Through the Interface

Building the 5m Dar Smart Bridge

Now that my head is briefly back above water following Autodesk University 2022 and some time off with the family, I thought I’d revisit the Dar 5m Smart Bridge project to share some of the things I learned about it during AU in New Orleans. As a reminder, I was not heavily involved in the building of the bridge itself – although I did track it with great interest from a distance – as my role really only came into play in the final stages of the project, when we were looking to get the data from the bridge... Read more →

Your input on the future of AEC professions

[Firstly, apologies to regular readers who have struggled to load this blog over the last week or so. Typepad has had the mother of all outages, but things seem to be back on track now.] One of my oldest friends, Matt Armitage, lives in Kuala Lumpur and participates in a regular show on a local business-oriented radio station – BFM 89.9 – talking about technology. The show is called Mattsplained (abbreviated to MSP) and I have to admit I’m completely hooked on it (I happen to listen to it via Spotify, but I think it’s on all major podcast... Read more →

Join the beta for the AEC Cloud Information Model API

Autodesk Platform Services – the platform formerly known as Forge – has a brand new service that’s soon going into beta: the AEC Cloud Information Model API. This API will allow you to access design parameters in Revit models hosted in the cloud with no need to pass by an instance Revit. The managed beta will give you access to data extracted from a fixed set of Revit sample models that is then hosted in the Autodesk Construction Cloud. It’ll be a great way to understand how the API works and provide feedback to the engineering team to steer... Read more →

AI+X Summit 2022

On Friday I hopped on a train to Zurich to attend the AI+X Summit 2022 event – organised by the ETH AI Center – which was co-located with the ETH Entrepreneur Club’s Launch event. It was a lovely autumn day, and the colours were even on display in Zurich’s Oerlikon district. The event was held at Stage One, an event space a short walk from the Oerlikon train station. I was mainly there for the AI+AEC workshop, but there were a number of mainstage presentations and exhibits by startups and larger companies involved in AI. The workshops were held... Read more →

Ballenberg, Ticino and the Bernese Oberland

Our children’s school holidays came right after this year’s Autodesk University in New Orleans, so I was highly relieved (and not a little stunned) that I came back from such a large event without Covid. (I managed to get it at the last large gathering I attended, so it’s just possible that my resistance is still in place. Either way, it was a relief!) We had some things to take care of on the Monday of last week, but on Tuesday we hit the road for Ballenberg, the Swiss Open-Air Museum. It’s basically a historical celebration of Swiss culture... Read more →

Another Autodesk University is over

That’s it for another whirlwind AU! This year’s AU was a very different one for me. Normally I’m delivering a class or two and end up spending several hours in meetings with customers – I almost never get to spend time in the Expo. In contrast I spent almost all of my time at this year’s event in the Expo standing on or talking about a bridge, so I can’t give any meaningful commentary about the broader event, sadly. One thing I will say – beyond whatever takeaways people have related to the change of venue (New Orleans over... Read more →

Come and see the 5m Dar Smart Bridge at Autodesk University 2022

In a recent post I hinted at a really impressive project that is being unveiled today in the exhibit hall of AU 2022. (My involvement was as usual pretty minor, primarily relating to data visualization, while the really impressive work was around designing and printing it.) The project is a 5 metre long single-cantilevered (in terms of the printing – it’s supported at both ends when in use) smart bridge, 3D-printed from recycled PETG and glass fibre in our Boston Technology Center for Dar. Here’s a video shared via LinkedIn that describes the project and a photo of Steve... Read more →

Human-centric building design

In a recent post, I mentioned that I’ve been asked to help lead our efforts in a particular area of research. I was deliberately vague at the time. Now, with Autodesk University 2022 around the corner, it seems a good time to say more about this. I hope it stimulates some interesting discussions at the event. As a company, one of Autodesk’s core interests is to enable the design and creation of healthier, safer, more resilient spaces. We want to explore tools for designers and architects that help them create buildings with more attention to the occupants. In the... Read more →

Exciting updates on Tandem & seeing them at AU

If you didn’t get the chance to watch last week’s webinar by the Autodesk Tandem team – their September 2022 webinar – then I highly recommend checking out the recording, especially if you’re interested in updates to their work on displaying sensor data. If you liked Project Dasher, you’re going to love the work that’s being done in Tandem. :-) Questions were asked during the webinar about attendees’ interests regarding workflows for heatmaps: If you missed the chance to vote – but have strong opinions on these workflows and would like to provide detailed feedback – then you can... Read more →

A new site dedicated to technology and engineering at Autodesk

There’s a new Autodesk site that many of you will find interesting: tech.autodesk.com has just launched, a showcase for technology and engineering at Autodesk. The site will be a great resource for people interested in learning about the technical work performed by our employees and will also be a way for Autodesk engineering talent to connect with the outside world. I’m really looking forward to seeing what our development teams share through this new mechanism. The site has linked to blogs written by a few of the company’s technologists, including this one. That was very nice to see, I... Read more →

