From Shop Floor to Software : Autodesk

Old DWG, New BIM?

Leslie_Gordon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:01:00 GMT

CAD at the Venetian Resort

Autodesk is again hosting its annual Autodesk University (AU) event at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. It's still pretty early, so things haven't yet geared up. The developer must have sympathy for those of us who travel a distance to get here and thus are still reeling from jetlag -- the keynote speech from CEO Carl Bass is not slated to start until around
10 am! Most similar venues have attendees getting up around 7 am.

Anyway, I absolutely love the Venetian Resort, especially the fake "Venice" that comprises a series of fancy shops and resturants, a real canal full of real water, and gondoliers dressed in the traditional red and white striped shirts. Some of my collegues hate Las Vegas because it is so sleazy. I don't gamble but I love the neon lights and the glitter. But you can sense a heart of darkness: I've been told that there are shops where desperate gamblers can pawn their cars, recreational vehicles, and even home mortgages.

Old DWG, New BIM

At the registration area is a large board that attendees can use to post their idea on how to get a more sustainable

world. Ideas: Share our vehicles, Go local; Turn off the lights; Build digitally; Use solar wind and energy. And -- my favorite -- "Old .DWG, new BIM." BIM is a big buzz in architectural circles lately. It stands for Building Information Modeling and is said to be a term that was coined by Autodesk to mean "3D, object-oriented, AEC-specific CAD." Of course, DWG is the traditional drawing format. Can you teach an old DWG new tricks, er, that is to be a BIM?

Ideas on Innovation

Tom Kelly, co-founder of design company IDEO spoke at this morning's keynote session. He says, design is not superficial, it is strategic. It creates value. It can make the difference between love and hate. If you wanna' innovate, you have to design. Now you have to out-innovate the rest of the world. It is like the Red Queen effect from Alice in Wonderland. We are running, but we are not getting anywhere. So you have to run twice as fast. What if we are first, or perhaps the best? IDEO designs: From the Apple mouse to helping the Red Cross redesign the experience of donating blood.

What works in innovation and what doesn't? His book: The Ten Faces of Innovation. Learn from other people's failures. His mistake: The human brain can handle only 7 bits of information at a time. So don't talk about the 10 top faces.... talk about the 2:

Designs used to be driven by specifications and technical challenges. The Anthropologist would go to lakes and streams and come and tell us about it. This is a source of innovation. The act of discover is in seeing with new eyes. In the process of developing expertise, most designers start filtering out new experiences. Vuga de -- the opposite of deja vu. Start to ask questions differently. For example, Oral B wanted to innovate around kid's toothbrushes. IDEO started with anthropology -- every toothbrush in the world had the implicit assumption that kids' toothbrushes should be a small version of their parents. Kids actually hold toothbrushes differently and needed big, squishy toothbrushes. Had best selling toothbrush in the world for 18 months until others caught up.

Next is the Experience Architect. He thinks about the total experience the customer has. Good book -- The Experience Economy.

For example making a birthday cake:

Commodity way -- Mom goes out and buys stuff to make a birthday cake. Cheap, but a lot of work and a lot of risk.

Product way -- Betty Crocker makes the batter. More expensive, but saves a lot of time.

Service level -- Go to a bakery and buy a ready-made cake that squirts the kid's name on it. No risk. Expensive

Chuckie Cheeses -- Terrible in many ways except you can be a hero for your kids that day if you pay big bucks for a Chuckie Cheese party. Parents are willing to pay almost anything. No risk.

How to get an idea: Find an opportunity hidden in plain sight. For instance, the Westin Hotel and its Heavenly Bed. No one else had thought to design around the businessmen who flies in late, goes to bed and goes to work early (not around the spa and pool crowd).

Use simplicity as a tool. The simpler as the better. Aspire to the "wet-nap interface" of moist towelettes. Just tear open and use.

New trends to check out -- "algorithimic design," and biomimicry

Live from Autodesk World Press Day 2008, San Francisco

Leslie_Gordon — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:19:00 GMT

Day one brought announcements about new capabilities in Autodesk's 2009 releases. But all that later.

