It is Alive in the Lab

Augmented Reality for Showcase retires from Autodesk Labs

2013-05-17T04:00:00-07:00

Scanning and photogrammetry are ways to get something in the real world into the computer. 3D printing is one way to get something out of the computer into the real world. Augmented reality is a way to visualize something in the computer in the real world without having to physically create it.

Augmented Reality allows the ability to overlay semantically in context information (graphics, text, video, sound) on to a live video feed of the real-world in real-time. Autodesk Showcase is already a gold standard for photorealistic high quality interactive 3D real-time rendering. With the Showcase 2013 Augmented Reality plug-in, it was easy to visualize showcase 3D models in the real-world as viewed through a web or video camera. The technology preview has ended. The add-in has a time-bomb that stopped its operation on April 30, 2013. Thanks to everyone who downloaded the technology preview:

and provided feedback:

The augmented reality team is considering another technology preview at a later date.

Retirement is alive in the lab.

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

2013-05-16T09:00:41-07:00

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. I got this comment on my YouTube video today.

So is the front wheel mounted the wrong way? I took this picture in the Autodesk Gallery today.

Enlarge

Here is the back wheel:

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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.

The search for correct orientation is alive in the lab.

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**13 Voyager 2

2013-05-16T04:00:00-07:00

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 the next few months. I started small and am working my way up.

Artist rendering of the NASA Voyager 2 spacecraft. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

10¹³ MAGNITUDE
10,000,000,000,000 m
10 billion kilometers

Voyager 2

10 billion Kilometers

Despite what you may think, Voyager 2 did not have a sibling, Voyager 6, which nearly destroyed Earth before being stopped by the robot-stumping James T. Kirk. Designed to study the outer solar system, Voyager 2 was launched in 1977. Its primary mission ended in 1989 after encountering Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—the four gas giants—and it is now on extended mission beyond the heliosphere.

Voyager carries an audio-visual disc (if discovered by intelligent life) containing photos, scientific information, spoken greetings, and a medley of Earth sounds and music. It is currently 10 billion kilometers from the sun and is expected to transmit until 2025.

Voyager 2's Solar System Tour:

Closest approach to Jupiter occurred on July 9, 1979.
Closest approach to Saturn occurred on August 25, 1981.
Closest approach to Uranus occurred on January 24, 1986.
Closest approach to Neptune occurred on August 25, 1989.

Despite Voyager 2's impressive itinerary, that's only one-tenth of the Solar System.

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:

10¹⁴ The Solar System
10¹⁵ Cat's Eye Nebula
10¹⁶ Pillars of Creation
10¹⁷ Great Orion Nebula
10¹⁸ M15 Globular Cluster
10¹⁹ Sagitarius Dwarf Galaxy
10²⁰ Trangulum Galaxy
10²¹ The Milky Way
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.

Updated FABmep Import for Revit MEP Now Available via Autodesk Labs

2013-05-15T10:38:32-07:00

Autodesk Fabrication CADmep supports detailing, fabrication, and installation workflows for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) contractors, and provides tools that extend design-intent to create more accurate, intelligent, constructible models of building services systems. Autodesk Revit is specifically built for Building Information Modeling (BIM), empowering design and construction professionals to bring ideas from concept to construction with a coordinated and consistent model-based approach. The flavor of Revit that adds capabilities for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing is Revit MEP.

The FABmep Import for Revit MEP is our free technology preview that enables users to import Autodesk Fabrication CADmep models into Autodesk Revit MEP, providing round-tripping capabilities for as-built/record drawing purposes.

The latest update includes changes based on your feedback:

Improvements to MEP fitting alignments on imported systems
Mapping Definition file now saved to ProgramData directory to resolve accessibility issues

You can download it now:

Download FABmep Import for Revit MEP via Autodesk Labs

The technology preview started in July 2012 with support for Revit MEP 2013. The latest update also adds support for Revit MEP 2014. So now both sets of users can weigh in.

So how is the interoperability? The team welcomes your input. You can contact the team in a variety of ways.

Expanding the audience for feedback is alive in the lab.

Autodesk Labs versus Beta: Experts Elite Presentation

2013-05-15T04:00:00-07:00

photo courtesy of Adrianna Schneider, @LEEDing-Lady

The Expert Elite program was spearheaded by many, including Technologist, Shaan Hurley, and launched at AU during our Launch & Lunch event with our CEO Carl Bass. The Expert Elite program is designed to recognize community members who make extraordinary contributions to our online and social communities. Members of the Expert Elite group are characterized by their regular and responsive participation in Autodesk’s discussion forums and social channels and advanced knowledge of company and our products. Our goal with our Expert Elite program is to deeply engage this important group of individuals and empower them to better assist their peers and support the Autodesk community.

