Autodesk Blogs - Aggregated Content

Kick up the I.Q. of Your AutoCAD Dimensions!

2012-05-30T14:40:58-07:00

Do your designs ever change? If the answer is “no”…then move along to someone else’s blog. If the answer is “yes!” (which I’m pretty sure is ALL of you) – then you’ll probably want to hang out here a little bit longer and learn more about parametric dimensions (assuming you haven’t already discovered these priceless little gems yourself).

For most of AutoCAD’s long life – we’ve been adding dimensions to our drawings that are driven by the geometry selected. We change the objects – the dimensions update (ideally).

These standard dimensions are all well and fine – and have worked for us for years. But In the meantime - most of the newer design software products that entered the world (such as Revit or Inventor) were blessed with much smarter parametric dimensions. These dimensions were so clever, you could change the geometry simply by changing the dimension value (insert sound of the angels here!).

I won’t lie…I was jealous. I had Dimension Envy.

And then the AutoCAD Heavens opened up and bestowed upon us - Parametric Dimensions. It was a truly momentous day!

Using these nifty smarter dimensions meant we could change our minds about our designs as many times as we wanted. A simple double click on the dimension allowed us to change the value – which in turn modified the AutoCAD geometry (insert sound of the angels yet again!).

So check out my Cadalyst video – and see for yourself how easy it is to use Parametric dimensions, as opposed to those boring, standard dimensions of yesteryear!

Note: You’ll never have Dimension Envy again.

Improved snapping to fillets and hooks in Revit

2012-05-30T15:01:00-07:00

There was a need to have additional references and characteristic points when modeling reinforcements in order to accurately define them in concrete elements.

Fillet and Hook references let you define a rebar or rebar set in the appropriate position within a fillet or hook. By snapping to these references you can avoid interferences and collisions with other rebar.
For fillets the references are placed at points of tangency and at the mid-point of the fillet arc.
For hooks the references are placed at the point of tangency with the rebar segment, at the point of tangency with the hook extension and at cardinal points between them.

After modifying properties of rebars or reinforced elements snapping to the references is preserved and adjusted to modified settings.

It helps you define concrete reinforcement more accurately.

LaunchPad for Product Design Suite Graduates from Autodesk Labs

2012-05-30T04:00:00-07:00

The technology preview of LaunchPad for Product Design Suite 2012 has ended. Thanks to everyone who participated. Your feedback helped shape this technology into its inclusion as part of Product Design Suite 2013. I love it when a technology preview results in a happy ending.

Graduation ceremonies are alive in the lab.

Creating a 3D viewer for our Apollonian service using WinRT Part 2

2012-05-29T23:23:51-07:00

In the previous post in this series, we saw the code for an initial, basic implementation of a 3D viewer for our Apollonian web-service developed for Windows 8 using WinRT. In this post, we extend that code to provide support...

Free Webcast with Lynn Next Tuesday

2012-05-29T08:22:02-07:00

Still using an older version of AutoCAD (not 2013 yet)? Got a spare hour next Tuesday?

Then join Lynn Allen for a free webcast!

See What You've Been Missing in AutoCAD 2013

Keynote Speaker: Lynn Allen

Date & Time: Tuesday, June 5, 2012 11:00am- 12:00pm PDT

Register now!

Get the scoop on all the new features in AutoCAD 2013, as well as info on some of the upgrade & cross-grade incentives currently on offer.

Hope to see you there!

How to Trick Get Your Boss to Buy You an iPad (Tablet)

2012-05-15T18:08:38-07:00

Guest Post by Brian Benton of the ‘CAD-a-Blog’

If you are a design professional (or just a CAD Geek in general) you may already have purchased an Apple iPad (or Android Tablet.) Perhaps you haven’t but you would like one. Here is a method that you can use to get your boss to purchase you one.

Step one is to ask nicely. When you are turned down make an argument as to why you need a tablet to do your job. Go with the obvious “it’s a small investment to increase efficiency which will increase profits.” The key here is to do more than mention it or to merely state that you will be more productive. This is your boss and he/she didn’t become boss by being a pushover. Through some real hard irrefutable data.

