Beyond the Paper View RSS

This blog highlights how applications built around DWF can do more than what can be done just using paper. The blog covers the building (architectural/electrical/construction), manufacturing, and infrastructure (e.g., GIS, telecommunications) industries.
Hide details



Free Tinkercad Lessons Plans are Available for Teachers 13 Sep 2020 4:15 AM (4 years ago)

Tinkercad

With COVID-19 impacting the ability of teachers and students to gather face to face, remote learning is the remedy. As such, Tinkercad has been found to be a valuable tool in teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics. Tinkercad is our free, easy-to-use app for 3D design, electronics, and coding. It's used by teachers, children, hobbyists, and designers to imagine, design, and make anything!

In 2018, my colleague, Guillermo Melantoni, and I taught a Tinkercad class at the Alameda Boys ad Girls Club. During this time of the pandemic, one of the most frequent requests our Tinkercad team receives is for lesson plans. Well, you know what they say, "Ask and yee shall receive." The Tinkercad site has a set of free lesson plans.

See_lesson_plans
Review the lesson plans.

Autodesk has always been an automation company. Today, more than ever, that means helping our customers automate their design and make processes. We help them embrace the future of making, where they can do more (e.g., quantity, functionality, performance, quality), with less (e.g., energy, raw materials, timeframes, waste of human potential), and realize the opportunity for better (e.g., innovation, user experience, efficiency, sustainability, return on investment). Helping teachers and students get a start on design and making is part of providing the opportunity for better.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

List of Autodesk Products by Industry 17 Apr 2020 11:22 AM (5 years ago)

Autodesk serves three industries:

More and more, we find that these industries are converging:

So with this in mind, I was reluctant to sort the cheat sheet of products by industry. Recall that one of our summer interns, Courtney Yu, created a cheat sheet, a sort of Cliff's Notes, of Autodesk products. Although any customer from any industry may be able to reap the benefits from any product (which is even more likely due to convergence), I thought I'd take a crack at sorting Courtney's list by primary industry.

Construction-FactoryOS-Vallejo-1024x512

AEC

"As an architect you are a builder. You are of course more than a builder. You need to be a militant, you have to be a poet, you have to be a visionary, you have to be an artist. But certainly you have to be a builder. Everything starts from there."
— Renzo Piano, architect

Technology-Center-San-Francisco-1024x512

PD&M

"Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent."
— Joe Sparano, designer

Media_Screens_34622188-1024

M&E

"Whoever controls the media — the images — controls the culture."
— Allen Ginsberg, American poet, philosopher, and writer

Autodesk has always been an automation company. Today, more than ever, that means helping our customers automate their design and make processes. We help them embrace the future of making, where they can do more (e.g., efficiency, performance, quality), with less (e.g., energy, raw materials, timeframes, waste of human potential), and realize the opportunity for better (e.g., innovation, user experience, return on investment). Our set of software products provides our customers with the opportunity for better.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

The DWF Format was invented by Autodesk but was AutoCAD? 2 Jul 2019 6:53 AM (5 years ago)

Autodesk has a large array of products and services. Some were developed internally such as Fusion 360 and Inventor whereas others were acquired such as Revit. AutoCAD is the product the founders started with although their original intent was to automate the business man's desktop with electronic Rolodex, word processing, and spreadsheet software — hence the name Autodesk. There is debate as to whether or not AutoCAD was internal or by acquisition as the founders were asked to bring software prototypes to the table, and that's where AutoCAD got its start (outside of the company but by a founder). Regardless of its origin, AutoCAD has evolved over the years by being developed internally as well as by integrating technology through acquisition. Back in the day when I was a DWF Technical Evangelist, I joking referred to AutoCAD as DWF Content Creator.

Earlier this year, a visitor arrived in the lobby of our San Rafael office, looking to buy a copy of AutoCAD. Our visitor was Howard Johnson who was the CEO of Vertex — a company acquired by Softdesk back in 1987, and ultimately acquired by Autodesk when Autodesk acquired Softdesk in 1996. Howard wanted to play around with AutoCAD to experience for himself how Vertex technology had gotten integrated into Autodesk products. Howard was greeted by Amanda Kinley on our Community team who hooked Howard up with a free AutoCAD subscription and pointed him to various training materials. Thanks, Amanda.

