Collaborative by Design - Autodesk University 2014

Autodesk’s annual conference was held last December amid the distractions of Las Vegas. Attracting over 10,000 attendees, the event underscored the company’s drive into consumer sectors as well as BIM, reports Adam P. Spring.

Autodesk University 2014 was housed at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and was an event where decisions based around market repositioning started to take shape. It was also an event based on collaboration and a shrinking of the divide between industries once seen as separate from one another. For instance, entertainment driven solutions are now playing a key role in infrastructure and asset management software. 

Keynote

Intuitive and organic design was at the heart of the AU keynote. Jeff Kowalski, chief technology officer at Autodesk, discussed a world where otherwise inanimate objects were given a life cycle. Smart computing was seen to be at the heart of a movement, which is driven by a refined approach to multidimensional design. For instance, it is now viable to create object or building designs that evolve in real time via intelligent computer simulation. The open source Spark initiative, which was used to launch the Ember 3D printer at AU 2014, is also aimed at making such designs into real-world objects. Spark is well positioned to revolutionise the 3D printing market; especially when parts of Kowalski’s keynote were fed into real-world workflows. His sentiments also complemented those of the speaker that followed him, Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk.

Bass is passionate about the industry he works in. His portion of the keynote demonstrated his ability to identify and react to technology-driven trends as well. For example, he was quick to put things into perspective: “I think, not since the industrial revolution has there been such a broad and radical rethinking of the way that we make things.” More than a bold statement, he supported it by examples from a world now driven by rich data – information that better captures the complexity of the real world.

It was clear that Bass and his team were giving future designers the ability to run projects through intelligent systems. Services and solutions designed to evolve plans or models - as opposed to simply developing them in a detached and linear fashion. This approach was a theme throughout the keynote and followed a line of thinking called synthetic biology, which explores the ability for machines to evolve along the same lines as the natural world. In terms of evolution, design is an iterative process that takes place gradually over a long period of time. It is a popular idea used in the engineering department of UC Berkeley, the part of San Francisco where Bass resides, and combines with other observations about the natural world. For Autodesk, computational and machine learning are used to speed up the design process. Recent acquisitions like the British company Within, which has observed the porous structure of bone to make lighter and stronger products, is an example of synthetic biology in action. Project Cyborg is gaining momentum within the Autodesk community!

Next Wave of Progress

Robert Shear, senior director of the Reality Solutions Group, paid reference to Project Cyborg in his presentation on reality capture. Shear outlined how the foundations of digital design had been defined by products like AutoCAD, and were now transitioning to point cloud driven workflows. As-built and as-designed information were no longer detached from reality but driven by it. Attendees only needed to look to Revit and BIM-driven applications for examples.

Project Cyborg offers the next wave of progress for the reality-to-design-based solutions outlined by Shear. As a flexible cloud-based platform, it is already giving users the ability to shape solutions around their needs. Project Cyborg can simulate real-world scenarios at all scales, be it particle sized or building sized in nature.

Reality Computing

The Reality Solutions Group oversaw the development of products like ReCap, Photo and Project Memento. It has covered a lot of ground in a short period. Its foundations were formed through a series of intelligent acquisitions by Autodesk. These have seen RealViz, AliceLabs and Allpoint Systems come together as the driving force behind products like ReCap. Silviu Stoian of the Beck Group gave a carefully framed presentation on ReCap versus Leica Geosystems Cyclone. Stoian showed that ReCap was intuitive to use and had robust cloud registration. Results showed an impressive achievement for a product less than three years old.

Accessible 3D Imaging

The power of accessible 3D imaging was emphasised in the media and entertainment sessions. ReCap Photo and 123D Catch continue to bring point clouds and solid surface mesh data to a wide variety of new users. They present solutions designed to be intuitive by putting 3D imaging into the hands of anyone with a stills camera and internet connection.

One example was the workflow outlined by Craig Barr, technical marketing specialist in the media and entertainment division of Autodesk. Barr combined game engines like Unity with Maya, Mudbox and Project Memento. These are sculptor-friendly solutions and breath life into otherwise inanimate scenes. Their baseline data consisted of point clouds and meshes of real-world examples (created via Photo or 123D Catch). For example, photographs taken with a Canon camera provided the template for modelling the head of a real person.

BIM City

When it comes to building information modelling, direct solutions like BIM Shift were considered alongside thought-provoking examples like CityScope from MIT Media Labs. There was even an entire tour of BIM related products on display at AU 2014. This included tablet and live response based systems.

Presented by James Ira Winder, CityScope is the brainchild of the Changing Places group at MIT. It uses an effective yet simple solution based on Lego blocks to map out and continually rethink how cityscapes are analysed. The example Winder gave was live activity on a map of Twitter feeds in the Mandalay Bay Hotel where his presentation took place. Jose Sanchez, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, also re-evaluated BIM at AU 2014 by using videogame based examples. In ‘from gaming to making’, Sanchez used SimCity and Lemmings to make an interesting point about perspective: gaming environments have always relied on maps and plans to give them structure. It was hard to argue with him, especially when the Unity game engine was a Silver Sponsor of AU 2014, as well as an exhibitor at the event.

Exhibitors

The AU 2014 exhibitor area showcased a service and solution based culture geared toward all aspects of infrastructure and asset management. Platinum sponsors like Dell, for instance, showed off their Precision Workstations. Dell systems are not only designed to be powerful – they seek to offer a complete solution to users. Andy Rhodes, executive director of workstations at Dell, was quick to point out that customer needs were at the heart of everything the Texas-based company did. Included in this were prices that reflected value for money, as well as a responsive customer support structure.

It was Topcon however who took centre stage in the exhibitor area at AU 2014. Developments like the GLS 2000 laser scanner, as well as the BIM fuelled LN-100 (a robotic total station for construction setting out), were indicative of why the close working partnership with Autodesk has developed. Both companies have products that serve up an all-in-one package for architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) markets. For example, solutions like Autodesk ReCap are designed to be easy to use and save the user time. As a point cloud-based solution, it also feeds directly into GLS scanning workflows. BIM, infrastructure and asset management are three things that could make the Autodesk and Topcon partnership a force to be reckoned with in 2015.

Era of Connection

Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of the IPG Group, encouraged the crowd to stay connected in the closing keynote. His presentation was indicative of a shift toward what is best described as GeoICT. Information and communication technologies (ICT), such as smartphones and tablets, have developed to a point where everyone now carries a powerful computer in their pocket. One that not only receives but transmits various information between a connected network of users. Autodesk first started to realise this in 2009, when an iOS version of Sketchbook Pro became the fastest selling product in the company’s history. 

Summary

As a Fortune 500 company, Autodesk continues to consider all aspects of 3D design related information flows. Included are relationships with infrastructure and asset management. Announcements like students being able to use its products for free on a worldwide basis, as well as the REAL event scheduled for February 2015, show a busy year ahead for Autodesk, now a company that is extending beyond its traditional user base. It is becoming a company that caters to consumer, prosumer and professional interests alike.

This article was published in Geomatics World March/April 2015