On May 8 and 9, Autodesk hosted our first annual North American Autodesk Expert Elite Summit in San Francisco. We had about 40 members joining our Summit, and it was an opportunity for us to share program, product, and strategic information with all of our members which are under NDA with Autodesk. The 2 day Summit was filled with Expert Elite Program topics and product breakout sessions where Product Managers collaborated with our members on features and functionality. I was involved into 2 capacities:

Fellow Autodesk Gallery Ambassador, Jonathan Rowe, and I gave the Expert Elite members a tour of the Autodesk Gallery.
I gave a presentation on Autodesk Labs and Autodesk Beta program.

I oversee Autodesk Labs, so I could cover that easily. Shaan oversees the Beta program. To prepare for the Beta portion of the presentation, Shaan gave me the skinny which he has documented in his Between the Lines blog article. It was great getting to talk to users whom we regard as evangelists because of their combination of technical knowledge and active participation in our development processes. I enjoyed my myself. From a few tweets I saw, I think the experts did too.

Here is what I covered. You can download my PowerPoint. Although the notes section is not word for word what I said, it does capture the essence of what Shaan sent me, and I crafted myself.

Download Labs_Beta.pptx (9399.2K).

I think the two main questions that the presentation answered for the experts were:

I updated my Beta profile to say I wanted to help test product X, but I did not get included in the Beta for product X. Why?

Betas are limited by size. Some such as AutoCAD 2014 are large — about 30,000 participants. Others are as small as 200. So when product teams determine whom to accept into a beta, they have to make hard choices, Since how our products get used varies form locale to locale, teams are looking for geographic diversity. With this in mind, only one-third of beta program participants are in the United States. So if you don't get included, it's nothing personal.
I went to all the trouble to report a bug during the Beta, but when I got the released product, it was not fixed. Why?

Feedback during a beta can be a feature request or a defect report. Although a beta is typically months before a product ships, there is often not enough time to add new capabilities. In fact, that is why Autodesk Labs was formed - so we could get feedback early in the process where there is enough time to consider dramatic changes to approach or functionality. So most feature requests during a beta get added to a wish list. They can be considered down the road.

For defects, the severity, frequency, and risk are evaluated.
- The severity reflects how bad it is (e.g., typo, annoyance, feature does not work as promised, crash, loss of data).
- The frequency reflects how likely it is to happen (e.g., everyone will encounter this every time, this only happens with a certain type of data or on a certain hardware configuration).
- The risk associated with a defect reflects the complexity and amount of code that has to change to correct it.
Anytime we fix a defect, we run the risk of breaking something else. So as a beta progresses, the bar gets raised higher and higher as to what gets fixed and what gets deferred. All of this is done by product core teams (i.e. project management, QA, SW DEV, marketing) who hold daily bug scrub meetings using a list of bugs in a defect tracking system. So if you report a defect, and it does not get fixed, it was probably just too risky to fix for the initial release. It's in the tracking system, so you may see it in a later service pack.

In the question and answer portion, the attendees made the following points:

With regard to betas, why does Autodesk have a target release date? Why doesn't Autodesk just keep fixing defects until they are all fixed? How does customer participation help? See my answer.
It would be easier to submit crash reports if users could copy/paste from the application into the crash report.
Users would like to use video to supplement their crash reports. Many times it would be easier to explain what they were doing when they encountered a crash by simply retracing their steps while recording their screens with narration. Perhaps Project Chronicle is the answer?
Users without access to local discussion forums would like Autodesk to persuade VARs and resellers as to the value that these forms of interaction offer.
Autodesk University presenters lamented the fact that although the conference costs are paid by Autodesk, the hotel costs are not.
Autodesk should consider an all-in-one system that analyzes the user's system, suggests possible solutions, and captures data that can help technical support personnel diagnose problems.

Explanations are alive in the lab.

From the Ground Up: Autodesk Shared Reference Point Tool – Now available

2013-05-14T13:11:49-07:00

The BIM Coordinator for AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit was our free technology preview that assists project team members with building and site grids. The technology preview automated the more error-prone manual steps in the coordination of site and building grids between the AutoCAD and Revit environments. The tool specified one common XYZ point and its orientation in the XY plane between the two coordinate systems. This reference point defined the relationship between the building and site grid.

Remember my blog post:

It's Alive in the Lab: BIM Coordinator for AutoCAD Civil 3D / Revit to graduate from Autodesk Labs

Check out this recent blog post:

From the Ground Up: Autodesk Shared Reference Point Tool – Now available

Originally available in Subscription Center for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 and Revit 2013, it is now also available for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014 and Revit 2014.

Completion is alive in the lab.