A tablet has the typical mobile document editors, email, calendar, etc. But your boss knows that any mobile device can do that. But tablets are unique in that Autodesk has created tablet specific programs for you to use. Add these programs (apps) to the mobile and user friendly format of a tablet and it’s a win-win situation. Here are some of the major (and free) apps from Autodesk.

AutoCAD WS is a mobile CAD program that can read and edit DWG files. Store your DWG files in Autodesk 360 (Autodesk’s free cloud system) and you will have access to your drawings while in the field, at home, at a client’s office, or anywhere you can connect to the internet. Using AutoCAD WS means that you can also collaborate with clients more effectively reduce costs by eliminating misunderstandings or confusion.

Do you ever need to red line drawings? You do? Well Autodesk has the free app called Autodesk Design Review Mobile App. It can read, view, and mark up DWF files. Access those files easily through Autodesk 360 while in the office, in a meeting with a client, while on the job site, or with a colleague. The tablet form factor makes redlining a drawing with others very easy to do. Since you are reviewing the mark up and discussing it at the same time there is less confusion (if any) and no question as to what is needed. Plus there is now a digital copy of the mark ups that are easily reproduced and archived.

What’s that? You don’t use AutoCAD. You use Inventor? Great. There is also the Autodesk Inventor Publisher Mobile Viewer where you can view and interact with animated 3D assembly instructions made with Inventor.

In your designs, do you need to calculate force? How about while you are in the field? Do you use pencil, paper and a calculator to do your design concepts? Autodesk ForceEffect can do all of this for you on your iPad. It allows for freehand sketching of design elements, can include joints, supports, calc loads, compute reactions and more! The files created can be saved and loaded to/from the cloud. It even comes with its own tutorials.

Perhaps you need to go to the field and conduct and conduct an as-built survey of a location. You can use 123D Catch to take pictures of the location and collect real 3D point data in order to recreate a 3D model of the area. 123D Catch can also be used on objects to help in reverse engineering or for reproducing them in a 3D printer.

How much would you, or your boss, have to pay to get any of these services done for a project? A lot less than the cost of a tablet that’s for certain. Did I mention that all of the above apps are free?

Now that you are armed with this useful information it should be no problem to get your boss to purchase you an iPad.

Here is a list of Autodesk’s mobile apps.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=16953811

Examples of Project Geppetto in Action

2012-05-29T04:00:00-07:00

"I see dead people" is the famous line from the hit movie, The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis. When it comes to Project Geppetto, the opposite is true. Project Geppetto is our free technology preview where you can easily add life-like people to your 3ds Max scenes. Recently technical visionary, Josh Pabst, provided some feedback with some images of a West Loop Office Tower in Chicago.

enlarge

Design Credits: Architecture firm SMDP (Sarver Minn Design Partners) // more

CGI: Josh Pabst // more
Modeling: AutoCAD 2012 // more
Rendering: iray^® and 3ds Max 2012 // more

You too can try this too. Please so and share your results at labs.3dsmax.geppetto@autodesk.com.

Signs of life are alive in the lab.

^* iray is a registered trademark of NVIDIA Corporation.

getAbstract: a side by side comparison

2012-05-28T04:00:00-07:00

Out of respect for those who have given their lives in service to our country, Autodesk employees in the United States are not working today. My wife and I are attending a ceremony in Alameda to honor our fallen heroes. Before we go, I thought I'd talk a little about our getAbstract pilot.

Autodesk is trying a service called getAbstract. The getAbstract service is a web site that Autodesk subscribes to which provides 5 page summaries of books and articles. I used it to get the essential concepts contained in a book I had never read.

The Corporation by Joel Bakan blog post

In May 2009, after seeing the author on The Daily Show, I bought and read the book Uranium by Tom Zoellner. I then wrote a blog article about it.

