It is Alive in the Lab

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**24 The Local Supercluster

2013-06-19T04:00:00-07:00

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over a few months. I started small and worked my way up. This is the second to last one.

Artist’s rendition of the Local Supercluster.

10²⁴ MAGNITUDE
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m
100 Million Light-years

The Local Supercluster

110 Million Light-years

In terms of size, we’ve entered the realm of the absurd. The Local Supercluster contains the Local Group (plus 100 other galaxy groups and clusters) within its diameter of 33 megaparsecs (Mpc, equal to 110 million light-years).

All matter out to a distance of at least 50 Mpc, including the Local Group, is experiencing movement of 600 km/sec in one direction. While astronomers don’t quite understand the reason for this, that certainly didn’t stop them from naming it. "The Great Attractor" is a gravity anomaly with a concentration of mass equivalent to tens of thousands of Milky Ways, and is apparently reeling in an awful lot of matter.

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

Previous posts on this topic include:

Future blog posts will cover:

10²⁵ 3C 273
10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.

Autodesk Labs Site Down for Maintenance Tonight for 3 Hours

2013-06-18T16:51:34-07:00

Our IT team will be conducting some database maintenance tonight, so the Autdoesk Labs web site will be down from 7:00 pm Pacific time to 10:00 pm Pacific time. Though you will not be able to visit the site to learn about nor download any new technology previews, you can still use the various feedback mechanisms (i.e., email messages, forum posts, blog comments, Facebook comments, Twiter tweets, and YouTube video comments) to let us know what you think of technology previews you are currently working with. Thank you for your patience and continued interest in Autodesk Labs.

Fine tuning is alive in the lab.

3D Printed Motorcycle Designer Settles 5 year-old debate

2013-06-18T04:00:00-07:00

Enlarge.

At AU 2008 I happened to be nearby when our team was hoisting the 3D printed motorcycle for display. Autodesk had given me a FlipCam to take some video, so I did. See my my YouTube video. The video resulted in a YouTube comment:

"The front wheel is mounted the wrong way. Just a detail, but normally a vortex wheel should be mounted just like the back wheel of the bike."

Front wheel:

Enlarge.

Rear wheel:

Enlarge.

I decided to get opinions from experts in the Labs community. So I published this blog article:

Full Scale 3D Printed Motorcycle: Is our wheel backwards?

The result of publishing this blog article was comments like:

"It does seem like the spokes would cut through the wind easier if they wheel was flipped the other way before being mounted."
"It just doesn't look right design wise... I'd have a greater worry if the tire rotation direction were wrong."
"Yes, wrong way, look at pictures of the Yamaha RD350LC for how it should be done. See image."
"Aahhh, be careful of retroactive interference - what you have 'learned' before affecting the things you see today. The wheel is different than current designs, but not necessarily backwards. The profile of the spokes may be designed such that it "slices" through the air in the most effective way as it is shown."
"I would prefer spokes be in tension when braking, as installed."

The last comment was:

"Has anyone asked the Designer of the bike?"

I thought this was a good idea, so I asked Nino Caldarola of IMAGINiT Technologies. Here is his reply:

"The wheels can be mounted in either direction. In the model I wanted to show the spokes spinning with the leading edge forward. However, most purists would want it the other way. So the answer is 50% they're on correctly, and 50% they are reversed. Who's going to challenge me? I'm the Designer! :-)"

Oh what a diplomatic answer. "The wheels on the bike go 'round and 'round, 'round and 'round..." The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us and check out the wheels for yourself.

Discussion is alive in the lab.

New and Existing Project Chronicle users can try a new feature right now

2013-06-17T12:53:11-07:00

Senior Principal Research Scientist, Tovi Grossman, let me know that we are pleased to announce that an update to the Project Chronicle Website has just been released. The June 2013 update contains an exciting new feature:

New! Live Embedded Chronicles. Play Chronicles directly from your own web site.
This is in addition to a number of bug fixes and performance improvements.
Please view the updated Chronicle Website.
If you haven’t already, you can also download the Chronicle Recording Utility.

Here's an example of the new embedding feature.

Amelioration is alive in the lab.

123D Make Helps Students Learn in Cairo

2013-06-17T11:37:23-07:00

As its name suggests, 123D Make helps you "make" your design in the physical world by converting it to a form where the resulting material can be folded, stacked, or interlocked to reveal the design. I got a great email yesterday regarding 123D Make. I thought I would share it with It's Alive in the Lab readers.

