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
This past weekend I [Brian Mathews] attended the excellent RMI 2009 Conference. RMI is the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is a non-profit think-tank formed in 1982 concerned with promoting an economically favorable path towards sustainable design and energy efficiency. As founder Amory Lovins puts it: "It is cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel, and your investment returns are guaranteed."
Autodesk's CEO, Carl Bass, was on an all-star panel with Amory Lovins, and several other luminaries I'll blog about later.
One panelist was Janine Benyus, a founder of the Biomimicry Institute (third from the right in the picture). What is Biomimicry? it is the idea that many of the design challenges you face every day have already been solved by 3.8 Billion years of evolution. Janine's great idea is that while biologists have tons of information about organisms, that information was organized by organism rather than by function. She started the non-proffit Ask Nature to organize the biology world's data in a form more useful to designers, engineers, and architects: by function for industry.
Need a non-toxic way to color the outside of your home? Need a way to deal with rainwater? How do I keep pipes from clogging? What's the most lightweight shape for a car that is still strong? All these questions can be answered by gaining inspiration from organisms who have field tested the approach for 3.8 billion years. So if you have a design challenge, why not Ask Nature? And if you find a solution, be sure to thank a Genius (a living organism who gave you the inspiration).
After the panel, I got to spend 90 minutes talking to Janine and hearing the most incredible examples of how vairous organisms have solved industrial problems. One client of theirs had industrial pipes that were eventually clogging due to scale that formed inside. She helped them learn how seashells form, and more importantly how organisms stop their shells from growing once the desired shape is realized. The chemistry in pipes is almost the same, and now there is a natural protein that keeps the pipes clear.
Every time I meet Janine I come away energized and inspired. Check out her TED videos too.
Today is day 1 of my sabbatical. As I mentioned on Thursday, there will some guest authors on this blog during my absence. As a way of introduction, I thought I would tell you who they are.
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Brian Mathews |
Vice President, Autodesk Labs | I have known Brian since July of 1990. I was employee 13 at Ithaca Software after it relocated to Alameda. I had no prior association with the company when it was at Cornell University. As "the new guy," I knew the least about computer graphics and specifically our product HOOPS (Hierarchical Object Oriented Picture System). Brian came on as employee 14. I thought to myself "Great - I will no longer be the new guy." To my dismay, Brian had worked with HOOPS during his years at Cornell. Though no longer the newest employee, I was still the dumbest guy in the room. Many years later our daughter, Stephanie, babysat all of the guests' children at a hotel in Napa for Brian and Lauren's wedding. |
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Ben Cochran |
Software Architect, Autodesk Labs | Ben Cochran is the reason I am an Autodesk employee today. While working as a software development manager for Océ Reprographic Technologies on Océ Plan Center, our solution processed DWF files. Ben was our technical contact back to Autodesk regarding DWF files. As I found developing software for a hardware company less fun than developing software for a software company, I asked Ben if Autodesk had any openings. He told me that Brian needed another DWF Technical Evangelist. I subsequently interviewed and got the job. Brian was working for me when he invented DWF. Does anyone remember WHIP!? I was an evangelist for a year before moving on to project manager and then back to software development mangaer. |
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Douglas Look |
Senior Strategic Designer, Autodesk Content Network | Doug Look almost needs no introduction. You've seen him on many of our multitouch videos and other Labs items. When I was a software developer for Ithaca Software in Alameda, I wrote graphics drivers for the DOS and HP Unix platforms. As a platform-independent graphics solution, HOOPS had drivers for everything conceivable, e.g. DOS, Windows, AIX, VAX/VMS, HP-UX, X11, PEX, Apple, Sony, Sun, etc. There were more drivers to be written than we had developers. As such we contracted some of the driver development out. A programmer named Anh Look previously worked for Ithaca Software when it was still in Ithaca, New York with its close association to Cornell University. I worked with Anh on a 3D driver for a Matrox graphics card. In those days, DOS had no standard - a different driver was needed for every device. Years later when Doug returned to Autodesk after getting another degree from the Institute of Design in Chicago, he knew about me from my work with his wife. |
These are 3 of the smartest peopel I know. Autodesk has many like them. I am looking forward to their posts. Gazing out on the horizon of pending journalistic variety is alive in the lab.
I have alluded to boot camp as part of entering military service in the United States. There's also boot camp for the Macintosh environment that lets you run Windows applications on Apple hardware. Well I got a message from Director of Worldwide Education Marketing, Alissa Perlstein. There's another boot camp.