Uranium by Tom Zoellner blog post

Each getAbstract summary provides a set of take-aways. For fun I decided to compare the Uranium take-aways provided as part of the getAbstract site with the Uranium summary I provided in my blog article.

It's Alive in the Lab	}getabstract
Uranium is the heaviest element that occurs naturally. With a large number of protons in its nucleus, it lends itself to releasing energy when its nucleus is split in a collision with another particle.	Uranium holds huge danger as a source of the apocalypse and great promise as a source of clean energy. One ton can produce as much power as 20,000 tons of coal.
Uranium is so unstable that it naturally sheds particles. As it loses protons, it becomes radium, then radon, and then polonium. Despite this, the ore itself can be picked up and carried around safely as long as the dust is not inhaled.	Uranium breaks down into radium, radon and plutonium. It is common and lethal.
Uranium ore must be concentrated into U-235 before there is a danger of a spontaneous chain reaction. Creating U-235 does not come easy. Processing requires a plant the size of a football field. This is not like making homemade beer in one's apartment bathtub.	The core element in the Hiroshima atomic bomb was uranium’s most powerful, heavily concentrated form: enriched U-235. Making U-235 is an immense job, but a small piece in a bomb can vaporize a city.
Prior to its use for nuclear reactions, when mining for precious metals like gold and silver, uranium was often found and cast aside as a "bad luck" metal.
Cancer often results from uranium poisoning because the particles cast off from the material bombard the cell's nucleus and disrupt the makeup of the cell.	Inhaled in a closed space, like a mine, uranium enters the lungs, causing cancer.
X-rays got their name because "X" was a placeholder for an unknown source of energy. The original MIME type for DWF was drawing/x-dwf where "x" was for experimental.
Plutonium does not occur naturally and only exists as a result of a freakish occurrence when uranium is bombarded with neutrons. It got its name from the planet Pluto that had been spotted only 11 years earlier. Plutonium is easier to manufacture in bulk than U-235 but is more dangerous to use.	The amount of plutonium that flashed into energy in the Nagasaki bomb was about one-third the weight of a penny and killed more than 40,000 people, ending WWII.
	The U.S. spent $2 billion on the Manhattan Project, which built the WWII atomic bomb. President Harry Truman called it the "greatest scientific gamble in history."
	By the mid-1960s, during the Cold War, the U.S. had 30,000 nuclear warheads.
	Much of the former U.S.S.R.’s nuclear material is not catalogued, and the material that is identified and stored is badly secured.
	Today, about 40% of the world’s known uranium is in Australia. The largest single uranium mine is in Niger.

So they are surprisingly similar. I guess you could say getAbstract provides tangible benefits. (Rim-shot!)

The business versions of Cliff's Notes are alive in the lab.

Heading for San Francisco

2012-05-27T22:48:29-07:00

It’s a beautiful Whit Monday, here in Switzerland – and will probably be a beautiful Memorial Day, when I arrive in San Francisco, this afternoon. I’m heading across the pond to attend an internal technical conference and spend time with...

Just Checking In...(and Happy Memorial Day)

2012-05-27T17:17:31-07:00

My good pal dave espinosa-aguiilar mentioned that a few of you out there were concerned about my post last week on Kicking Up the IQ of AutoCAD Objects. I promise you all - I was just trying to be funny...there were no hidden messages in there at all.

Clearly it was much funnier in my head than it was on the blog (that happens at times). But rest assured all is well!

And Happy Memorial Day everyone! I hope you are enjoying the long weekend (those of you who are in the US).

Germany's PV solar sources generate half of national power demand

2012-05-27T13:07:09-07:00

Germany's photovoltaic (PV) solar power generating sources produced power at a rate of 22 GW, meeting almost half of national electricity demand at midday on Saturday, May 26. This level of power generation would meet a third of demand on a workday. Currently Germany gets about 20 percent of its total annual power from renewable sources including solar, wind, and biomass.

Germany was one of the first countries to implement a feed-in-tariff program, in which power companies are subsideized to pay higher rates for distributed renewable energy sources. According to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry, German power consumers have about € 4 billion per year added to their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.

