Category Autodesk Labs

Autodesk at TED 2011 this Week

For those interested in cutting edge ideas, technology, and speakers, the TED conference has been the source of a brain stimulating smorgasbord to feast since its founding. The focus of TED is “T”echnology, “E”ducation, and “D”esign. As you may be aware Autodesk is passionate about all three of the focus points in TED and perhaps best known for the big “D” in Design.

Lab Coat Please…

As of February 1st I have moved to the Autodesk Labs group within Autodesk as a Technology Evangelist. It is a full circle for me as I developed the first Autodesk Labs site and posted several projects back in 2006, now I finally get to work in the group. I will be working with the teams supporting and evangelizing the Labs hosted technologies to current and future customers.

January’s Plugin of the Month live on Autodesk Labs: DrawOrder By Layer for AutoCAD DOBYLAY

Kean Walmsley & Scott Sheppard announced a free plugin most working with layers in AutoCAD could really use and that is to DrawOrder By Layer.

To explain the plugin simply it places the layers in their top to bottom order based on their layer. This is perfect for easily setting what object to plot or display on top of other layers.

Download the plugin, install per readme on AutoCAD 2007 and later releases and based applications, 32/64bit, and use the command DOBYLAY.

Autodesk Labs Project Snap Will Make Life Easier for DWG files

This is a perfect post for a Monday morning. Each day the number of DWG, RVT, and IAM files grows perhaps by hundreds of thousand, perhaps millions. The effort to locate a specific file of yours becomes more challenging as the number grows within your computer or network. Autodesk Labs Project Snap helps you instantly find your files without the need to implement some large document management system.

Convert Point Clouds into Real Geometry in AutoCAD 2011

Shape Extraction, not to be confused with “Shape Shifting” which is a completely different thing, but perhaps Autodesk Labs is also working on that for the future.

There is a new Autodesk Labs Technology Preview released just one week after the mind blowing project Photofly was released where you could use photographs to generate a point cloud. This weeks Autodesk Labs release is the Point Cloud Shape Extraction for AutoCAD Plug-in for AutoCAD 2011.

The Point Cloud Shape Extraction Plug-in is a point cloud shape extraction solution which allows you to import, load, and extract shape and geometry information from point cloud data in AutoCAD 2011 and a few other AutoCAD 2011 based products. This plug-in allows you to take a point cloud and extract primitive geometry like flat planes, cylinders,l and more from the point clouds points. You can also generate cross section through the point cloud and have the result in splines or plines and then use those to create derivative geometry such as a 2D drawing or perhaps a 3D model.

AutoCAD DWG Rendering Farm in the Cloud with Project Neon

Project Neon is now available via Autodesk Labs as a free technology preview. With Project Neon you can render mu7ltiplke DWG files simultaneously. http://bit.ly/aYXFgL

It is perfect for designers, architects, engineers who have AutoCAD 2010/2011 DWG files in 3D set with materials and lighting requiring rendering. Rendering is one of the most time and system intensive tasks and by using the cloud your machine is freed of that workload and the high-quality, photo-realistic renderings are delivered directly to your own secure online storage. The actual renderings are completed on Autodesk’s own data center and render farm.