It is Alive in the Lab

Back to Work on Monday

Ducks in a row outside our bedroom window

Today is the last day of my sabbatical. I had better get all of my non-work "ducks in a row" as it is back to work on Monday.

-- Scott Sheppard, Autodesk Labs

What You Can Do With Project Cooper

Using Project Cooper, Autodesk employees have created a host of precise drawings and plans. Every so often, we take a minute to sketch out other, more whimsical subjects. Take a look at what two team members shared with us today. Fun is alive and well in the Labs.

"Woman” by Zushun Zhan

"Sneaker” by Kevin Ke

Cloud Services You Need

[This is Ben Cochran again writing for Scott while he is on Sabbatical.]

For years now, languages, tools and platforms have been making the creation of web-based services easier and more robust. Some of these are IIS, Apache, Tomcat, Java, .NET, WCF, PHP, Ruby on Rails and the list goes on and on and … 

Until recently deploying and hosting these services had been difficult and expensive. This is because any service of value needs to be dependable.  Otherwise, who would use it? I personally have come to expect web services to be highly available. For example, I love on-line banking, but if my bank had flaky on-line services, I would change banks without thinking twice. Thankfully, that is not the case for my bank.

Cloud based services are generally a collection of connected dependent systems that include storage, databases, security, auditing, monitoring and more. The whole system is only as reliable as the weakest link. Traditionally, making these services reliable required lots and lots of hardware. Each server needs to have redundant power supplies, redundant disks, redundant network, redundant load balancers and redundant storage. Then the data-center that houses all this equipment needs to be redundant. Does this sound a little redundant?  With all this equipment, hardware failure is inevitable, requiring teams of IT people to keep everything running smoothly.

The result is that many companies think twice about building scalable reliable services. Companies that do have the needed IT infrastructure are often times not flexible enough to try out new ideas. They require a retooling to support different and out of the box services.  All of this makes the cost of exploring new web based services expensive and risky, for many too risky to try the next crazy idea.

This is changing! With cloud hosting services from companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing the backend systems on an as-needed bases the initial cost is a fraction of what it was. For example, servers, load balancers, network, reliable backed up storage and databases are rented by the hour or gigabyte. Instead of buying truckloads of expensive redundant hardware in hopes that a new cloud service idea is successful, companies can spend almost nothing to try out new ideas. If the new idea takes off, the backend systems scales up for the demand. Companies need only pay for resources that are actually used.

Labs had been experimenting with new and interesting cloud services like:
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/dragonfly/
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/draw/
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/freewheel/
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/showroom/
and more recently http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/trials/

What new cloud services are useful to you?  What are your crazy ideas?

- Ben Cochran

Random Bridge Ramblings

Autodesk Labs Software Developer, Gyorgy Ordody, submitted this.

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As we now know in the Bay Area, it’s not easy to maintain and build bridges. We have the Bay Bridge (or James "Sunny Jim" Rolph Bridge) trouble going on as this is being written (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/30/BAU91ACT27.DTL&tsp=1), while the new eastern span is being built. In fact, the Autodesk Gallery (http://usa.autodesk.com/company/autodesk-gallery) has a model of the new span, as you could see in a previous post (http://labs.blogs.com/photos/autodesk_gallery_at_one_m/bay_bridge_jpg.html). For more about the new eastern span, you can check out http://baybridge360.org/ while you can see a panoramic view of the actual Bay Bridge here: http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/bridges/sf-oak-bay.htm.

The Golden Gate Bridge is also continuously maintained, painted and the lane configuration are changed several times a day to accommodate the traffic. In fact there are plans to implement a “zipper-like” solution for that problem (http://www.goldengatebridge.org/projects/mmb_aug08.php).

Other bridges are also being earthquake retrofitted (http://www.mtc.ca.gov/news/transactions/ta1205-0106/rsr.htm, were widened (http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/bridges/sm-hayward.htm) added to (http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/bridges/ben-mar.htm) replaced (http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/bridges/carquinez.htm).

To learn about these bridges, check out the Bay Area Toll Authority page: http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/bridges/index.htm and the homepage of the Golden Gate Bridge: http://goldengatebridge.org/ (which is under different jurisdiction from the previous ones.)

To build bridges is not easy. To start to warm up to the idea, you can just play (highly addictive) games. The grandfather of all bridge building games is Bridge Builder. You can learn more about this game/download it from a fan page, check out: http://www.bridgebuilder-game.com/ or http://www.stopgeek.com/featured-download-bridge-building-game.html  You can also buy it its (3D) sequels at the source: http://www.chroniclogic.com/

The popularity and addictivity might be due to the (mostly) realistic physics, and the ability to test the bridges with actual traffic on them. In fact, there is even a wiki page about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_Builder, where you can learn that among many others, the equally addictive and physics based Word of Goo (http://www.2dboy.com/games.php) and Armadillo Run (http://www.armadillorun.com/). And while you’re sitting in traffic, waiting for the Bay Bridge-related traffic jams to clear, you can play a Bridge Builder clone on your phone! (Actually, please don’t do that.)

