It is Alive in the Lab

Got a design challenge? Ask Nature, Thank a Genius!

 

RMI 2009

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.

Asknature.org

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.

It's All About The Commute

Last weekend we were in the Bay Area looking for a place to live. The goal is to optimize the commute to the Autodesk office at One Market in San Francisco. There is a passenger ferry that goes from Alameda to San Francisco.

Alameda Ferry Terminal

The Ferry Building is just across the street from the Autodesk office. The departure and return schedules look very promising.

The site has ample parking and a nice structure.

The ramp entrance to the ferry has a sign that lets you know how many minutes until the next ferry.

The ferry ride is about 20 minutes as San Francisco is not far away.

We happened to be there while they were dredging to deepen the bay for large ships such as the one in the background.

Although there was nothing walking distance from this location, there may be something that is bicycling distance. As Autodesk works on company initiatives to be environmentally friendly and makes solutions available such as the Sustainable Materials Assistant and Green Building Studio, we as employees try to do our part in our own ways.

Considering the environment is alive in the lab.

Updated Sustainable Materials Assistant for Inventor Now Available

Oh, mercy mercy me
Oh, things ain't what they used to be
Where did all the blue sky go?
Poison is the wind that blows
From the north, east, south, and sea
Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas
Fish full of mercury
Radiation in the ground and in the sky
Animals and birds who live nearby are dying
Oh, mercy mercy me
   "Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)", Marvin Gaye, What's Going On/Let's Get It On, 1980.

Software Development Manager, Feiqi Zhang, provided me with an update of the Sustainable Materials Assistant. I was happy to put it on the Autodesk Labs site:

Free Download of Sustainable Materials Assistant

This updated version now supports Inventor 2010. To continue support for Inventor 2009, the ZIP file contains both installers. I'd like to welcome the Inventor 2010 users to the party! Now 2009 and 2010 users can provide problem reports, insights, and success stories on their efforts to improve the sustainability of their designs with the assistance of this technology preview. Please share your feedback with labs.iv.sustainable@autodesk.com. Oh, mercy mercy me.

Keeping our technology previews current to keep the feedback coming is alive in the lab.

Request for Survey Participation: Graduate School of Design at Harvard University

Dear owner, architect or energy consultant,

You are invited to participate in an online survey on the use of building energy simulation during design, construction and operation. A special emphasis of the survey is to better understand who on the design team owns and gets access to the energy model of a building, what role the model currently plays during building design and construction, and how the use of the model could be extended to the overall lifetime of a building.

The survey is being carried out by the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in collaboration with the Office for Sustainability. The survey is funded through the Harvard Real Estate Academic Initiative. The goal is to develop recommendations of how owners of large real state should interact with their building design teams to get maximum benefit from their building performance analysis contracts. The hope is that your input will help develop recommendations that are acceptable, fair, and profitable to all members of the design team.

To participate in the survey simply go to:

A Survey on the Use of Building Energy Models during Design, Construction and Operation.

Thank you for your participation! Please forward the survey link to your professional networks. We will be keeping the survey open until August 15th.

Autodesk Earth Day

Autodesk is celebrating Earth Day in a virtual way with our own internal site called Autodesk Earth Day.

You can find out more about our green efforts at:

Sustainable Design

In keeping with that spirit, you can celebrate by trying:

3D/2D ShareNow for AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, and Design Review instead of printing to paper

or

the Sustainable Materials Assistant for Inventor to determine your model's carbon footprint.

Celebrating Earth Day is alive in the lab.

Scottsdale Arabian Library Wins Smart Environment Award

When my son was in 6th grade, he played in a recreational basketball league. Our outdoor practices were on a court near the Scottsdale Arabian Library. Having just relocated to Arizona, I thought the name was unusual. Billed as the west's most western town, each of Scottsdale's libraries is named after a breed of horse. Recently our hometown library was one of three 2008 IIDA/Metropolis Smart Environments Award winners.

Architects Jim Richärd and Kelly Bauer began work in 2003 on the Arabian Library and balanced the local librarians' desire to create an inviting experience with the community’s desire for a building that responded to the desert setting. The Scottsdale City Council had an interest in completing a LEED-rated project. We are always happy when AutoCAD and other Autodesk products help in creating a sustainable environment.