Germany added 7.5 GW of installed solar power generation capacity in 2011 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity. Even RWE, long a hold out on solar power, has announced that it plans to invest in PV farms in southern Europe. Germany’s energy intensity, energy use per GDP, decreased by over 3% in 2011.

I remember that about two years ago on at about 5pm on Sunday May 23, 2010, renewable energy set another record, in Texas when wind generation reached about 6.7GW, about 20% of Texas' total state power demand.

Burlington Hydro's real-time smart grid for operations and analytics: Managing big data real-time

2012-05-26T15:01:54-07:00

At the Oracle Spatial User Conference in Washington DC this week, Don Guatto, COO and VP Engineering at Burlington Hydro and Geoff Cameron, EVP Intelligent Networks at AGSI gave a rivteing presentation on Burlington Hydro's (BHI) smart grid implementaton for the utility's GridSmartCity initiatives.

BHI is a utility near Toronto with 65000 meters, 32 substations and 93 employees. The GridSmartCity initiatives include

self healing networks - this initiative has reduced average outage times in BHI's service area to 20 seconds per year
smart meters - Burlington is in Ontario which has deployed smart meters and time-of-use pricing province wide
distributed generation - Ontario has a Feed-in-Tariff program which has led to the deployment of over 7000 micro-generation projects, mostly solar
electric vehicle (EV) charging stations
factory ride-through systems - enabling factories to continue functioning through outages
battery-based electric storage

Smart grid management system for operations and analytics

An independent consultant hired by BHI made a recommendation with far reaching implications for BHI. "Two of the main factors affecting GIS today are the move towards using internet technology to be able to serve GIS data to a much broader user base and efforts by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to promote interoperability. BHI needs to implement a new GIS that will fit its technology vision and provide the benefits of today's GIS to BHI operations."

Based on this recommendation BHI determined that the foundation for their smart grid management system would be an open architecture based on open standards. This would allow them to integrate their SCADA system, 65 000 smart meters reporting power use every 15 minutes, the supporting automated meter infrastructure (AMI), intelligent devices, power line sensors, a customer information system (CIS), their ERP system, engineering analysis, and other systems. It would utilize bidirectional communications to both receive information from and control smart devices. The system would have handle much larger data volumes than BHI had ever experienced before. For example, some devices were reporting 60 times per second. And perhaps the most challenging requirement is that it also had to operate real-time, which as Geoff emphasized, is beyond the capability of today's traditional enterprise GIS systems.

Implementation

AGSI's solution uses their Go360 products which provide a scalable, geospatially-enabled solution built on an open service oriented web architecture. It uses Oracle Spatial for a shared, geospatia data repository and AutoCAD Map 3D for design and geospatial data maintenance. A web browser, either on the desktop or on a mobile device, is all that's required to access tools for asset maintenance, cable locate, asset managemet, operations, financials and drill downs, automating network pinning and work protection tagging, SCADA, schematic views, automated CAIDI, SAIDI and SAIFI reporting, an outage management system (OMS), mobile workforce automation, automated as-built management, real-time asset monitoring and analytics, and an executive dashboard.

One of the most impressive Go360 applications that Geoff demonstrated was a transformer status monitoring dashboard that not only showed a map with transformer loading in real- in the form of a heat map, but could also report on historical loading and even estimate, based on the history of oveloading on a particuler transformer, how much the lifetime of the transformer had been shortened as a result of the overloading. It also allowed the operator to reconfigure the grid in real time to reduce the load on overlloaded transformers and redistribute it to others with available capacity.

What impressed me most was to see how an open IT architecture based on open standards together with industry standard off-the-shelf components, a bidirectional communications network and real-time smart devices and sensors has enabled BHI to develop a state of the art real-time geospatially-enabled smart grid operations and management system that integrates with their existing enterprise systems and provides a common point of access to all their operational data.

BHI has plans to contnue to develop smart grud applications in the future, but I think that they have built a strong IT foundation for their future smart grid development.

