For those that love to participate in providing early feedback that helps shape the future of Autodesk products and technologies, there are several great options to get involved. You don’t have to be on the bleeding edge or the top Autodesk product user in the universe as all skill and experience levels are encouraged and needed.
Both Autodesk Labs and Autodesk Feedback Community are now managed under the Autodesk Office of the CTO. Both of these valuable future product and technological incubators are vital to Autodesk and of course benefit our customers.
Autodesk Labs
Autodesk Labs is where several Autodesk teams post research and future technologies to get feedback on them. The technology previews are not products yet, but are early concepts. The goal is to find what technology previews are useful or need improvement from those that people have little interest for. Several current Autodesk products like Autodesk Inventor Fusion, Autodesk Revit LT, and Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler have successfully graduated from Autodesk Labs to be come real Autodesk products.
Go to: http://labs.autodesk.com/
Autodesk Feedback Community
Autodesk Feedback community is the center of the Autodesk product universe for future versions. This is where you can sign up to be a part of the early discussions in product futures, early alpha and beta versions of the Autodesk software you use or wish to use. The goal is to get early user feedback on the new releases and of course send in bug reports to improve the products before the new releases are released to the general public.
Go to: http://beta.autodesk.com/
Autodesk User Research & Product Usability
Autodesk User Research is where you sign up to participate in in studies on how Autodesk products and technologies are used. Things like workflow where the product team or product design may want to know how a conceptual or current feature is discovered and used are studied remote, at events, or in person visits.
Get involved and help shape future Autodesk products and technologies today.
Cheers,
Shaan
In this diagram:
http://labs.blogs.com/its_alive_in_the_lab/2013/01/venn-and-the-art-of-autodesk-communities.html
the items in green are under the auspices of the Office of the CTO.
Scott,
The one comment on the diagram is that not all Labs and Feedback (Beta) community members are customers of Autodesk as shown. Many do end up becoming one after participating in projects.
Cheers,
Shaan
I have gotten involved and been very specific with what Autodesk needs to do with HSMWorks and the massive problems HSMWorks has.
Sadly, no one from Autodesk wants to deal with the kind of specifics I discuss and that the CADCAM press doesn’t ask:
http://tinyurl.com/bzqa989
Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn
Not all comments, criticism, or feedback can be personally responded to by executives. If you want an official response and one can be provided given SEC and other rules, then contact Autodesk Public Relations http://www.autodesk.com/pressroom
This is much different feedback than I discussed in the post related to Autodesk Beta, Labs, and User Research.
The CAM questions I have asked Carl Bass have nothing to with the SEC.
My CAM questions are HSMWorks specific and center around the inability of HSMWorks to:
Keep constant track of a stock model.
Make proper use of the information a solid model contains to create intelligent toolpaths without the constant need to chain or create boundaries.
Easily do solid cut part simulation over multiple setups. Almost all machined parts require multiple setups to make them, yet HSMWorks and others can’t easily solid cut part simulate this real world situation.
My questions are relevant to 100 percent of CAM users and have often been raised as issues on the HSMWorks Forum by HSMWorks users.
Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn
Jon,
Some discussions by an executive of a public traded company on future planning can be an issue as I understand (quiet periods etc.)
Here is Autodesk CEO Carl Bass bringing up HSMWorks and spending the majority of a very recent interview (a few weeks ago) discussing HSMWorks:
http://engineervsdesigner.com/61-autodesk-carl-bass/
Carl Bass decided to do so with two very nice people who are very good with CAD but know next to nothing about CAM. Unfortunately, this is true for the majority of the CADCAM press. Because of the lack of interest and lack of knowledge on the CADCAM press’s part the right questions never get asked and an understanding of what the real problems with CAM don’t get conveyed to those who could use the knowledge of why the basics in CADCAM are so badly broken.
Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn
Jon,
I would suggest contacting Autodesk Public Relations.