This week in San Francisco, we're hosting a number of young people in the Gallery and on the 2nd floor. No, these aren’t our newest employees, they are college students from around the US here for a week of technical training. Every year, the Education team trains students to become advocates for our technology on campus – the Student Expert program. On this Monday, the Gallery became the training ground (or boot camp) for this preparation before these students go back to school.
Our boot camp roster includes:
Boot camp is designed to:
Watching others pick themselves up by their boot straps (metaphorically) is alive in the lab.
My wife and I are in the Bay Area today shopping for a place to live. We are staying with friends. They have a nice view.
It's a little bit hazy today, but that place looks like a city you could leave your heart in.
Tomorrow is our 28th wedding anniversary. Sheryl and I dated through high school and college and got married 3 months after graduation. John Schmier took this picture a while back. Those really are my fingers on the keyboard. We were at an offsite meeting, and he had just gotten a new camera. He wanted to check out its MACRO capabilities. I thought it was appropriate to share today.
Last week I read Crash Proof by Peter D, Schiff. Having already shared an excerpt from the book about gold, I thought I would mention silver.
The United States dollar was first defined by the Mint Act of 1792 as 371.25 grains if fine silver which was exactly the weight of the Spanish mill dollar. In 1792, the Spanish mill dollar was the most common coin in colonial America. It was so popular that it was allowed to circulate in America until 1857 - 70 years after the signing of the constitution. [Crash Proof, page 53]
Well if gold had been the standard of money since the beginning of civilization, how did silver enter the monetary picture?
The reason silver was used in addition to gold was because it was easier to transport. Silver coins represented smaller amounts of money and could be carried around on one's person, whereas an amount of gold equal to the value of a silver dime (one tenth of a dollar) would be so small that you couldn't see it in your hand. [Crash Proof, page 222]
...Just another interesting snippet of the book I thought I would share.
Made up my mind to make a new start,
Going to california with an aching in my heart.
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself its not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.
"Going to California", Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin,Led Zeppelin IV, 1971.
My dream of being a San Francisco One Market Street employee instead of a remote employee got one step closer. Assuming our buyers get their financing, the appraisal comes in near the selling price, and all of the punch list items are fixed by the walk-through, we have sold our Scottsdale, Arizona home. We have converted our living room / dining room area into a packing center.
We will rent a condo until our son goes to Marine boot camp in October. In the mean time, we will search for a place in the Bay Area.
Yesterday we got an email from Brian Mathews, VP of Autodesk Labs. With his permission, I thought I would share it with you.
From: Brian Mathews
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:35 AM
To: Autodesk Labs Dev
Subject: Man on the Moon: being an engineer
With all the media buzz about the 40 year anniversary of putting a man on the moon yesterday, a lot of attention was put on the brave astronauts that risked (or lost) their lives.
One thing that didn't get much coverage was the engineers it took to put those astronauts on the moon. While the astronauts were brave, from one perspective you could argue that their job was made possible by the process and procedures created by engineers behind the scenes. When Apollo 13 got into trouble, it wasn’t the astronauts that saved the situation: they didn’t have the knowledge. Engineers made the difference.
The average person has a hard time understanding how incredible the task was from an engineering perspective and the talent required. Consider the available electronics and programming languages of the time. There was no Mathmatica to do engineering calculations, no Google to find spec sheets or wiring diagrams, and no AutoCAD to aid in manufacture. The CPUs of the day used a lot of power for very little performance. Running a finite element analysis of the reaction chamber dynamics was impossible. Beyond the significant intellectual aspects of the science were the very practical skills of managing a large and complex team, building an amazingly complex craft, and then testing the system somehow on the ground.
I congratulate the many engineers who put a man on the moon 40 years ago. I congratulate you all for your accomplishments today as engineers and your dedication to apply the intellectual discoveries of science to practical reality for the betterment of mankind. We can make a difference.
Brian P. Mathews
Vice President, Autodesk Labs
I have an autographed copy of Buzz Aldrin's book The Last Man on the Moon. I read it years ago. I recall that the lunar lander touched down on the surface of the moon with only seconds of fuel left. Imagine the horror if the fuel had been spent minutes earlier. Now do the calculations to make sure that doesn't happen using a slide rule. We owe the engineers of that era a great deal.
Celebrating mankind's achievements as truly a team effort is alive in the lab.
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