It is Alive in the Lab

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

AutoCAD 2010 Documentation Available Online

There's nothing like curling up with a good book. what if the book were replaced by a web site?

In May of 2007 I asked:

If we had Autodesk documentation available as a a Wiki, would you trust it?

We're not there yet, but it's a start. Senior User Assistance Manager, Diane Serda, has made the AutoCAD 2010 documentation available on-line.

http://www.autodesk.com/autocad-help

The difference between a Wiki and a traditional web site is who authors it. In our case, this documentation was produced by the AutoCAD Technical Publications team. One day users like you may be able to update and add to it. Since it's been about two years, I will ask again:

If we had AutoCAD documentation available as a a Wiki, would you trust it?

Please let us know what you think at thelabs@autodesk.com. Thanks.

Wondering if technology documentation and social networking will ever intersect is alive in the lab.

TiddlyWiki Drawing Plugin based on Project Draw

A Project Draw diagram embedded in a Wiki.

TiddlyWiki is a wiki-modeled software as a service application that people can use as a personal notebook. Project Draw is our technology preview of a software as a service application that people can use to create simple diagrams. Autodesk Labs Software Engineer, David Falck, found this:

TiddlyWiki Drawing Plugin based on Project Draw

We are excited to see Project Draw mashed up this way. You can get more info at:

Software as She's Developed

Thanks to Michael Mahemoff for this informative video.

Celebrating the interoperability of software as a service solutions is alive in the lab.

Autodesk MapGuide Public Wiki

MapGuide has a public Wiki:

MapGuide Best Practices Wiki

On May 16, 2007 I asked the question:

Wikipedia: Appropriate for Autodesk documentation?

I guess the answer is yes.

Software documentation: As easy as 1, 2, 3...

It was Father's Day. My wife, Sheryl, decided to make some brownies. Here was the set of instructions on the box:

Notice anything unusual? Unless you read carefully, perhaps not?

Look at the first requirement in the "FOR 20 BROWNIES You Will Need" section:

• 8" or 9" Square Pan or 11" x 7" Rectangular Pan

Now Look at Step 1:

1. HEAT oven to 325° F (metal or glass pan). Grease (or use cooking spray) bottom of pan.

Sheryl preheated the oven. She selected an 8" square glass pan. She greased the pan. She proceeded to Step 2.

2. STIR amounts of brownie mix, water, oil, and eggs listed at left (FOR 20 BROWNIES section) until well blended. Spread in pan.

She did this. Now she had a greased 8" square glass pan full of batter. On to step 3.

3. BAKE as described below at left...

When she looked at the lower left of the box, she saw a footnote associated with baking time:

• * 8" square glass pan not recommended.

Why wasn't this part of step 1? It's a little late to put this in step 3. She alreday had a greased sqaure glass pan full of batter - she wasn't about to switch then. Do you have examples of instructions are not correct? Hopefully not any Autodesk documentation. This is exactly the kind of mistake that could be corrected with web-based instructions on a Wiki. The community could catch and correct these types of issues. On the other hand, who is going to fire up her browser before firing up her oven? Probably very few of us. What if the oven had a built-in web browser?

Venting is alive in the lab.

How can I mashup thee? Let me count the ways...

It was about a year ago that I blogged about the importance of mashups: It's all about the pipes... A frequently asked question is How do I add Project Draw or Project Freewheel to my Wiki? Autodesk Labs Software Architect, Ben Cochran, recently outlined the mashup capabilities of Autodesk Labs offerings.

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Project Freewheel and Project Draw have several different ways to be mashed up into other site.

1. Using an iFrame is one way the Project Freewheel interactive viewer can be added to a 3rd party site. In this case, the other site can also pass in CSS and JS to change the look and functionality of Project Freewheel. Some examples of this are:

   • http://www.actionair.co.uk/drawing.html
   • http://gis.co.weber.ut.us/gis/pop_up_plats_freewheel.php
   • http://www.timberdesign.com/contemporary/northmoor/northmoorframe.htm

   Using an iFrame has been very popular.