Recognizing Autodesk's contribution to my own backyard is alive in the lab.

Shrinkwrap Add-in most popular in Belgian Inventor Poll

On the heels of my posting about what's available on the Autodesk Labs site for Autodesk Inventor users, my friend, Stefaan Boel, shared the results of a recent poll he conducted on the Belgian Inventor Wizard site. Stefaan posed the question:

What is important for you?

• Advanced Simulation
• Feature Recognition
• iMap
• Plastic Features
• Shrinkwrap
• 2D to 3D tool

The results were:

The Shrinkwrap Add-in for Inventor is the most popular. This is great feedback. Thanks for taking the poll and sharing the results.

What's on labs for the manufacturing industry?

A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey emailed us:

Do you have a recent presentation of the latest stuff available on Labs for the manufacturing industry?

Inventor Product Manager, Sam Antos, provided the answer with a PowerPoint presentation. I have taken Sam's slides and fashioned them into a blog article.

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iMap for Inventor

• Skeletal iMap views to identify and modify complete assembly structure, including sub-assemblies
• Constraint iMap views to interactively investigate, create, and manipulate key relationships and constraints
• Navigate your Digital Prototypes!

// More iMap info

New User Interface

• Modern, ribbon-based UI for increased productivity, ease of use, and learnability
• Intuitive, task-based grouping of commands
• Customizable Quick Access Toolbar
• Document switching thumbnails
• Progressively detailed Tooltips

// More UI info

Advanced Simulation

• Key Plassotech capabilities that augment the Autodesk Digital Prototyping solution
• Part and Assemblies FEA and modal frequency analysis
• Parametric simulations and multi-criteria optimization
• Quickly set up simulation models that provide usable results

// More Advanced Simulation info

Shrinkwrap Add-in for Inventor

• Easily provide a single solid part as a substitute for a complex assembly
• IP protection for suppliers by quickly removing all internal components from an assembly
• Substantially less memory usage compared to the fully detailed assembly

// More Shrinkwrap info

Inventor Plastic Features

• Dedicated, purpose-built Inventor environment for designing complex plastic parts
• Automated creation of common technical plastic features
• Innovative Progressive Shelling technology for thin-walled plastic parts

// More Plastic Features info

ShareNow Add-in for Inventor

• One click publishing from Inventor to easily share designs with non-Inventor users
• Browser-based viewing without additional software
• Real-time and/or at-your-convenience collaboration including markup

// More ShareNow info

Also available on Autodesk Labs

• Enhanced JT Translator
• AliasStudio Direct Reader
• Feature Recognition
• 2D to 3D Tool
• Sustainable Materials Assistant
• English and French Inventor LT 2009



• XVL Translator (for Inventor 2008)
• Native Translators (for Inventor 2008)
• Frame Generator Customization (for Inventor 2008)

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Thanks Sam!

Enumerating the benefits of modeling software technologies for the manufacturing industry is alive in the lab.

Autodesk: Sustainability Report

Our CEO, Carl Bass, was proud to announce the launch of Autodesk’s very first Sustainability Report. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of more than 100 individuals across the company, the report showcases our commitment to sustainability. In reading this report, we hope it will be clear why sustainability is central to Autodesk’s vision of being a great, good, and important company.

Autodesk Sustainability Report

Along with the report, Carl was also pleased to announce that for the first time, Autodesk has been listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Dow Jones Sustainability Index

Inclusion in the index is an acknowledgment of our sustainability efforts. The Dow Jones assesses more than 600 applications from North America companies alone, and chooses just 20 percent of the leading sustainability-driven companies to be listed.

Here's Comes the Sun...

In April we released the Sustainable Materials Assistant for Autodesk Inventor. Autodesk is interested in helping the world be more sustainable. AUGI's own Mike Perry alerted me to the following article:

Arizona State University Takes Advantage of Sunny Days

As an ASU alumnus and parent who pays tuition for an ASU student, I was proud to see what my Sun Devils had done.

Check it out.