Interview: Carl Bass at C2-MTL

2012-05-25T12:06:38-07:00

Our CEO, Carl Bass, presented yesterday to about 1,000 people at the C2-MTL conference. Commerce + Creativity Montreal is a conference that seeks to explore creative answers to commercial questions.

Carl's strong message around innovation contrasted with many of the other "creative" and "innovative" presentations. Carl provided real direction about how to achieve those things, supported by great imagery, and presented in Carl's unique style. His presentation was very well received as observed via the Twitter stream and the nodding heads in the room.

Following the talk, Carl was interviewed for C2-MTL TV.

Colorful communication is alive in the lab.

Book Review (sort of): The Corporation by Joel Bakan

2012-05-25T12:13:36-07:00

A few of us at Autodesk are piloting a service called getAbstract. The service provides compressed knowledge by providing summaries of books and articles. I thought I would give it a try by reading a 5 page condensation of The Corporation by Joel Bakan.

The getAbstract web site makes it really simple in that it even lays out what it calls Take-Aways at the start of the synopsis. For The Corporation, the take-aways included:

Corporations play a crucial role in deciding what people eat, wear, read and watch.
The rise of the corporation began in the late nineteenth century, with the introduction of limited liability for corporate shareholders. The thinking was "Why should someone who only invested $100 in a company lose his house when the company did something wrong?"
In the early twentieth century, a court ruled that Ford Motor Company had a legal duty to maximize profits for shareholders at the expense of all other concerns. The Dodge brothers, investors in Ford, disagreed with Henry Ford who lowered the price of cars because he felt guilty about how much money the company was making.
As a result of that court ruling, corporations have become similar to exploitative "psychopathic" personalities. In their single-minded pursuit of lucre, in their quest to exploit any weakness and cast off regulatory oversight, corporations have become psychopathic organizations.
Corporations pursue profit but ignore their actions' environmental and social costs. For example, they pass the costs of pollution and unsafe products on to the rest of society.
In recent years, corporations have taken pains to appear socially responsible; however, this lip service to philanthropy is aimed at maximizing profits.

Though I have no doubt what is expressed is true for many corporations, at Autodesk we have a different perspective. Our approach to philanthropy is not at odds with our quest for profits.

Autodesk employees regularly volunteer their time at local organizations. For example, Autodesk allows up to 4 paid hours per month for parents to help out at their children's schools. This flexibility allows employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance and probably be more productive when they are at work instead of worrying about how their children are doing in school. Many of us are salaried employees so we easily work more than 44 hours a week, let alone 4 extra hours in a month.
Autodesk makes its design applications free to students. Yes this is a blessing for educators and students alike who do not have the means to purchase suites of design applications to learn how to design automobiles, buildings, bridges, or the next TV commercial. On the other hand when these students enter the workforce and need software for their professional lives, which design applications will the choose? Hopefully ones that they are already familiar with.
In these tough economic times, Autodesk has extended the use of free student versions to the unemployed. When these displaced workers reenter the workforce, they will become users of our design applications. With time on their hands that they can put towards self-betterment, having access to design applications is a win for both the person and Autodesk.
Autodesk is committed to sustainability. We pay attention to how much energy our computers use. We watch how much we travel. Our second floor at One Market (where I work) has a LEED Platinum certification for commercial interior renovation. Our office in Singapore also earned LEED Platinum certification yesterday. Yes we do all that, but we also make software that allows our customers to analyze and visualize the sustainability of the designs they create. Being familiar with sustainability ourselves helps us make and sell better products.

So although the getAbstract The Corporation summary appears to do this topic justice, all corporations cannot be tarred with the same brush. The getAbstract site gave this book a 6 out of 10 rating: "getAbstract.com recommends this study to those who would like to explore corporate behavior and its impact on society, albeit from a contrarian’s point of view." My next test of getAbstract will be to read a summary of a book I have actually read already and compare that to my recollection of what is in the book.

