Bay Bridge model at the Autodesk Gallery
Autodesk serves a variety of industries:
- AEC — Architecture, Engineering, and Construction
- MFG — Manufacturing
- ENI — Engineering, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure
- M&E — Media and Entertainment (including art)
The Autodesk Gallery at One Market in San Francisco celebrates design — the process of taking a great idea and turning it into a reality. With more than 20 different exhibits regularly on display that showcase the innovative work of Autodesk customers, the gallery illustrates the role technology plays in great design and engineering. I am one of about 80 gallery ambassadors. As I have mentioned before, we chose the job title "ambassador" instead of "docent," because the correct way to address an ambassador is "your excellency" yet this never happens.
In December, I mentioned that the gallery was getting some new exhibits — ones that had returned from Paris and/or Las Vegas. Many It's Alive in the Lab readers have not been to the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco. If you are an Autodesk customer in one of the industries we serve or not a customer at all, there is definitely something in the gallery for you to see. In a series of four blog articles, I thought would highlight gallery exhibits that are related to a specific industry. This third post is for the ENI industry. Here are the exhibits:
Reclaiming Public Space | San Francisco is leading the way in developing parklets, reclaimed parking spaces, that are adorned with colorful chairs and tables, and other inviting accoutrements of human interaction, like garden beds and grassy slopes. City planners use software like Autodesk InfraWorks to get a sense of the overall landscape and where green space would be welcome and advantageous. |
3D printing future cities | Digital models are increasingly used by city planners and real estate developers to design and understand future projects in a real-world context. The 3D city model, printed at the Autodesk Pier 9 office, uses Autodesk InfraWorks for the collection of buildings where many of the individual 3D building models were created from photographs using Autodesk ReCap. |
Bay Bridge Seismic Safety Project model | The eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge is the longest self-anchored suspension bridge in the world. Autodesk 3DS Max visualization software was used to gain legislative approval, bring contractors on board, and inform the public - often changing their behavior dramatically. |
Autodesk Transportation Simulator | The Presidio Parkway is a historic drive that connects the Presidio with the Golden Gate Bridge. Autodesk visualization software helps people get a visceral experience of the finished roadway so they understand the benefits of the completed project and are more tolerant to inconveniences, such as road closures, along the way. |
Imagining a City of Evolutionarily Optimized Buildings | Instead of the traditional design/analyze/update approach, what would happen if a designer simply provided constraints and allowed infinite computing resources in the cloud generate thousands of possibilities and evaluated them? Using the Project Vasari, Revit Architecture, and Autodesk Green Building Studio application programming interfaces (APIs), IDEA Studio residents developed a plug-in to automatically generate, analyze, visualize, and rank various design configuration. |
So whether you're an ENI aficionado or not, come check out exhibits, old and new, at the Autodesk Gallery at One Market in San Francisco. There is plenty to see. This blog article highlighted only the ENI-oriented ones. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays and Fridays from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. There is a guided tour on Wednesdays at 12:30 pm. Visit us.
Exhibitionism is alive in the lab.