Dear Scott,

I hope this email finds you well. I'm Mostafa Gabr, an Architect and a Lecturer in Arab Academy, and many other universities in Egypt, I am sending you my experience with my students in using the 123D Make program. First I would like to thank Autodesk for this program. It is a great addition to the long list of Autodesk programs and a new step towards the age of digital fabrication to reveal the design.

Enlarge.

The students' challenge was to model and fabricate the Khalifa tower of United Arab Emirates, the tallest tower on Earth according to The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Three groups were created to fabricate the tower with three different fabrication approaches: Folding, Staking, and Interlocking. The model tower was 1.65 m (5.43 ft) — almost as tall as some students (scale 1:500 of the real 828 m (2,717 ft).

All three teams overcame some challenges:

The Folding and the Interlocking groups faced the problem that the slices/faces were longer than the laser cutter bed, so they used AutoCAD to fix the output file and make the slices/faces shorter.
The Stacking group only faced the problem of the amount of material which made the model heavy to hold.
The Folding group's last challenge was to assemble all of the parts all together and close the model shape! That was hard — hence no assembly instructions available for the folding.

In the end the Folding group took the longest time in assembling (5 hours). After them was the Stacking group (3 hours). The winner was the Interlocking group (0.5 hours).

I would like to thank you for posting our experience with 123D Make program. Thanks for your help and support.

Warm greetings from the hot and always glorious Cairo :),
Mostafa Gabr
Msc. in Architecture and Environmental Design
Department of Construction & Architectural Engineering
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO
New Cairo, Egypt

Congratulations to all of the students who participated in the challenge.

Folding group:

Ahmed Mohamed Hafez
Rana Khalil Ali
Sara Hany ElMahdy
Kamal Amgad KamalElDin
Lobna Sami Roushdy
Marc Emad Nassri
Mostafa Mohamed AbdElGhafaar

Interlocking group:

Ahmed Hossam ElDin Hamdy
Ahmed Hossam Fawzy
Rana Mohamed Hamed
Samar Sami ElSaed
Ghadeer Ali Souliman
Marim Omar AbdAllah
Mostafa Gamil Deeb

Stacking group:

Amira Mohamed Hassan
Gamal Ayman Gamal
Taher Mahdy AbdelHamid
AbdelRahman Hossam ElDessouky
Noha Ibrahim AbdelShafy

Teaching assistant, Omar Etman, also helped out.

Towering educational programs are alive in the lab.

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**23 Local Group of Galaxies

2013-06-17T04:00:00-07:00

Andromeda, the largest galaxy in the Local Group of Galaxies.

10²³ MAGNITUDE
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m
10 Million Light-years

Local Group of Galaxies

10 Million Light-years

When we call this group of galaxies “local,” we don’t mean run down to the corner for a coffee and a donut local. It all depends on your perspective, and our perspective is rather large at the moment. The Local Group is the group of galaxies that includes our own, the Milky Way, and more than 54 others.

The galaxies of the Local Group cover a 10 million light-year diameter, the two most massive of which are the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies, containing 400 billion and 1 trillion stars, respectively, with each having its own system of local satellite galaxies.

I recall my days at Buzzsaw.com. Back in 1999 I used to see Frank Chu walking around town. Frank would conduct his own one-person protest march and carry around a sign requesting that "12 galaxies unite" to impeach an array of former US Presidents. I guess Frank should have been thinking bigger: "55 galaxies unite."

Previous posts on this topic include:

Future blog posts will cover:

10²⁴ The Local Supercluster
10²⁵ 3C 273
10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**22 IC 1101

2013-06-14T04:00:00-07:00

Artist’s rendition of IC 1101.

10²² MAGNITUDE
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m
1 Million Light-years

IC 1101

6 Million Light-years

You know all those galaxies, clusters, and stars we've been talking about? Well, they're positively petite. IC 1101 is a super-giant galaxy 1.07 billion light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (“the serpent” in, of course, ancient Greek).

With a diameter of 6 million light-years, IC 1101 is the largest known galaxy in existence. Being more than 50 times the size of the Milky Way and 2,000 times as massive, if it were in place of our own galaxy, it would swallow up the Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud, Andromeda Galaxy, and Triangulum Galaxy, which is just another way of saying it’s a real monster.

A galaxy is a collection of matter. A nebula is also a collection of matter. So what's the difference? I was able to find the answer on a site called wiki.answers.com. What are the odds?

