Autodesk University 2014 Day 1

I am privileged enough to be at AU again. Today kicked off with a class before the keynote, where I designed a curtain wall, using complex surface geometry created in Fusion and then pushed out to Revit, I really enjoyed this.

After the class we headed to the Mandalay Bay events centre for the Keynote speech. This year seemed a bit low key in comparison to last year, but the products launched were mind blowing!

I was going to write up my 6 pages of notes, but I figured that the marketing folk at Autodesk have done a better job than me, so please check out the press release from Autodesk here: http://news.autodesk.com/press-release/architecture-engineering-construction-civil-infrastructure-and-natural-resources/aut-7

After the Keynote, we lunch where I met a Rob, one of Autodesk’s UI developers, we had a very interesting chat about User Interfaces, and the complexities and challenges around user interfaces and who to interview/ask/survey about design tools. Existing users are often not willing to change, and new users are always interested in fresh new workflows, so the challenge is to make both sets of people happy!

For the post lunch session, I sat through a class on embedding the A360 viewer into webpages, BUT not in the traditional sense, the idea was to use the viewer to create a Virtual Reality 3D viewer, something like the Occulus rift, but using Google Cardboard. This was pretty fascinating, and I am now the proud owner of a Google Cardboard, so I have some great examples to work with.

Straight after the 3D VR session (above) I had a very interesting meeting with one of the Autodesk Product managers about the future direction of some of the data management tools, unfortunately, I can’t write about what was discussed here! But let’s just say that the future of PDM is looking very bright indeed.

There is a lot of cool tech around, like 3D printers and the like, but I was particularly impressed with this little desktop CNC. I'm sure that once the exhibition hall opens that there will be more to see!

I’m off to a class now to learn about programming the AutoCAD API via HTTP, should be good. I shall report back tomorrow on Day 2 of AU 2014. If you are out in Las Vegas, please come say hi, or hit me up on Twitter.