While visiting with Amanda, Howard shared some materials.

AutoCAD continues to grow. It has a rich set of capabilities that have evolved over time. Some of these were homegrown and others were integrated. We are grateful to contributors like Vertex over the course of AutoCAD's development. In 2010, Howard was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle in a story entitled "Architect has no designs on retirement."

Today, DWF files from AutoCAD go beyond the paper.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

Robots As Assistants Will Garner Our Affections 23 Oct 2018 7:24 AM (6 years ago)

Though there's hype that robots will take our jobs, many like me at Autodesk believe that robots will become our assistants. We see robots moving from the factory floor to the construction site as the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry and Product Design and Manufacturing industry converge. According to this TED Talk, we may even develop an affection for our robot assistants:

Watching this TED video last week reminded me of a blog post that I wrote after watching Life of Pi.

 

May 20, 2013

Robot_love
"I love my computer
 you make me feel alright
 every waking hour
 and every lonely night"
— Bad Religion

When I attended Design Night on robotics, there was a discussion as to whether or not robots would ever have emotions. The audience was split about 50-50 in terms of answering yes and no. Last night I watched the movie, Life of Pi, via Netflix. In my opinion, it contained a related conversation between a father, Sanosh, and his young son, Pi, who almost lost an arm while attempting to feed a tiger by hand:

Sanosh Patel: You think tiger is your friend. He is an animal, not a playmate.
Pi Patel: Animals have souls. I have seen it in their eyes.
Sanosh Patel: When you look into his eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you.

And there it is — why robots will one day have emotions. Robots will mimic physical characteristics that we humans will interpret as emotions. They will make smiles or frowns with fake lips, have wide-open or droopy mechanical eyes, and perhaps even tears. In the same way Pi believed that animals have souls from what he perceived in the tiger's eyes, people will project emotions on to robots.

As was presented on Design Night, researchers discussed the following:

Panelist: How would you feel if someone took a baseball bat to your refrigerator?
Respondent: I would not like it, but not so bad.
Panelist: How would you feel if someone took a baseball bat to your robot?
Respondent: I think I would feel the same.
Panelist: Then explain this. We had people play with a robot dog. After a short while, we gave them a bat and asked them to destroy the dog. They could not do it.

They say communication is defined by the receiver, not the sender. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I guess it's the same with emotion. People will see physical characteristics that they associate with human emotions and believe that the sender has these emotions when in fact it is they who are projecting the emotions on to the sender. Whoa! In the Design Night example, people believed the mechanical dog had feelings because it acted like a dog even though it was the equivalent of a blender or toaster.

Life-of-pi-tiger
Let me guess. He's angry?
source: fxguide.com

At the start of the Design Night, Adviser to the CEO/CTO, Jonathan Knowles, introduced the panelists and also recognized Dr. Don Greenberg who was in the audience. Dr. Greenberg is a professor at Cornell University and pioneer in computer graphics. Back in the early days had anyone asked him, or anyone else for that matter, if we'd ever see computer graphics that were so good that one could not distinguish them from a photograph, the answers would not have been split 50-50, but 100% no. But just look at visually striking movies, such as Life of Pi, today. No tiger was harmed in the making of the movie because the tiger was computer-generated. Robots are indeed in their infancy, but just give them time. One day we'll say "They're Gr-r-reat!" One day we might not be able to distinguish them from people — much like computer renderings and photographs.

Getting emotional is alive in the lab.

 

Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). Robots are just one part of that automation that allows customers to do more and better with less.

The Autodesk Galery experience includes

Though there's hype that robots will take our jobs, many like me at Autodesk believe that robots will become our assistants. We see robots moving from the factory floor to the construction site as the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry and Product Design and Manufacturing industry converge. According to this TED Talk, we may even develop an affection for our robot assistants:

Watching this TED video last week reminded me of a blog post that I wrote after watching Life of Pi.

