Autodesk Manufacturing & Digital Prototyping Solutions

Steve Carell Explains 3D Animation

A great find from our visualisation jedi master friend Jamie Gwilliam which he posted over on his Jamies Jewels blog...

He says it better than I ever could…..

- Jamie

via jamiesjewels.typepad.com

Autodesk® Inventor® Design Checker technology preview available.

Anyone who keeps an eye on Autodesk Labs should have seen a new addition.

Autodesk® Inventor® Design Checker is a technology preview I’m sure will benefit a number of organisations. In fact, anyone that has a requirement to ensure designs and configurations of products need to adhere to certain criteria will find this tool of use.

Design Checker can be configured to define not only what type of features are checked, but also the standards that dictate if a check passes or fails. Custom checks can also be defined. These configurations are stored in a Profile and can be separated into different work environments (Parts, Drawings, Assemblies). This allows Profiles to be created that define different checks for different
product types, different customers, or any other end user variances. By changing profiles, Design Checker checks the models based on the rules defined in that profile.

Make manual design checking a thing of the past.

• Live checking while you work, or just at the end – you decide.

• Check common standards like missing iProperties, or create your own custom rules.

• Create custom profiles to suit each project's or customer's specific rules.

Check it out now on Autodesk Labs. 

 

This tool is currently compatibile with Inventor 2012 and Inventor 2013.

 

AutoCAD WS becomes AutoCAD 360

Over the past couple of years, the AutoCAD WS team has been collecting great feedback about how AutoCAD WS has been used in the office and in the field. The team has taken that feedback into our labs, and today are excited to emerge with the next evolution of AutoCAD WS, now AutoCAD 360. Here’s a quick summary of the top 5 changes to the platform:

1. A new name: AutoCAD 360.
2. A new website: www.autocad360.com.
3. A new mobile app update available; download it in the iTunes App Store or Google Play.
4. New AutoCAD 360 Pro mobile app plans. Here are the top 12 reasons to get a Pro plan. And here, you can compare the AutoCAD 360 Pro mobile app plans.
5. A new, free AutoCAD 360 web app beta. It’s a ground-up redesign of our AutoCAD WS web app, offering easier operation and better collaboration capabilities.

Check out the new Welcome to AutoCAD 360 video, too.....

 

Autodesk 2014 suites - So what's changed?

As you can see from the infrequency of the posts on this blog, it's been a busy few months.

At the end of March we announced the 2014 release of products, with most applications being available to download to subscription customers soon after.

In the run up to and subsequently since the launch, most of us at Autodesk have been busy running around presenting at customer launch events and partner launch / training sessions. Although there are still a few to support, hopefully we can start to breathe again and spend at least a few nights at home!

Anyway, over the course of the last couple of months a few common questions have arisen, which I thought it prudent to highlight to the wider audience.

Apart from what’s new in the individual applications, those of you on subscription with a product suite will notice that you now have access to a wider toolset.

New applications for Design Suite customers

For example, inside standard design suites such as Autodesk Product Design Suite Standard you will notice within the installer that you have now have AutoCAD Raster Design and Autodesk Recap.

AutoCAD Raster Design has been available to purchase for a number of years, however with this now being included in the standard suites, if you do receive or still have a need to convert raster based drawings into vector then you now have a tool to help achieve this included in the box.

See here for an overview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Wg6BOOS2c

Autodesk Recap is a new application that gives the user the flexibility to combine, filter, navigate and annotate point cloud data.

If you’ve already used point cloud information within 2013 versions of Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Revit and Autodesk AutoCAD you will notice in the 2014 that we no longer directly read in the native point cloud data such as those generated from Faro, Lieca or any of the other scanner vendors. The reason for this is, you can now process these point clouds via Autodesk Recap, which will allow a user to combine multiple files, filter noise, remove unwanted points, set units and co-ordinate systems, visualise and analyse (such as elevation or intensity) and a whole host more.

See here for an overview with Factory Design Suite.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyrhXux5YCE

A significant change for users of Autodesk Product Design Suite Premium is that it now includes Autodesk Inventor Professional. All the simulation tools such as FEA and Dynamic Simulation plus mold tool design and plastic fill analysis are now available to these users.

Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate now includes Autodesk Navisworks Manage, giving you the capability to run clash detections with aggregated data from a variety of sources including point cloud information.

Autodesk Inventor Fusion

That’s all well and good but something that has popped up is, “Where has Inventor Fusion disappeared too?”

Well this product is no longer being included in the Suite installations, and although it is available to download from Autodesk Labs, you can expect to see its replacement Autodesk Fusion 360 coming to market soon.

To download Inventor Fusion, use this link http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/fusion

For customers using our simulations tools such as Autodesk Simulation Mechanical and Autodesk Simulation CFD, a supported version of Autodesk Inventor Fusion is still included in the media.

