It is Alive in the Lab

On #AutodeskLabs Sabbatical: Be Back on May 12

The vacation policy for Autodesk employees in the United States is 2 weeks per year. Unlike other American companies, employees don't earn additional vacation as they work more years with the company. What we get instead is a 6-week sabbatical... Read more →

Autodesk Research Wins Innovative Application Award for AI Deployed Applications

Director of Research, George Fitzmaurice, shared some good news with us. He was pleased to announce that a paper by Autodesk Research members was accepted and selected to receive the Innovative Application Award for Deployed Artificial Intelligence Applications at this... Read more →

Easily Try 3 New InfraWorks 360 Technology Previews

"Let me tell you about the new world order Not the kind to make you run for the border It's a new religion wrapped in a revolution With a prudent solution for your mental pollution" — Todd Rundgren, "No World... Read more →

Bloomberg: The Design and Architecture of the New Bay Bridge

Check out this video. Autodesk's own Brian Mathews, our VP of Reality Capture and CTO for the Information Modeling and Platform Products Group, was featured on Bloomberg TV. He discusses the design and architecture of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay... Read more →

Autodesk Labs: What kind of feedback are we looking for?

It's no surprise that Autodesk Labs is located on the Autodesk Feedback Community portal. Autodesk Labs is all about feedback. Sometimes people ask me what kind of feedback do we want. They have downloaded a utility or have tried one... Read more →

Types of Technology Previews and Betas on Autodesk Feedback Community

Though they share a common website (Autodesk Feedback Community), in a previous blog post I highlighted the differences between technology previews from Autodesk Labs and betas from the Autodesk Beta program. Autodesk Labs and Autodesk Betas: Similar But Different That... Read more →

Project Carbon (a.k.a. Vectorize It) Now Available on Autodesk Labs

That tool is one big monkey wrench. From the same team that brought you Project Shapeshifter, Project Carbon is a technology preview from the Autodesk Research.IL group. Vectorize It is an iPad application that converts images to vector drawings and... Read more →

I'd like to buy the world a 3D print and live in perfect harmony...

Bill O'Connor is one of our corporate strategists. He and I do a lot of work together. Via this blog, I have shared a few things that Bill has done — one of which involved the Future of Storytelling conference.... Read more →

YouTube: Visualizing The Bloomberg Businessweek Design Conference 2014

Autodesk Labs is part of the Corporate Strategy & Engagement (CSE) team at Autodesk. The mission of the CSE team is formulate, prototype, and cultivate ideas, technologies, and relationships that shape Autodesk's future. We distill the big ideas and conversations... Read more →

Student Access to Mesh Enabler for Inventor

The Mesh Enabler enables Inventor users to work with imported Mesh data. As shipped, Inventor 2012 can import mesh data from Catia files. In addition to Catia files, Inventor 2013 can import mesh data from STL files and from JT... Read more →

Updated Project Khan available for download via Autodesk Labs

Happy St. Patrick’s Day — March 17, 2014. Yesterday some people celebrated with green beer. We celebrated with little green men comprised of fewer mesh faces thanks to a Project Khan update. Recall that Project Khan for Maya gives you... Read more →

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the AutoCAD Leprechauns

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Watch Heidi O'Hewett, Kate O'Morrical, Shaan O'Hurley, Lynn O'Allen, and Kean O'Walmsley show us how the River Dance is done. Watch the video. Dancing is alive in the lab. Read more →

Evan Atherton: My Trip to the Geek Mother Ship - a tour of ILM

"It's Pi day, Pi day, gotta get down on Pi day, party on the weekend" — Rebecca Black Software Engineer of Applied Innovation, Evan Atherton, is one of our team members. I have featured Evan's exploits in other blog posts.... Read more →

Check Out Autodesk Instant for iOS and Android

Today in North America I am proud to share that Autodesk launched Autodesk Instant, a group messaging app for the workplace on iOS and Android. Autodesk Instant makes it easy for coworkers to instantly communicate no matter where they are... Read more →

Reminder: List of #AutodeskLabs Technology Preview End Dates

All good things must come to an end. I blog about this every once in a while. Most technology previews are like milk cartons. They have expiration dates on them. When a technology preview expires, the technology preview no longer... Read more →

Innovation Catches the Eye of Even Children

See Dick. See Dick run. Run, Dick, run. The latest issue of the Autodesk Labs newsletter features some work that the Office of the CTO is doing around what we refer to as The Innovation Genome Project. Basically one of... Read more →

Our robot is now learning to paint

Dr. Woohoo and Scott Photo by Norbert Jeske In a previous blog post, I mentioned that our robot is learning to draw. Now Bishop (a.k.a. our robot) is learning to paint. Turbulence: Robot + Human = Watercolor Painting from Dr.... Read more →

Autodesk and Upcoming Human-Computer Interaction conference

Autodesk's own Senior Principal Research Scientist, Dr. Tovi Grossman, has been serving as the Technical Program Co-Chair for the 2014 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The CHI conference is the premier international research conference on human-computer... Read more →

Design Night on April 3: Found in space

Design Night, open to the general public, is an events program at the Autodesk Gallery. At each event, guests explore a different theme — such as biomimicry, light, or robotics — that challenges the conventionally narrow definition of design. The... Read more →

Autodesk Labs and Autodesk Betas: Similar But Different

Enlarge. Now that Autodesk Labs and Autodesk Beta are both hosted on the Autodesk Feedback Community platform, I thought it would be a good idea to reiterate some of that information that I shared at our first annual North American... Read more →

LEGOs in the Gallery

Oh no, not another LEGO dinosaur selfie. Three of the exhibits in the Autodesk Gallery at One Market feature LEGO building blocks: The LEGO Dinosaur Autodesk Gallery: 3D Builder App for LEGO MINDSTORMS Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10-2... Read more →

March issue of Autodesk Labs newsletter now available

There's yet 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... Read more →

Autodesk Labs: I love it when feedback works

I love it when this feedback thing works. Check out this thread from the forum on the Autodesk Feedback Community: On Feb 13, 2014, at 3:00 am, Johan Cantry wrote: In a 3D view I used a section box to... Read more →

The Rock Boat XIV was once again music to my ears

Happy Mardi Gras! For the past three years my wife, Sheryl, and I took a cruise on The Rock Boat with my college roommate, Tim, and his wife, Marie. Like last year, our twenty-something-year-old daughters also attended so they could... Read more →

Project Tally Graduates from Autodesk Labs

Tally™, by KieranTimberlake and PE INTERNATIONAL, is a plug-in application for Revit that allows users to quantify the environmental impact of building materials for whole building analysis as well as comparative analyses of design options. While working on a Revit... Read more →

30 minutes of scheduled downtime for Autodesk Labs on March 4

Autodesk Labs and Autodesk Beta are both hosted on the Autodesk Feedback Community platform. The Autodesk Feedback Community platform will be undergoing maintenance and will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes. Here is the information about the downtime: Several times... Read more →