Through the Interface

Floppy Friday #8

It’s the last day of school! Well, of work. My kids still have school until Wednesday, but Autodesk has very generously insisted that its employees take an extended break over the holidays starting this evening. I’m planning to make the most of these two weeks – such as is possible with the pandemic-related restrictions – so I do hope to be able to queue up a couple more Floppy Fridays for the holidays, all being well. In today’s episode we look at two games – 1942 and Back to the Future – and mention a 3rd (Slap Fight, in... 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 →

Floppy Friday #7

This week’s Floppy Friday is slightly shorter and probably no sweeter, showcasing two fun Commodore 64 games that came in as viewer requests. Stefano Metrangolo asked that I try to find International Soccer (which also goes by the names of International Football or Cup Final, in some places) and Clint Brown requested TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or in this case Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles). As you’ll see in the video, to load the game I needed a “mission code” sheet, that luckily still exists online. I hope you enjoy the nostalgia hit, Stefano and Clint! Please do keep... 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 →

Floppy Friday #6

In this week’s episode we take a look at Missile Command and Impossible Mission, and also talk about Out Run – another of my arcade faves from back in the day. A shout-out to both Matt Armitage and Marco Fiocco, who were the inspiration for the games played. I’m very happy with how my system is shaping up: as mentioned in the video I now have a few hundred more floppies, some new old joysticks and a fixed video cable. For next week’s episode – depending on when the replacement chips arrive and whether they actually help – I... Read more →

Have you tried Node Auto Complete in Dynamo 2.9?

If so (or if not but you’re up for doing so) then the Dynamo team would like to hear from you! For some background, here’s the post on Dynamo Core 2.9 that introduces the feature. To enable the feature via Settings –> Experimental –> Enable Node Auto Complete. Then you can simple place a node (from the Library or by right-clicking on the canvas) and start to use auto-complete to find nodes to connect by Alt-clicking the input ports. Here’s me creating a small graph to create a polygon, for instance. From my cursory inspection it seems a really... 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 →

Floppy Friday #5

During the last few days I went through and found a couple more floppies for this week’s Floppy Friday. The first contained Rastan, a game where you’re a barbarian warrior off on some kind of adventure. The second contained a game called Druid (although the loader referred to it as “Druids”, for some reason), which was heavily inspired by one of my arcade favourites, Gauntlet. Anyway, here’s today’s episode. Enjoy! I mentioned a couple of things in this episode: this week I managed to find a new joystick (in fact three of them!) which should arrive shortly. I also... 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 →

Winding down after AU 2020

Much in the same way as I felt a little tired last Monday – something I suggested on Twitter might be Pavlovian, as it wasn’t due to jetlag or travel-based fatigue – today has been another low energy day. (Typically the week after AU – and sometimes even longer – is a non-event for me, but this year there’s no good reason for it to be. I expect I’ll be back on top of things tomorrow.) Anyway, it is a good opportunity to reflect back on last week’s “first of its kind” (and many of us are hoping “one... Read more →

Floppy Friday #4

I wasn’t sure I’d find the time to record this week’s episode – what with Autodesk University 2020 being in full swing – but I also thought it might be a nice way to wind down after a hectic week. I hope all of you who attended this year’s AU found it useful (and even fun!) despite the constraints imposed by it being fully online. I’ll post something about how I personally think it went on Monday. Anyway, this week’s Floppy Friday starts with a Star Trek graphic and theme tune, and then looks at a number of games... 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 →

Floppy Friday #3

It’s Friday, so it’s time to dig into a few old floppies for my old new Commodore 64. In this week’s episode we take a look at an image on the same floppy as Bubble Bobble – which we saw last week – and then play Artax (and no, this doesn’t have anything to do with Atreyu’s horse from The NeverEnding Story), Rick Dangerous and Zaxxon. It’s Autodesk University next week, so I hope I’ll still find time to record one of these to be posted on Friday, but we’ll see. Once again, if you enjoy this content, please... Read more →

Build your AU 2020 schedule today

It’s time: the full, interactive schedule for this year’s all-digital Autodesk University is now online. You can go ahead and start bookmarking your favourite classes today. Assuming you’re one of the 85,000 (and counting!) people who have registered for the event. If you haven’t already registered, don’t worry: you can still do so for free. (There are still plenty of tickets left. ;-) So to get things rolling, here’s a link to my AU 2020 class for you to bookmark and watch from November 17th. You can expect some interesting news to be announced (or at least repeated) in... Read more →

Kicking off the pre-AU Forge Hackathon

‘Twas the week before AU, when all around the globe, developers began coding, into Forge did they probe. Unknown Before Autodesk University kicks off, next week, our Developer Advocacy and Support team is running the inaugural Forge Hackathon. I talked about this event a month ago: hopefully some of you saw that and decided to sign up. By all accounts it’s well subscribed, either way: I see 45 team channels in Slack, and people have started talking about their various hacks. We started today with an introduction for Asia and Europe. Cyrille Fauvel kicked things off and introduced –... Read more →

Floppy Friday #2

With all the stress and anxiety in the world at the moment, it’s nice to unwind with an old school video game. In this week’s Floppy Friday we take a quick look at a couple of games – Nibbly ‘92 and Bubble Bobble. I used to play Bubble Bobble back in the day on my ZX Spectrum, but whatever skillz I may have once had have totally disappeared, as you’ll see. If you want to check out the previous episode, here it is. I’ve also created a playlist, in case you want to use you want to use it... Read more →