Autodesk Simulation 360 Pro

Talking about simulation tools, if you are currently using Autodesk Sim360 Pro, for 2014 in addition to cloud based Simulation Mechanical and Simulation CFD, this toolset also now includes Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis which gives users the power to be able to simulate full structural analysis including code checking.

Autodesk Inventor Publisher

If you are currently a user of Autodesk Inventor Publisher 2013 on subscription you will have noticed that there has been no 2014 flavour released. To confirm the state of play, 2013 R1 was made available on subscription center a couple of weeks back, this version give users compatibility with 2014 file formats.

Autodesk Vault

One of the big changes for this product line is that Autodesk Vault Collaboration has been discontinued. Although there is no need to panic, as all customers with 2013 versions of this product on subscription will be auto fulfilled with Autodesk Vault Professional. Customers that have Autodesk Vault Workgroup will see the 2014 version ship in the not too distant future.

Well what else is new?

I’ve only highlighted a few of the overall changes to some of our offerings, for FY14 you can expect to see a whole host of new technologies being made available to customers, so we’re not finished yet.

 

 

Autodesk aquires Tinkercad

 

Those of you who activley read the press releases will have seen that on Saturday, Autodesk announced the aquisition of Tinkercad an easy-to-use browser-based 3D design tool.

Although it's way too early to say exactly how the roadmap will look, you can expect to see this offering add to and enhance the 123D family of applications.

See the business wire release here

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130518005006/en/Autodesk-Acquire-Tinkercad-Easy-to-Use-Web-Based-3D-Design

Or the announcement from Kai Backman, Founder & CEO of Tinkercad here

http://blog.tinkercad.com/2013/05/18/autodesk_tinkercad/

Autodesk Expands Analysis Software Portfolio through Acquisition of Firehole Composites

Yesterday Autodesk announced another aquisition in it's growing simulation porfolio.

Firehole Composites (http://www.firehole.com/) is a software vendor specialising in advanced FEA of composites, providing tools that link directly into competitive CAE systems like Ansys, and Dassault’ s Simulia.

The existing customer base comes from a range of areas such as Automotive OEMs, F1 and Yacht building, with the available tools being utilised to help solve challenges such as weight reductions to meet emission targets, deliver improved fuel economy and providing detailed analysis of composite ship hulls.

See press release here.

http://news.autodesk.com/news/autodesk/20130319006450/en/Autodesk-Expands-Analysis-Software-Portfolio-Acquisition-Firehole

Want to see Autodesk PLM 360 in action?

Have you heard about PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) being used at large design, engineering & manufacturing customers and the benefits it has to offer? But when looking into how you could use PLM within your organisation, you've seen a price tag and implementation thats made you cringe?

Well if you want to find out how you can implement PLM within your organisation to help you streamline processes within Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Projects etc, improve collaboration internally & externally and do all this at a fraction of the cost and implementation, you should attend one of the free Autodesk PLM 360 webinars.

If you've never seen or heard of Autodesk PLM 360, this free 60 minute webinar will give you enough of an introduction so you can see exactly how it can be used within your organisation for:

• Engineering Design
• Manufacturing
• Change Management
• LEAN
• Quality
• Supply Chain
• New Product Introduction
• Regulatory Compliance
• Project\Program Management
• Plus much more 

If you hre looking to improve the processes within your business, implementing LEAN initiatives or feel that you could be doing things better, then these webinars are for you. 

You can join the 60 minute webinar from the comfort of your own chair and office and hear from Autodesks Gavin England who will provide an introduction and live demonstration of PLM 360's capability as well as how it is already helping many businesses in the UK, Europe and Worldwide.

To register and confirm your free place on the webinar, use the link below....

http://www.autodeskplm360.co.uk/events/an-invitation-to-discover-autodesk-plm-360.html

Enjoy the webinar!

Autodesk acquires PI-VR. Specialist in real time visualisation software.

Yesterday Autodesk completed the acquisition of PI-VR (www.pi-vr.de) a privately held German software company that specializes in sophisticated real time visualization technology used primarily in the automotive industry.--(BUSINESS WIRE )--

Some people may have seen this, but apart from joining the bandwagon I wanted to reiterate this announcement and also add some more background, as to what this may offer and what we can hopefully look forward to in the future.

PI-VR primarily offer an application called VRED, which is available in a few different flavours.

Having played around with VRED Pro a couple of years back it’s great to see this solution become part of the Autodesk portfolio.

Similar to Autodesk Showcase, you can make use of HDR environments for real time visualisation and also like Autodesk Showcase Pro 2013 R1 you can link to HDR Light Studio (http://www.hdrlightstudio.com/) for greater flexibility when wishing to use custom real time environments.