CEO Carl Bass spoke on trends on CAD. An interesting example, he says, is the bar for engineering and design has been raised by the gorgeous graphics of entertainment industries. Another trend has an increasingly global market ruthlessly commodizing just about everything. And speaking of the global economy, says Bass, about 40 trillion dollars will be spent in global infrastructure in the next few years. China alone is going to build 50 new airports in the next ten years.

How are projects of the scope as the recent replacement and rebuilding of the Bay Bridge managed?

The world's largest self-supporting suspension bridge, the Bay Bridge was kept open while this happened. Drive-through animations were created to show motorists detours. On Labor day 2007, the bridge was closed for three days to replace a huge section. Infrommercial on TV showed animations to motorists. A lot of free press was had because simulations were so compelling. Bay area freeways during that time were almost empty, proving that good communication can affect motorist behavior

Bridge simulations created about 10 years ago created a digital model of the bridge in 3D Studion Max to generate rendered images. The 3D model provides a repository of information.The software incorporates time into the 3D model to communicate complex construction techniques as defined by multiple project schedules. Three major contractors were building in a constricted space and 3D and 4D models let team members work out complex design issues.

More to come...

Do more design online, free

Leslie_Gordon — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:16:00 GMT

Web-based programs, downloadable software, and virtual worlds are now letting us do more and more, and all without shelling out a dime. For example, Web-based software such as Autodesk's Project Draw lets you create vector drawings for floor plans, electronic-cirtuit diagrams, user interface mockups, and the like. An intuitive interface makes using the drawing program a breeze. Just drag rectangles, ovals, and the like onto the workspace and use handles to strech and pull shapes. You can save your work in several editable formats on your server or the developer's. Export your diagrams as PDFs, JPGs, PNGs, and SVGs. At the bottom of this post is an example of a simple drawing I created in the software, which I saved on my local machine as a JPG.

SolidWorks Labs has a link to the developer's island on Second Life. I am still stuck on dial-up at home (yes, yikes!) and our company firewall won't let us interact with Second Life at work, so I can't yet explore this as much as I would like. I am ready though. My avatar's name is Pez Balut, and I am just about to purchase land so I can have a presence in the World. Are any of you active users of Second Life? If so, what do you think? Just email me or reply to this blog.

A nifty software package, available for free download is IBM Lotus Symphony. It's based on the Open Document Format (ODF) standard, so you're not locked into upgrades, proprietary file formats, and software licensing agreements. Included in the package are programs to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. I haven't tried the ones for presentations and spreadsheets, but the word processor is great. It has a clean, elegant, and easy-to-use UI. The software looks like Word, but better, and it works in a similar fashion.

CAD in Russia

Leslie_Gordon — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:23:00 GMT

As one of the CAD/CAM/CAE editors on MACHINE DESIGN, I travel a lot to software tradeshows and user conferences. Some of the functions include journalists from all over the world. I met a journalist from Russia at a recent event who kindly sent me a copy of "CAD/CAM/CAE Observer," published in that country. Interestingly, small portions of the magazine are in English – just enough to be tantalizing and make you wonder what the rest of the ad or article says. It's interesting to see what jumps out as a product or person immediately recognizable to those interested in CAD.

For example, there is an image of and article by Andrew Anagnost, Senior Director of Product Management at Autodesk titled "Digital prototyping trumps PLM." There is also an ad that says, "PTC releases Pro/Toolmaker 8.1," along with the company's recognizable logo. In an editorial written in somewhat garbled English, the author says he can't see any threat to PLM systems from Dassault or Siemens PLM. He also theorizes that SAP will create its own CAD platform by acquiring "market players" such as CoCreate or PTC. Interestingly, one of the advertisers is TechniCom Inc. Raymond Kurland President of the firm and Editor of TechniCom's eWeekly, is a fellow journalist I often see at the events. He even had a review of Solid Edge in the Russian magazine.