 

May 20, 2013

Robot_love
"I love my computer
 you make me feel alright
 every waking hour
 and every lonely night"
— Bad Religion

When I attended Design Night on robotics, there was a discussion as to whether or not robots would ever have emotions. The audience was split about 50-50 in terms of answering yes and no. Last night I watched the movie, Life of Pi, via Netflix. In my opinion, it contained a related conversation between a father, Sanosh, and his young son, Pi, who almost lost an arm while attempting to feed a tiger by hand:

Sanosh Patel: You think tiger is your friend. He is an animal, not a playmate.
Pi Patel: Animals have souls. I have seen it in their eyes.
Sanosh Patel: When you look into his eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you.

And there it is — why robots will one day have emotions. Robots will mimic physical characteristics that we humans will interpret as emotions. They will make smiles or frowns with fake lips, have wide-open or droopy mechanical eyes, and perhaps even tears. In the same way Pi believed that animals have souls from what he perceived in the tiger's eyes, people will project emotions on to robots.

As was presented on Design Night, researchers discussed the following:

Panelist: How would you feel if someone took a baseball bat to your refrigerator?
Respondent: I would not like it, but not so bad.
Panelist: How would you feel if someone took a baseball bat to your robot?
Respondent: I think I would feel the same.
Panelist: Then explain this. We had people play with a robot dog. After a short while, we gave them a bat and asked them to destroy the dog. They could not do it.

They say communication is defined by the receiver, not the sender. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I guess it's the same with emotion. People will see physical characteristics that they associate with human emotions and believe that the sender has these emotions when in fact it is they who are projecting the emotions on to the sender. Whoa! In the Design Night example, people believed the mechanical dog had feelings because it acted like a dog even though it was the equivalent of a blender or toaster.

Life-of-pi-tiger
Let me guess. He's angry?
source: fxguide.com

At the start of the Design Night, Adviser to the CEO/CTO, Jonathan Knowles, introduced the panelists and also recognized Dr. Don Greenberg who was in the audience. Dr. Greenberg is a professor at Cornell University and pioneer in computer graphics. Back in the early days had anyone asked him, or anyone else for that matter, if we'd ever see computer graphics that were so good that one could not distinguish them from a photograph, the answers would not have been split 50-50, but 100% no. But just look at visually striking movies, such as Life of Pi, today. No tiger was harmed in the making of the movie because the tiger was computer-generated. Robots are indeed in their infancy, but just give them time. One day we'll say "They're Gr-r-reat!" One day we might not be able to distinguish them from people — much like computer renderings and photographs.

Getting emotional is alive in the lab.

 

Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). Robots are just one part of that automation that allows customers to do more and better with less.

Our automation efforts go beyond the paper.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

The VueOps Facilities Management Solution is based on Autodesk Forge 23 Oct 2018 7:19 AM (6 years ago)

Vueops
image source: VueOps

Today's blog post story comes to us from the Forge team. Forge is our application program interface (API) platform and supporting materials (sample code, manuals) as well as a community of developers who uses those APIs. Although Forge is intended for our customers and 3rd party developers to be able to use our web services, we use Forge for our development of the cloud-based services that we offer.

VueOps helps customers maximize facility uptime by integrating their building information through via a platform that optimizes facilities and the teams that support them. VueOps improves the workflow of managed equipment to save valuable time looking for information and planning the work. The time savings helps customers increase resource allocation to preventative maintenance, higher equipment reliability, and profitability. The VueOps visual platform uses intelligent, 3D models to enhance how even the most complex buildings operate.

Owners came to VueOps looking for practical ways to take advantage of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in operations and maintenance. The 3D models used to construct the buildings contained a wealth of information, but they were difficult to link to operational data and enterprise systems. Plus, people without design experience had difficulty navigating the massive files. The VueOps team decided to develop a solution that provided model viewing, data management, and integration with enterprise solutions (such as work-order management systems). So it's no surprise that VueOps adopted the Forge platform to connect cloud-based facilities management with 3D models, equipment data, and enterprise systems.

Forge is defined by 7 groups of APIs:

VueOps developers are making use of 4 of them:

ForgeAPIsV12
Enlarge

VueOps has used the time savings gained with Forge to do more than just go to market sooner. The VueOps team has been able to devote more time to high-value functionality, such as search-driven model viewing — a plus that lets users navigate large models very quickly. And with less time spent on basic development, VueOps can apply more resources to customizing the solution to meet customer needs.

Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). Autodesk Forge is an integral part of our automation plans.

