AU2008: Future Tech and the next Inventor UI?

Experts, Like you - AU2008's strap line - loving the branding scheme.

Autodesk are hosting their huge, annual user event at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas this week. As with all such events, things kick off with Keynotes from the executives and a special guest. For AU2008, this meant CEO Carl Bass, CTO (that's Chief Technical Officer to you, punk) took the stage with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO. Kelley gave a very foreshorten speech based on his book, "the Ten Faces of Innovation", combined with Bass' empassioned whistlestop tour through how Autodesk products are being used to enable innovative design, meant that Jeff Kowalski took the stage to show off some of the future technology that the company is working on. Among the many things shown, a few things lept out.

For those Inventor users out there, a chunk of modelling technology was shown that 'might' be the future look and feel of Inventor - the video shown was cropped out so you can't tell what the application was, but it's pretty clear where this is headed.



What we can see here is a stripped back ui, a feature tree that's integrated into the modelling window and some telling geometry manipulation. Whether its Direct Editing, Sync Tech, the 3D design world is going ape for the ability to directly manipulate geometry - this shows this working inside an Autodesk product - an intriguing thought.



Here you can see Marking Menu (something that Alias mastered years ago) being used to extend the operations available at the cursor, on the model and ready to go when you need them.



Secondly, Kowalski offering the thought that we should not think about what we can do with the computing technology now available (which he stated is currently being vastly unused due to legacy code issues across the IT industry). This image shows a concept of having a multi-core workstation or perahps across a cloud, running multiple simulation analyses. What's displayed appears to be a chart showing results from design optimisation runs, displayed as a strength vs. weight chart, with live previews of FEA results.



The last was something I thought was very cool indeed. It showed a very sparse sketching interface, with tools that interpret your inputs to create not only explicit sketch strokes, but also to create smooth splines. That's impressive alone, but the demo went further to show how that same workflow and data could then be flipped into a 3D environment and the same sketching-style inputs could be used to generate surfaces (we don't have an image of that just yet). Looks a lot like this:


ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Final thing isn't particularly new (SolidWorks did it a while ago), and the idea of online rapid prototype order certainly isn't, but Autodesk has signed up with Z Corp (who in turn have created the Zprint service in partnership with QuickParts.com) and Stratasys (presumably using its RedEye bureau to enable print and delivery)to offer a direct link between AutoCAD and Rapid Prototyping service providers. Available from a File/Menu pick, the tools convert your 3D AutoCAD data to STL and communicate it with the chosen vendor.


This whole bike was built on Stratasys's FDM machines

Details are sketchy at the moment, but its due to be delivered with the next Bonus Pack (the goodies provided to Subscription customers). No word yet of whether or not this is going to roll out to Inventor and Revit, but its a smart move, for both Autodesk and the service providers involved.

NOTE: Autodesk went to great lengths to ensure that we all understood that what's shown here is based on technology in development and maybe not even make it to final products and that attendees shouldn't base purchasing decisions on the back of what was shown. And you should do the same.

But having watched this, it would be a damn shame if it doesn't.

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Plastic fantastic

A nifty preview of Inventor's Plastic Features Technology has been offered up on Autodesk Labs, giving users the chance to experiment with new technologies for simpler plastic product design.

Designers and engineers alike will be able to create thin-walled plastic parts as design tools simplify the addition of features like grills, bosses, snaps, and lips to a design.

The release comes as a result of Autodesk's work over the last few years to strengthen their position in plastics, what Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice president of Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions, has called "one of the fastest-growing engineering materials."

By acquiring PlassoTech last year Autodesk have added advanced product simulation technology and Moldflow injection moulding simulation technology to Inventor's armoury.

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Blue Ridge launches CFdesign v10

The image above shows simulation results from a Quick Natural Convection on LED light design shown with CFdesign v10 new user interface - nifty looking eh?

Blue Ridge Numerics (at 1pm, UK time today to be exact), released details of the latest release of its CFD application, CFDesign. The big ticket items for this rev seem to be a new user interface, greater CAD integration, better design review features and interactive void filling and external volume creation.

Interesting, UI changes aside (which look pretty good as you can see), the CAD associativity interested me. There are two schools of thought here. To built the app directly within the CAD interface, or to build it standalone and provide tight links. The two are not always as clear-cut as they seem. In all fairness, CFDesign has always been in the Standalone/integrated camp and this release sees that worked on with the ability to extract much more from the CAD data, such as model orientation, part and background, part names and material properties. Blue Ridge also talks about mapping of mouse functions. I guess that this means the user will load CAD data from their workhorse tool and the system can be set to mimic the user interaction methods of that CAD system. Also of interest is the new multi-view mode, which allows you to work with different analysis results sets and have the system synchronise the panning, zooming and rotation of the views. Other updates include interactive void filling and external volume creation meaning you don't have to do it your CAD system.

Lastly, Blue Ridge has also introduce CFD-tv which provides users with "on-demand, task-specific training in a Web 2.0 format that will appeal to multi-tasking engineers who want to add CFD to their armory." Apparently, each CFD-tv episode is a short video segment led by a CFdesign power user intended to answer commonly asked questions.

There will of course be a full, indepth review of CFDesign 10 in the next issue of DEVELOP3D - so make sure you sign up for a subscription.

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DWG editing goes Web

It seems that the battle over the DWG format is still raging - Autodesk claim it's
there's, others protest. Autodesk tries to copyright and protect it, others protest and to be honest, it's a battle I'm not really interested in. DWG was an abbrieviation long before the advent of CAD and the copy of BS308 (for those non-brits out there, this is a British Standard for Technical Drawing) proves it - job done.

Anyway, what is interesting is that SolidWorks Labs just launched an online hosted DWG editor called BluePrint Now and it looks pretty slick. With many talking about delivery of CAD over the web, then this is a good indicator of what the first batch of tools will look, feel and smell like. Its built using the Microsoft's SilverLight technology and the UI is nifty, if a little clunky (as all over the web, CAD apps have been to date). But does it work? I'm going to spend some more time playing with it, but first impressions are that it has some basic tools, lines, circles, arc etc. You can output the drawings as PDF, as DWG again (useful if you've made an edit) from AutoCAD R14, right through to the latest rev - or you can email a link to share it with someone.

SolidWorks DWG data - works fine - as you would expect.

I did try loading some data, both from Inventor as AutoCAD DWGs and from SolidWorks. The app has a 1Mb file limit, which is going to be pretty quickly hit if you've got any data of any size. It loaded the SolidWorks DWGs fine, displayed them after a few hiccups but you could actually pan and zoom the drawing, add some basic detail. Same for the Inventor generated data.

Inventor DWG file, uploaded to Blueprint Now - seems to work just fine

But this isn't the point of Labs projects. these things are put out there to show the vendor's future thoughts - whether they actually reach fruition and become a shipping product remains to be seen. Oh and I just realised two things - Yes, I tried this using Safari and Yes, it works on OSX.

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STL for Revit

I found the recent addition to the Autodesk Labs web-site pretty interesting. There's a new download for an STL exporter for Revit. According to the web-site you can "Create 3D Prints of your Revit 2009 models. As architects and engineers start their digital designs earlier and keep them digital for longer, they want a way to still physically interact with their designs. With the economical availability of 3D printers this has become possible."

This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the Architectural world is going nuts-out-crazy for 3D printing and other rapid prototyping technology that designers and engineers have been using for decades (in some cases). Also, its interesting that this comes out for Revit, when the Inventor STL output tools are a little sketchy. It doesn't allow you to export individual parts from an assembly (each has to be created separately), and it only supports the heavyweight ASCII version of STL, rather than the more compact binary version.

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