But in addition, depending on the flavour (VRED Essentials, VRED Photo and VRED Professional) you have further levels of benefit from camera control with post processing options, creation of variants, surface analysis, annotation, comprehensive material libraries, real time ray tracing and refraction, animation, and then because of it's greater utilisation of workstation hardware, native support for stereo displays, cave installations, clustering, multi touch and even head tracking support.

Something that may also make certain users ears prick up is VRED is also available in PC and MAC versions.

As for the future, we know from the press release that Autodesk intends to integrate Autodesk technologies into the PI-VR platform, while continuing to sell, support and enhance the PI-VR product line. The VRED products will also join Autodesk’s existing solutions for the automotive industry including Autodesk Showcase , Autodesk Alias , Autodesk Maya , Autodesk 3ds Max and the Autodesk Design and Creation Suites .

From All of Us at Autodesk - Merry Christmas

As most of the people we deal with are now breaking up for their christmas holidays, we wanted to take this oppurtunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Hopefully everyone is managing to take some well earned rest and is also looking forward to opening some gifts on christmas morning.

See below for above a holiday card created by the M&E team featuring the characters from the Entertainment Creation Suite Global Campaign.

Finally, as the last couple posts have been related to Autodesk Showcase, I thought I'd finish the year with one final Showcase related post...kind of..

The guys at Triple Eight Race Engineering have been using Autodesk Product Design Suite and associated tools for some time now. With the ever changing landscape of motorsport, in addition to the BTCC, next year they will also be running two BMW Z4s within the British GT Championship.

http://www.tripleeight.co.uk/news/item/21-a-new-era-dawns

Below is a nice output from Autodesk Showcase showing the proposed race car mockup . I have to say I wouldn't say no to one of these being under my christmas tree this year!

 

 

Create pop up info labels in Autodesk Showcase

There are a number of advantages of being able to display additional information within the Showcase scene.

After our previous post highlighting how Autodesk Showcase can be driven from an external source, one of the questions that was raised was, "How can I emulate an automotive car configurator to allow a user to pick a hot spot and pop up information displays within the scene."

After coming up with a workflow I thought it may come in useful to share one method how this can be achieved.

I have published a quick overview on the steps required, but bear in mind you need to be familiar with Autodesk Showcase and the necessary steps to configure a model with alternative model materials, visibility and position. In addition the user must be familiar with modifying geometry position and size and creating storyboards and behaviours.

Step 1: Create label geometry and information required for Showcase

• Create some 3D geometry that will represent the label itself. (In my example using Inventor). A simple extruded rectangle is enough.
• Next create some images (using MS Powerpoint in this case) that represent the information you want to display.
• If using MS Powerpoint, with the images setup, use the SAVEAS to create the separate images of the technical information. PNG is a good image format to use.

Step 2: Import your label and create decals for the popup information.

• Import the 3D model that will represent the actual label.
• Position the label geometry to suit your Showcase model scene.
• Duplicate as necessary at the relevant positions.
• Create decal(s) from the PNG files saved earlier.
• Transparency can be applied to the Decal to only show the text based upon its colour.
• Apply the decals to the label objects.

Step 3: Animate the label (Optional)

In this example we want to show the label appearing via a slide up from the trigger point.

• To achieve this, it is possible to create a key frame animation of the label object.
• By creating a Behaviour keyframe animation (via the B shortcut key), you can set the label object transform properties (via Edit>Transform>Transform Properties) to have a zero value on its Z axis scale when you create the first key.                                                              
• Scaling the object back up to 1 (100% of original) and generating a keyframe a number of seconds later in time produces the desired animation effect.

Step 4: Display the labels via a ‘Trigger’

It is often required to display the labels when a user clicks on part of the model

• To configure the scene in order to only display the one label at a time, it is necessary to configure the scene is a suitable manner.
• First create Visibility Alternates (via the A shortcut key) including only one label per alternate PLUS an empty one (no selections added) so the scene can be ‘reset’ to the point of no labels.

• Now most importantly, a Storyboard (via the U shortcut key) must be created for each label. Adding the required alternates, behaviours and shots to each respective storyboard, allows you to drive the storyboard manually or by keyboard shortcuts/triggers/external commands.

• To allow a user to click on a geometry ‘hotspot’ to make the label appear, a Trigger must be created.
•  Within the Behaviours area, create a Trigger and add the selected geometry via the right hand mouse options. Now within the Storyboard you can associate the new Trigger to the Storyboard item.

As if by magic, now by going into Presentation mode (via the Tab shortcut key), clicking in the ‘hotspot’ area will display the animated label.

Toggling to a different Trigger will then change storyboard items and if configured correctly will turn off the previous label on move onto the next.

So there you have it, a workflow to dynamically show label information within a scene

We hope you find this tip useful.