Facilities Management via Forge is done beyond the paper.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

Updated: What's so hot about that Autodesk Forge thing? 4 Jan 2018 10:06 AM (7 years ago)

Forge_anvil

Let's say you've been an Autodesk customer for a long time. You've got decades of your intellectual property captured in AutoCAD drawings. If you'd like to leverage that data to showcase your work to your customers, then Autodesk Forge is for you.

Forge is our application program interface (API) platform and supporting materials (sample code, manuals) as well as a community of developers who uses those APIs. Although Forge is intended for our customers and 3rd party developers to be able to use our web services, we use Forge for our development of the cloud-based services that we offer. You can leverage Forge in the same ways that we do.

Forge is defined by 7 groups of APIs:

ForgeAPIsDWF
Enlarge

Autodesk has always been an automation company, and today more than ever that means helping people make more things, better things, with less; more and better in terms of increasing efficiency, performance, quality, and innovation; less in terms of time, resources, and negative impacts (e.g., social, environmental). Autodesk Forge is an integral part of our automation plans.

So regardless of the number of gigabytes of data you have in your design files, you can use these APIs to extract data, surface it, and allow your customers to view and interact with it on your own website. To forge is to make or shape a metal object by heating it in a fire or furnace or beating and hammering it. In terms of customer showcasing, your data is the metal, and our APIs are the heat.

With help from Forge, DWF goes beyond the paper.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

Updated: DWF Files and Autodesk Forge 12 Dec 2017 6:58 AM (7 years ago)

Editor's Note: With the addition of the Reality Capture APIs, this is an update of a previous blog post.

Let's say you've been an Autodesk customer for a long time. You've got decades of your intellectual property captured in AutoCAD drawings or DWF files. If you'd like to leverage that data to showcase your work to your customers, then Autodesk Forge is for you.

Forge is our application program interface (API) platform and supporting materials (sample code, manuals) as well as a community of developers who uses those APIs. Although Forge is intended for our customers and 3rd party developers to be able to use our web services, we use Forge for our development of the cloud-based services that we offer. You can leverage Forge in the same ways that we do.

Forge is defined by 5 groups of APIs:

ForgeDetailedAPIsDWF
Enlarge

So regardless of the number of gigabytes of data you have in your design files, you can use these APIs to extract data, surface it, and allow your customers to view and interact with it on your own website. To forge is to make or shape a metal object by heating it in a fire or furnace or beating and hammering it. In terms of customer showcasing, your data is the metal, and our APIs are the heat.

Once again, just as DWF lets you go beyond the paper, Forge lets you go beyond the application.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

DWF Files and Autodesk Forge 27 Jul 2017 12:35 PM (7 years ago)

ForgeDetailedAPIsDWF

The purpose of DWF files is to go beyond the paper. DWF files can be shared with stakeholders who do not have design authoring software. They are integral to the electronic review process in that they can be marked up and measured. If you have decades of your intellectual property captured in DWF files and would like to leverage that data to showcase your work to your customers, then Autodesk Forge is for you.

Forge is our application program interface (API) platform and supporting materials (sample code, manuals) as well as a community of developers who uses those APIs. Although Forge is intended for our customers and 3rd party developers to be able to extend our web services, we use Forge for our development of the cloud-based services that we offer. You can leverage Forge in the same ways that we do.

In terms of what you can do with Forge and DWF files. Forge is defined by 4 groups of APIs:

  1. Design Automation API

    The Design Automation API gives you the ability to run scripts on your design files, leveraging the scale of the Forge Platform to automate repetitive tasks. The API currently works with DWG files, but we have plans to expand to file types generated by other design software. For example, this is a handy way to publish thousands of drawings to DWF or PDF. "Ordinarily, you would have to download all the files, run a script on them in the AutoCAD desktop software, and then potentially upload them all back to the cloud. Your efficiency would be bottlenecked by the processing power of your computer and your network bandwidth, and you would have to instrument logging and retry logic in your code to ensure that the entire job completed. With the Design Automation API, you can offload all that processing to the Forge Platform, which can process those scripts at a much greater scale and efficiency." [Forge]

    The pieces of this part of the Forge API include:

