It is Alive in the Lab

Project Chronicle Now Available for Download

Project Chronicle is a free technology preview from Autodesk Research that makes it extremely convenient and easy for users to capture, share, and learn from software workflows. Project Chronicle consists of a recording utility to capture recordings and a website... Read more →

3D Printed Speaker Enclosure Made At The Office

photo: finished product The folks at Instructables tell us that Halloween is their busiest time of the year. People like to make things as part of Halloween costumes. Speaking of making things, we see that the line between designing and... Read more →

Autodesk Gallery: Reclaiming Public Space Exhibit

Our Gallery at One Market just set up twelve new exhibits that come under the heading of Design in the Public Interest. These exhibits feature products, places, and processes where design is used for common good instead of monetary profit.... Read more →

Distinguished Research Scientist Andrew Hessel

He's gonna make it after all. Singularity University (SU) is a learning institution in Silicon Valley whose aim is to "assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies... Read more →

Extended time for Augmented Reality for Showcase Now Available

Augmented Reality allows the ability to overlay semantically in context information (graphics, text, video, sound) on to a live video feed of the real-world in real-time. The Augmented Reality for Showcase team was thrilled with the feedback they received on... Read more →

Simulation Overview via a Comparison Chart

Peter Marchese, a LEED Green Associate and Senior Consultant at Microdesk, posed the following question: Hi Scott, had a question for you regarding some of the Labs tools that do CFD. I was wondering if there was anything that compared... Read more →

Newsweek ranks Autodesk as one of the world's greenest companies

image source: Newsweek I am thrilled that Newsweek ranked Autodesk as one of the world's greenest companies. For its fourth annual Green Rankings, Newsweek examined the environmental performance of the 500 biggest public companies in America and the 500 biggest... Read more →

River Analysis: Asked and Answered

The River Analysis Extension for AutoCAD Civil 3D and AutoCAD Map 3D is a sophisticated river modeling software package that supports HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System). The technology preview makes it easy to compute water surface profiles for... Read more →

Book Review: Warfighting: The U.S. Marine Corps Book of Strategy

Although the internet is ablaze with tales of horses and bayonets, I am not in the Marine Corps or any other branch of service to our country, so why in the heck would I read Warfighting: The U.S. Marine Corps... Read more →

Autodesk Gallery: Laboratory to Learn Exhibit

The roof design promotes air circulation. Our Gallery at One Market just set up twelve new exhibits that come under the heading of Design in the Public Interest. These exhibits feature products, places, and processes where design is used for... Read more →

Southwest Airlines: In-flight entertainment

In all of my life I have only fallen asleep on a flight one time. Normally I work on my laptop. On Southwest Airlines flights that have wireless service, I use it browse the web and process email. On a... Read more →

Updated DesignScript Now Available

Senior Principal Engineer, Luke Church, is our guest blogger for today. He provided this update for DesignScript that works with 64-bit versions of AutoCAD 2013. A week ago, we made the DesignScript Tech Preview available on Autodesk Labs. http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/designscript The... Read more →

October issue of Innovation Edge now available

There's another issue of Innovation Edge, the Autodesk Labs newsletter, available for your perusal. This brief publication highlights technologies and utilities available on Autodesk Labs. Something people don't always know is that technology previews are free. All we ask is... Read more →

Upcoming LUMA Institute SF Workshop

The LUMA Institute is an educational institution dedicated to good design. Next week LUMA will have another SF LUMA workshop, this time teaming up with Mark Hatch and the gang over at TechShop. The workshop will cover human-centered design --... Read more →

Autodesk Gallery: See Better to Learn Better Exhibit

Who's that with purple eye glasses? Our Gallery at One Market just set up twelve new exhibits that come under the heading of Design in the Public Interest. These exhibits feature products, places, and processes where design is used for... Read more →

Book Review: Serial Innovators by Claudio Feser

As part of our pilot of the getAbstract service, I have opted in to get a monthly email where the service selects a book for me and emails me a PDF of its 5-page summary. Last month I received Serial... Read more →

Why the AutoCAD UX Team is Really a Lean Startup: Interviews by Erin Bradner

The POV Dispatch is our internal newsletter. Of late I have been posting articles from our latest issue. Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month by Frederic Brooks Reviewed by Scott Sheppard Good Design Requires Conceptual Integrity by Jon Pittman Power to... Read more →

Yahoo! Alerts: I had no idea

If you have a Yahoo alert to see if an article from It's Alive in the Lab gets mentioned somewhere, you would be surprised to get this. Apparently increased security is alive in the lab. Read more →

Raspberry Pi: Poly want a cracker?

Recall that our CTO got his hands on some Raspberry Pi computers and held an internal Autodesk contest to supply them to software developers. Internal Raspberry Pi Contest: And the winners are... One of the recipients was Software Architect for... Read more →

Power to the People: Building Technology as if Humans Mattered by Erin Bradner

Erin Bradner As I mentioned earlier in the week, the POV Dispatch is our Autodesk internal newsletter, published monthly, where we discuss the big ideas that are important to us and our customers. It is published by our Corporate Strategy... Read more →

Scheduled Down Time for Autodesk Freewheel in October

This is my once-a-month copy/paste blog posting to let you know when Autodesk Freewheel will be unavailable. Months ago Project Freewheel graduated from Autodesk Labs. Project Freewheel users are now using Autodesk Freewheel - the production version. To check it... Read more →

DesignScript Available for Download via Autodesk Labs

In an earlier posting I asked: Are you expert enough for an early version of DesignScript? Well, the team has continued DesignScript's development since then, and now it's time for everyone to answer that question for themselves. The technology preview... Read more →

Good Design Requires Conceptual Integrity by Jon Pittman

The POV Dispatch is our Autodesk internal newsletter, published monthly, where we discuss the big ideas that are important to us and our customers. It is published by our Corporate Strategy & Engagement (CS&E) team of which Autodesk Labs is... Read more →

Magic Finger: The Future of Touch Interaction

You may like the touch input offered by your tablet or mobile device, but imagine if your entire surrounding environment was touch sensitive. This would allow any physical object, including your own body, to serve as a peripheral input surface... Read more →

Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month by Frederic Brooks

When the Mythical Man-Month came out in 1975, it opened a lot of eyes in the world of software engineering. Is computer programming an art or a science? The book gets it title from an initial programming premise that if... Read more →

Design like you've never seen it

We have two placards that flank our company logo in the open space between our elevators on the second floor of our office at One Market Street in San Francisco. The top of each placard reads: As I pass them... Read more →

Updated Project Simulus Now Available on Autodesk Labs

Software Quality Assurance Manager, John Agcoili, let me know that the Project Simulus team had an update to their technology preview on Autodesk Labs. Recall that Project Simulus offers geometry modification capabilities through embedding Autodesk Fusion along with a simplification... Read more →

free ADN Plugin for October, LocatorLib for Maya, Now Available on Autodesk Labs

OK all you would-be programmers out there — the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) Plug-in of the Month program was developed to show you just how easy it is to program one of our design application programs. Each month you can... Read more →

My experience with oDesk: Part 2

This is a follow up to my post: oDesk: Is contract employment the new full time employment? As part of oDesk's process, because I inquired about my project's relegation to private status, a trouble ticket was opened in my name.... Read more →

Project Galileo Online Graduates from Autodesk Labs

When Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler was a technology preview on Autodesk Labs, it was known as Project Galileo. A second technology preview, Project Galileo Online, allowed users of Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler to collaborate on and share infrastructure-scale models with their stakeholders.... Read more →