Speed reading is alive in the lab.

Creating a 3D viewer for our Apollonian service using WinRT Part 1

2012-05-25T02:14:56-07:00

After tackling the implementation of a basic 3D viewer for our Apollonian web-service using a variety of technology stacks – AutoCAD, Unity3D, Android, iOS & HTML5/WebGL – I felt as though I really needed to give it a try with...

Join me for the official Autodesk webcast on AutoCAD 2013!

2012-05-24T22:47:05-07:00

I know that many of you were a tad disappointed at launch when I didn’t show off the new features in AutoCAD 2013. We were aiming high and wanted to focus on other awesome topics such as Autodesk 360. But we listened – and now I am holding an official Autodesk webcast on AutoCAD 2013 on Tuesday, June 5, 11:00 AM Pacific / 2:00 PM Eastern.

Sign up HERE

I’ll be covering nearly all the cool new features inside of AutoCAD 2013 – so join me for sure! Register today – I look forward to seeing you there! (well…to be fair – I can’t really see you over the internet – but I’m sure you will look great!).

So join me - it just won't be the same without you.

Connecting Design to Analysis with Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis Professional

2012-05-24T14:23:47-07:00

If you haven't seen this yet click here.

SketchBook Ink Now Available

2012-05-25T06:36:52-07:00

Sketchbook Ink is available in the Apple App store for the iPad. Whereas SketchBook Pro creates bitmaps, SketchBook Ink creates resolution-independent bitmaps. Think of MacPaint versus MacDraw. I drew this up in under a minute.

I call it Sheryl in Wind. I know what you're thinking - "My gosh Scott - how do you do it?" I admit the resemblance to my wife is uncanny. That's kind of the point. This app is fun. You don't have to be any good at it to enjoy it. If you want to see some examples from people who do know what they are doing.

Unskilled drawing is alive in the lab.

IEA reports that US fossil-fuel CO2 emissions have dropped by 7.7% since 2006

2012-05-24T07:18:56-07:00

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached 31.6 gigatonnes in 2011, according to its preliminary estimates. This is up 3.2% over 2010. The breakdwon for energy-related CO2 emissions by fuel-type is

coal 45%
oil 35%
natural gas 20%.

In 2011, CO2 emissions continued to rise for non-OECD countries, though the total for OECD countries actually decreased

Non-OECD 6.1% increase
OECD 0.6% reduction.

The largest emitters are, in order, China, the United States, the European Union, and India.

China

China is responsible for the largest contribution to the global increase, up 9.3%, primarily as the result of increased coal combustion. But China has dramatically improved its energy intensity, reducing the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP by 15% between 2005 and 2011.

United States

CO2 emissions in the United States dropped 1.7%. The IEA ascribed the decease primarily to switching from coal to natural gas in power generation as well as a warm winter. US emissions have fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. The IEA says this is the result of

lower oil use in the transport sector (linked to efficiency improvements, higher oil prices and the economic downturn which has cut vehicle miles travelled)
substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector.

CO2 emissions in the EU in 2011 were down by 1.9%, as the EU continues toward its 20-20-20 goals by 2020.

India

India’s emissions rose by 8.7% and it now is ahead of Russia in emissions.

Japan

The IEA reported that Japan’s 2011 emissions increased by 2.4%, which is not unexpected as for most of the time it had few nuclear reactors running, and now has none operating.

Autodesk releases Sketchbook Ink

2012-05-24T06:06:04-07:00

SketchBook Ink for the iPad, which was announced back in March at the time of the release of the new iPad, has been released and is available on iTunes.

Unlike traditional vector drawing apps, SketchBook Ink is dedicated to pen-and-ink drawing. The inking behavior gives it a distinct feel but builds on the Sketchbook Pro interface. The app supports importing images from the photo library on iPad that can be used as references or backgrounds. SketchBook Ink enables users to produce very fine detail in their artwork on the new Retina Display independent of resolution. This new technology also supports the ability to export and print large, high-quality images directly from the iPad.