One man’s trash… another RS-232 breakout box (Sold!)

In response to the last “one man’s trash” post I actually received two emails: the first from Kean Maizels, who ended up receiving the box, and the second from an old friend and former colleague from the UK, Phil Gill, who just missed out. Luckily the Neuchatel office’s “recycler in chief”, Francesco Tonioni, managed to find a second breakout box (he’d also found the one that launched this whole initiative, of course). A different model than the first, but with similar capabilities. I stopped by the Neuchatel office on Tuesday to pick it up, and I remember thinking to... Read more →

A visit to Autodesk’s Advanced Manufacturing Facility in the UK

I didn’t think, on Monday, that I’d be visiting the UK this week. So it came as a surprise that on Tuesday I ended up buying a flight to head across to Birmingham on Wednesday, coming back Friday. You’re probably thinking, “ouch, that must have been expensive!” – which was exactly my expectation, looking into flights – but it turns out that at this time of year (probably due to the demand from skiers) EasyJet runs daily flights between Geneva and Birmingham. And – this week, at least – the flights were nearly empty: I managed to get a... Read more →

Hackrod is open to the crowd

I was really excited to hear, over the weekend, that our friends at Hackrod have launched a successful crowd-funding campaign and that there’s still time to participate. The campaign is being hosted on MicroVentures, which means investors should receive interest on their investment as well as equity in the project, assuming things work out. This admittedly seems a nicer model than getting a T-shirt or coffee mug saying you supported their Kickstarter. ;-) I haven’t yet decided whether I’m personally going to get in on the action (so to speak) but I thought I’d post about it in case... Read more →