"A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants interspersed with a medium of gas, dust, and dark matter."
"A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium, and other gases.
"In some older astronomy literature, all 'fuzzy objects' were called nebula, even if they were technically galaxies. This is because scientists had not yet established that galaxies were, in fact, objects outside the Milky Way. They were presumed to be among the local gas and dust objects in our own galaxy. Edwin Hubble made the essential determination that some 'nebulae' were considerably further away than other objects in the Milky Way and were, in fact, separate galaxies."

Previous posts on this topic include:

Future blog posts will cover:

10²³ Local Group of Galaxies
10²⁴ The Local Supercluster
10²⁵ 3C 273
10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.

June issue of Autodesk Labs newsletter now available

2013-06-13T04:00:00-07:00

There's another issue of Innovation Edge, the Autodesk Labs newsletter, available for your perusal. This brief publication highlights technologies and utilities available on Autodesk Labs. Something people don't always know is that technology previews are free. All we ask is that you try them and give us feedback on your experience. This applies to subscription customers, non-subscription customers, and students.

// Read the newsletter.

Our aim is not SPAM anyone to death. Opt-in subscribers only receive 6 email messages in a calendar year — one every other month.

To receive the newsletter, you can subscribe:

Navigate to Autodesk Labs home page.
Click on the Sign In link that appears in the upper right.
Sign in using your Autodesk Single Sign-on user ID and password.
Click on Newsletter link that appears in the upper right after signing in.
Check the box to opt in to receive the newsletter and click on Update.
The Autodesk Labs newsletter sending process will use the email address associated with your Autodesk account. As I mentioned, you will get one email message every other month. There is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of each newsletter. Once click, and you will be dead to me. :-)

As our opt-in page says, thank you for all of the downloads, site visits, email messages, forum postings, blog comments, and social media interactions. By the way, a list of all past newsletters appears on:

http://labs.autodesk.com/newsletters

Electronic delivery is alive in the lab.

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**21 The Milky Way

2013-06-12T04:00:00-07:00

"Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty
Some of the breath fades with the light
I think about this loveless fascination
Under the milky way tonight"
— The Church

10²² MAGNITUDE
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m
100,000 Light-years

The Milky Way

120,000 Light-years

Time for something you’ve actually heard of. The Milky Way is the galaxy containing our solar system, with Earth two-thirds of the way out from its center. Nearly 120,000 light-years in diameter and containing 200–400 billion stars, the galaxy probably contains at least as many planets, 10 billion of which could be in the habitable zone of their parent star.

If our solar system were the size of a quarter, the Milky Way would be equivalent to India. Being 13.2 billion years old (nearly as old as the universe), it’s safe to assume the candy bar was named after the galaxy and not vice versa.

Growing up, when someone said Milky Way, here's what came to mind.

I was only off by 23 orders of magnitude.

Previous posts on this topic include:

Future blog posts will cover:

10²² IC 1101
10²³ Local Group of Galaxies
10²⁴ The Local Supercluster
10²⁵ 3C 273
10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.

Design Night: Peddle Away with Project Falcon

2013-06-11T04:00:00-07:00

Simulation of Scott Sheppard riding a PiCycle in the wind
photos courtesy of Ryan Arnaudin

Design Night is an events program at the Autodesk Gallery. At each event, guests explore a different theme — such as biomimicry, light, or robotics — that challenges the conventionally narrow definition of design. The theme is reflected in all aspects of the event, from the activities guests enjoy to the food they eat to the music they hear. The latest one, on June 6, focused on technology as it relates to athletics.

As part of the night's activities, I was able to ride a stationary bike (the PiCycle) and see a simulation of what it would be like for me to ride in the wind. This was made possible by Project Falcon, a free technology preview on Autodesk Labs. Project Falcon simulates air flow around vehicles, buildings, outdoor equipment, consumer products, bloggers, or other objects of your choosing in a virtual wind tunnel. Results update almost in real-time in response to changes in wind-direction and speed.

Download Project Falcon from Autodesk Labs

For this Design Night exhibit, I sat on the PiCycle:

The geometry of my body was scanned:

Project Falcon showed me the effects of wind on my geometry:

Speaking of pedaling (as compared to peddling software alluded to in the title), another activity at Design Night was that the DJ station was powered by attendees' pedal power — no electricity required.

Our next Design Night is August 1. Save the date.

Cutting through the virtual wind is alive in the lab.