After playing these games, only a few years of college and practice separates you from designing real bridges! And if you do so, maybe you’ll use Civil 3D. And maybe there will be an add-on to Civil 3D that will help to model those bridges. So, check back to the labs webpage at http://labs.autodesk.com to see if there are any new tools in the coming weeks.

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Thanks Gyorgy.

Project Cooper: You Name It!

[Amanda Collins writing for Scott Sheppard while he is on sabbatical]

Have you tried Project Cooper with Win 7, Vista or even XP? Be sure to email labs.cooper@autodesk.com with any comments you might have.

What do you think it should be called? Help us give Project Cooper a permanent name! Take this short, multiple-choice survey. Should take less than 2 minutes, and we appreciate your input.

SurveyMonkey survey link is live at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=sDjZfumZmi14Uu4E2e3VWA_3d_3d

MFG Community Wiki Help Beta

[Ben Cochran here, while Scott Sheppard is on sabbatical]

On Monday, the Manufacturing (MFG) Wiki Help went live. The MFG Wiki Helps enable community collaboration by enhancing and extending Autodesk Help content. You can share and edit videos, add instructions, add tips, ratings, tags, comments, and much more.

Users can use their profile information from autodesk.com and login using single sign-on. If you don’t have an autodesk.com profile, now is a good time to register. All autodesk.com users will have “contribute” access by default.

The first MFG Wiki Help project is Autodesk Inventor Fusion Technology Preview 2. After trying out Fusion, check out the MFG Wiki Help.

Personally, I love Wiki’s. Traditional documentation becomes stale fast. Regardless of how much effort is put into traditional documentation it can always be improved and added to, it is never done. New samples and workflows always enhance existing documentation. Check it out!

-Ben Cochran, Autodesk Labs

More on Project Cooper

[Amanda Collins writing for Scott Sheppard while he is on sabbatical]

One of the divisions at Autodesk is named Platform Solutions & Emerging Business (PSEB). Autodesk Labs is part of the “emerging” area. Another Emerging Business team in PSEB, led by Product Manager Lisa Crounse, has been working on technology to make it easier for the average person to create polished drawings. Not technical drawings like those produced from AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT, but drawings that are to scale, and accurate enough to hand off to an engineer or architect or city planning office.

Get a jump-start with sample
drawings and symbols in Project Cooper. 

Today Lisa’s team released a technology preview of Project Cooper, an easy-to-use drawing application that lets you create quick designs without sacrificing quality. Now contractors and ordinary people like me, who don’t necessarily “speak CAD”, can create accurate, detailed plans and layouts to scale. It’s a godsend to those of us with a great idea (like that dream kitchen) but lack the ability to pencil it out. With the sample drawings and library of content included in Project Cooper, I don’t even have to start from scratch. I can take a sample drawing and use that as a first step toward building the customized layout I have in mind.

Project Cooper is great for architects and engineers too, because they can include original sketches in their technical drawing sets. Architects tell us that omission errors resulting from misunderstood conversations are one of the key challenges to getting projects in on time and on budget. Project Cooper can help in those situations. Better communication; less rework.

Use Project Cooper to get ideas on paper,
then save the drawing as a DWG and
share it with your architect or designer.

You can sketch a host of different things with this software. So far, my best effort has been a porch-to-sidewalk ramp, but this is from a person who has trouble drawing a simple stick figure, so it’s quite an accomplishment! Hats off to the Project Cooper team for taking rough sketches to a higher level. And thanks for developing an application that can help an average person like me get what’s in my “mind’s eye” … down on paper for the rest of the world to see.

Project Cooper is available at no charge. Try it! And watch for exciting news to come.

Building for tomorrow is alive in the Labs today.
Amanda Collins, Senior Marketing Manager, Autodesk Labs

Inventor Fusion Update

[Ben Cochran here, while Scott Sheppard is on sabbatical]

I wanted to let you know the Autodesk® Inventor® Fusion Technology Preview has been updated. It now includes Inventor Fusion change manager functionality. I am excited about Fusion because the preview enables direct manipulation of 3D models in Inventor. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Project Cooper evaluated on CNET

Rafe Needleman from CNET evaluates Project Cooper on Win7 with multi-touch. If you remember a few years ago, multi-touch on the desktop was obscure and unsupported. Now you can see how multi-touch is entering the desktop environment. Check it out!

 

Looking for programs to install with Windows 7? How about Autodesk Project Cooper?

[Amanda Collins writing for Scott Sheppard while he is on sabbatical]

As you probably know, Microsoft launched Windows 7 on Thursday with a big event in New York City. Autodesk announced its support for Windows 7 here.

If you have a chance to read through the press release, you’ll see that Project Cooper, now on Autodesk Labs and on Autodesk.com, was part of Autodesk’s announcement. Project Cooper was demo’d at the Win 7 launch. Rafe Needleman, at CNET, covered Project Cooper last night: http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10380845-12.html

Project Cooper is a simple, hassle-free software that lets you create polished drawings, layouts, and plans. We hope you’ll install the Project Cooper tech preview with your other Win 7 applications. Take it for a test-drive and let us know what you think. Gathering feedback is alive in the Labs.