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**12 Distance from Pluto to the Sun

2013-05-14T01:00:00-07:00

10¹² MAGNITUDE
1,000,000,000,000 m
1 Billion Kilometers

Pluto to the Sun

5.9 Billion Kilometers

Before leaving our cosmic neighborhood, we tell the sad tale of the once-and-former planet Pluto. Composed of rock and ice, Pluto is roughly a fifth the mass of the moon. Its eccentric orbit takes it between 4.4 and 7.4 billion km from the sun, causing it to periodically come closer to the sun than Neptune.

The discovery of many objects similar to Pluto in the outer solar system led to the questioning of its status as the valid ninth planet in our solar system. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union defined what it means to be a "planet." Sadly, Pluto didn’t make the cut.

To do this day, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson claims to get letters from school children asking him to please restore Pluto's status as a planet. Old planets die hard among the young.

Previous posts on this topic include:

Future blog posts will cover:

10¹³ Voyager 2
10¹⁴ The Solar System
10¹⁵ Cat's Eye Nebula
10¹⁶ Pillars of Creation
10¹⁷ Great Orion Nebula
10¹⁸ M15 Globular Cluster
10¹⁹ Sagitarius Dwarf Galaxy
10²⁰ Trangulum Galaxy
10²¹ The Milky Way
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.

DesignScript Now Supports AutoCAD 2014 too

2013-05-13T07:35:53-07:00

Years in the making, DesignScript is our free technology preview created by Dr. Robert Aish in Farnborough and his team around the globe. The goal is to get customer feedback on exploratory design. The technology preview consists of:

a powerful scripting language for generating complex geometric models,
an IDE (interactive development environment) for editing, debugging and executing scripts,
a geometry library to generate geometry for AutoCAD,
analysis/simulation tools.

You can learn more about it on:

Download DesignScript via Autodesk Labs

This most recent update, build 0.4.90.7939, includes defect corrections based on your feedback. This update also adds support for 64-bit AutoCAD 2014 on Windows 7.

The team is looking forward to hearing from both AutoCAD 2013 and AutoCAD 2014 users alike. You can reach the team in a variety of ways.

Programmable geometry is alive in the lab.

Please Take our Project Pinocchio Survey

2013-05-13T04:00:00-07:00

Chris Andrews is one of our Product Line Managers at Autodesk. He has been busily poring over all of the feedback that has come in for Project Pinocchio. Recall that Project Pinocchio is our free technology preview where you can try your hand at human character design using just your web browser. It's actually quite fun for even the untrained animator such as myself.

Try Project Pinocchio Now

Now that you've given it a whirl, unlike the boy of wood whose nose grew when he lied, Chris would love it if you would complete a short survey. Be honest. We can handle the truth.

Complete the survey

Thanks for your participation.

Getting to the shocking truth is alive in the lab.

Dear Labs and Beta Communities -- Thank You

2013-05-11T07:58:21-07:00

In 1946 computer program defects got termed as bugs after a moth got caught in a computer relay.

Autodesk is full of product teams wanting to make their products perfect, but for several reasons, a zero defect product is not realistic. For example one person’s defect could be another's feature, a feature could be used other than designed, or a rare set of hardware or software conditions slips through the cracks.

Computer programs are combinations of algorithms plus data. In Microsoft Excel, an algorithm is expressed as a formula in a cell. Quick — what's wrong with this spreadsheet?

The value for the sum is not correct. The problem is the formula in the cell should be "=SUM(B1:B4)" instead of "=SUM(B1:B3)" — Doh! This is difficult to notice right off the bat because when you view the spreadsheet in Excel, you only see the data and not the formulas. You only see half of the program. You see the actual formula only when you navigate to the cell. It's then a simple fix of updating the formula to include all of the rows.

For computer programs. algorithms are expressed as code statements. Quick - what's wrong with this code?

The problem is that the code does not account for the case when x equals zero. This code would report 0 as negative. This is difficult to notice right off the bat because when you view the code in an editor, you only see the algorithm and not the data. You only see half of the program. Remedying this is what code debuggers are for. They allow a programmer to step through his code and look at the data values. This is where the "a ha!" moments occur. Once the unhandled value is noticed as in "Oh yeah, x can be zero." it's easy to correct the code.

The two examples I have provided are trivial. Most spreadsheets have thousands of cells. Code that makes up an application has millions of lines of code and thousands of data variables. So although applications undergo rigorous in-house testing, it sometimes difficult to envision every possible combination of values that can be encountered by pieces of code. That's why data from customers is so valuable. It reveals combinations that were not-yet-tested in the millions of possibilities. Thanks to all of our customers who help evaluate Labs technology previews and participate in our Beta programs. Customer supplied data and a debugger are a valuable combination in bug extermination.

The pursuit of perfection is alive in the lab.