2. A 3rd party can also use the Project Freewheel services directly. Project Freewheel is actually 3 things: a JavaScript based web interactive viewer, a DWF rendering service, and a real-time collaboration service. The Project Freewheel interactive viewer is actually a sample application demonstrating how someone could use the two other services. These 3rd parties could use Project Freewheel just to render DWF files.

   As an example, we have CADoogle (http://www.cadoogle.com/). My favorite is the bookmarklet. Go to http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com/gallery.aspx and add the bookmarklet to your bookmarks. Then do a Google search for filetype:dwf robot. The search will return DWF files of robots. When you click on the bookmarklet, all of the DWF links will be changed into calls to the Project Freewheel rendering service. The hyperlinks are replaced by thumbnail images.

3. We have also been working with OAN (Open Architecture Network) http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/. In this case we built an ObjectARX app that uploads design data directly from AutoCAD to OAN. OAN uses Project Freewheel to render and collaborate about the designs.

4. In addition to being an interactive content creation tool. Project Draw can also serve up an image. After creating a diagram, Project Draw can provide a snippet of HTML that can be added to a Wiki (or any site). The HTML uses Project Draw to serve up an image of the diagram. The image is also a hyperlink that when clicked, takes you to Project Draw to edit the diagram. In this way, it adds diagramming to a Wiki.

5. An API that allows 3rd parties to retrieve diagrams on Project Draw was recently added. This API lets 3rd parties save data locally. 3rd parties get an API key by contacting us at labs.draw@autodesk.com.

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Thanks Ben.

Wiki + Project Draw = need for {html} tags

I have written a few times about Wikis. There's even a category on this blog that collects all of the Wiki-related posts. A Wiki is basically a web site with multiple authors.

At Autodesk Labs we use the Confluence enterprise Wiki.Wikis like this one use their own Wiki syntax which is similar but less complicated than HTML. If you want to use actual HTML on a Wiki, you have to denote it with {html} tags. Halo Project Leader, David Falck, provided me with an example:

{html}<a href='http://draw.labs.autodesk.com/ADDraw/draw.html?_a=0verHdw6FiVsQqjkHN%2B6Gg%3D%3D&_o=VajBfVrVqYA%3D&_t=1211216958218' target='_blank'><IMG src='http://draw.labs.autodesk.com/ADDraw/FileAndLogoProcessor?REQUEST_TYPE=LOAD_IMAGE&_a=0verHdw6FiVsQqjkHN%2B6Gg%3D%3D&_o=VajBfVrVqYA%3D&_t=1211216958218' border='0'></a>{html}

This HTML has two parts:

1. A hyperlink to the original Project Draw diagram. The diagram can be edited using Project Draw by following this link.
2. A dynamic image that is generated by Project Draw. This image file cannot be edited nor does it need to be. When the digram is updated using Project Draw, the image is automatically updated. How cool is that?

So when using displaying your diagrams in your Wikis, don't forget your {html} tags.

Between the Lines: AutoCAD LispWiki

In May of last year I asked Wikipedia: Appropriate for Autodesk documentation? Shaan Hurley has a post today that for at least the LISP aspect of AutoCAD, the answer is yes:

AutoCAD LispWiki

Whoo hoo.

A Yahoo Alert for Obsolete Information?

I have Yahoo alerts turned on for DWF. I want to be on top of it every time a divorced white female does something newsworthy. :-) So i just got the following alert.

So I visited this link and saw that it mentions DWF Composer. We haven't called Autodesk Design Review by its old DWF Composer name for years now. I am not sure why I got this alert? I had hoped the site was a Wiki wherein I would have updated the information, but alas, it was not.

BLAUGI: How to use a Wiki (as a collaboration tool) in plain English

Mike Perry has an interesting article on the AUGI blog:

How to use a Wiki (as a collaboration tool) in plain English

Check it out.