Next week is the Forge Hackathon

Back at the beginning of August I mentioned the upcoming Forge Hackathon which precedes Autodesk University 2022. Well, the upcoming has become the immediate, and next week it’s happening! So if you’ve been debating whether or not to join the event, it’s time to make a decision and (hopefully) register. It’s a great opportunity to showcase your development team’s capabilities, to create something genuinely novel using Forge, or simple to kick back and have some fun. Or ideally all of the above. :-) (See this blog post for a reminder of the prize categories and judging criteria.) Read more →

Rest in peace

Photo: Lichfield/Getty Images Text: The Queen’s Accession Day message Open in a new page. Read more →

Forge Data Days (and DevDays Online 2022) videos

I’ve signed up to help with the Forge Developer Zone in the Exhibit Hall of Autodesk University 2022 in New Orleans, if you’re going to be there. Right now I’m planning on being there at these times, in case you want to swing by for a chat: Wednesday September 28th | 11:30am – 1:00pm Thursday September 29th | 11:30am – 1:00pm If you’re attending AU – whether physically or virtually – and have an interest in the Forge platform, then you may find this article to be of use. For my own preparation I thought I’d brush up on... Read more →

Autodesk open-sources Aurora, a real-time path tracing renderer for USD

SIGGRAPH 2022 – the pre-eminent computer graphics conference – was held in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, and with it came a slew of USD-centric announcements such as this one from NVIDIA about the Metaverse. It’s really impressive to see how computer graphics hardware and software companies are rallying behind this open source initiative. Autodesk is no exception: after having open-sourced a web-based USD viewing implementation, earlier this year, Autodesk’s big USD-centric SIGGRAPH announcement related to the open-sourcing of a real-time path tracing renderer for USD called Aurora. For those who don’t know how path tracing works, here’s... Read more →

Counting down to AU 2022

There’s now just a month to go before many will be travelling to New Orleans for the first in-person Autodesk University since 2019. Aside from being back at event with 10,000 or so attendees – something many of us may well have forgotten how to do, including myself – this year’s event will be different from those in recent years as it’s being held somewhere other than Las Vegas. In Vegas it’s possible to have that many people (give or take) hosted along with a full conference – including a significant exhibition space and somewhere to feed the hungry... Read more →

The first anniversary of the MX3D Bridge installation

While I was out on holiday, I received a newsletter from MX3D that I thought worth sharing here, too. It highlighted the fact that a year (actually 13 months, by this point) has already passed since the MX3D Bridge was installed in downtown Amsterdam. How time flies! The MX3D team put together this really nice video that shows details of the bridge’s design, construction and installation: Here’s the content of the newsletter article in question, © MX3D: We’re very happy to celebrate the first anniversary of the installation and public opening of the MX3D Bridge! We are looking back... Read more →

Of hiking and climbing

I’m back from our 2-week summer break, which we spent this year in Switzerland and Germany. The majority of the first week was spent up in the Bernese Oberland, a region we enjoy immensely. We were there all together – I was with my wife and our three kids – but in the mornings the “grown ups” left the kids to sleep in while we walked up to the centre of Adelboden. This was partly to give our puppy, Daisy, a bit of exercise… … but also because we love having a quiet breakfast at Haueter, considered one of... Read more →

A special unveiling at AU 2022

The Autodesk Research team is currently printing something very special in our Boston Technology Center with the hope of it being displayed at Autodesk University 2022 in New Orleans. I expect to be spending quite a bit of time near this object, during the event, and am very much looking forward to it. Even at this early stage it’s already a thing of great beauty. Now for some pre-AU fun and games: if you can guess the object’s function and how much it’ll weigh once finished – within an as-yet-undetermined threshold – then I’ll send you a souvenir from... Read more →

Register today for this year’s Forge Hackathon

Registration for the Forge Hackathon 2022 – being held virtually from September 19th-23rd – is now open. The prize categories are fun: You had me at 3D game Show me the Data! I feel the need, the need for Digital Twin Task automation is a state of mind There’s no place like ACC Do keep in mind the following judging criteria: Innovation Elegance Business problem solved Progress made during the week Depth of Forge use Wow factor (If you feel you need it, more detail on the categories and judging criteria can be found in the above-linked blog post.)... Read more →

An eventful start to the summer

It’s been some time since I’ve shared any personal news, so I thought I’d throw a whole load of it together in an easily ignorable post. I’ve structured this post on themes, rather than chronologically, as it feels more coherent that way. The summer has been lovely this year, in Switzerland, which is in stark contrast to last year’s horror show. We haven’t been away anywhere much – as yet, at least – but I’ll explain more about that a bit later on. For us the summer thus far has largely been about music. We’ve taken the opportunity to... Read more →