Try AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit without installing them

What if your design application was in the cloud?

Autodesk Labs team members Eddy Kuo and Frederic Loranger have been hard at work creating an environment where you can run trial versions of AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit on remote servers. At this point in the technology preview, we are looking for feedback on using our applications in this fashion. You can take one of our applications for a spin at:

Project Twitch: Autodesk Labs Application Trials Technology Preview

To try our design applications, you will need to download and install a small client application that is much smaller than our design applications. It is used to access our server. So although Project Twitch is not totally install-free, it does allow you to try AutoCAD 2010, Inventor 2010, and Revit Architecture 2010 without downloading these applications or requesting a DVD. You will need an Autodesk Labs Community login (a.k.a. Autodesk Single Sign-on also used for subscription and other communities) to participate in the technology preview.

The technology preview is not intended for production use. As such, you cannot upload your own files or save your work. Instead you fire up an application remotely, load a sample file, and view/modify it. Based on the technology involved, you need to be within 1,000 miles of the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in the technology preview - any farther than that and there would be too much internet latency for a pleasurable experience. (Hey I relocated just in time, but actually my old house was 725 miles from the data center so it worked there too.) You can let us know how it worked for you at labs.trials@autodesk.com.

I feel twitchy, oh so twitchy... Like a canary in a coal mine, evaluating software as a service is alive in the lab.