    • activity - action (e.g., plotting DWG to DWF file) that can be executed by the AutoCAD Core Engine
    • AppPackage - module (e.g., custom AutoLISP routine that extracts Xdata) referenced by an Activity to perform specific functions
    • module file - AppPackage entity
    • WorkItem - a job that you submit to be executed by the AutoCAD Core Engine

  2. Data Management API

    The Data Management API gives you a unified and consistent way for you to access your data across BIM 360 Team, Fusion Team, BIM 360 Docs, A360 Personal, and the Object Storage Service. The Object Storage Service allows your application to download and upload raw files (such as DWG oor DWF). [Forge]

    The pieces of this part of the Forge API include:

    • Project Service - your application can navigate to a project from BIM 360 Team hub, a Fusion Team hub, an A360 Personal hub, or a BIM 360 Docs account
    • Data Service - your application can navigate and manage the BIM 360 Team, Fusion Team, BIM 360 Docs, or A360 Personal metadata in terms of folders, items, and versions, as well as the relationships between these entities
    • Schema Service - lets your application understand the structure and semantics of extended data types, like DWF files
    • Object Storage Service - your application can download and upload raw files that are managed by the Data Service

  3. Model Derivative API

    The Model Derivative API lets you represent and share your designs in different formats, as well as to extract valuable metadata into various object hierarchies. 60 different file input formats are supported.

    The pieces of this part of the Forge API include:

    • Metadata Extraction - your application can extract identifiable elements and properties from a source file
    • Geometry Extraction - your application can identify various geometric representations
    • File Translation - your application can translate source files into output files (derivatives) of different formats

    With this API, you can translate your design into different formats, such as DWF , but the key one is that you can have it translate your designs into SVF for extracting data and for rendering files in the Viewer.

  4. Viewer

    The Viewer is a WebGL-based, JavaScript library for your use in 3D and 2D model rendering. The Viewer communicates natively with the Model Derivative API to fetch model data, complying with its authorization and security requirements. The Viewer requires a WebGL-canvas compatible browser:

    • Chrome 50+
    • Firefox 45+
    • Opera 37+
    • Safari 9+
    • Microsoft Edge 20+
    • Internet Explorer 11

    The Model Derivative API provides a URN to the SVF file. A URN (Uniform Resource Name) is an internet resource with a name that, unlike a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), has persistent significance — that is, the owner of the URN can expect that another program will always be able to find the resource. A frequent problem in using the cloud is that web content is moved to a new site or a new page on the same site. Since hyperlinks reply on URLs, they no longer work when content is moved. URNs do not have this problem. The Viewer converts the SVF (Simple Vector Format) into WebGL that the browser can display natively without an additional plug-in.

    Allowing Forge to render your files in the Viewer is a hassle-free way to share your company's data to your customers without having to deal with all of the peculiarities of these various browsers.

    The Autodesk technology that was once known as the "Large Model Viewer" (because it handles 3D models larger than Autodesk Design Review) is the same viewing technology that is now called the Autodesk Forge Viewer. In addition, leveraging webGL offers the advantage that the browser user does not have to download and install any additional plug-ins. Throughout the years, we've heard from customers that downloading and installing Autodesk Design Review can be a challenge as some users do not have administrative rights on their machines. In addition, Autodesk Design Review is Microsoft Windows-only. The Autodesk Forge Viewer supports browsers that can consume WebGL independent of operating system.

Just as DWF lets you go beyond the paper, Forge lets you go beyond the application.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

It's Alive in the Lab: New Version fo Autodesk Design Review Released 5 Apr 2017 2:34 PM (8 years ago)

The It's Alive in the Lab blog mentioned that there's a new version of Autodesk Design Review available:

DWF_BALL_Final_RGB
Read the blog article.

DWF continues to go beyond the paper.

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?

It's Alive in the Lab: PDF Magick for Paper Output 25 Sep 2014 3:09 AM (10 years ago)

Fotolia_611372_XS

Here is the latest software for processing PDF and DWF files to paper.

PDF Magick for Paper Output

To go beyond the paper, DWF has to be able to get to paper first.

— Scott Sheppard

Add post to Blinklist Add post to Blogmarks Add post to del.icio.us Digg this! Add post to My Web 2.0 Add post to Newsvine Add post to Reddit Add post to Simpy Who's linking to this post?