This weekend the final judging of the Linking Engineering and Philanthropy (LEAP) design contest for local FIRST Robotic FRC Teams was held at Mercy Corp in Portland Oregon. The high school FRC Team 1540 Flaming Chickens from Catlin Gabel that I have worked with for a few years founded LEAP and run it. Autodesk was again a proud sponsor with the prize money and Mercy Corp was the non profit recipient, awesome host, and defined the challenge and need for... Continue reading

Yesterday in the Autodesk Portland Oregon office, we held a fun event in the afternoon. Two volunteer employer groups Ministry of Mischief and Impact Team partnered to have fun and support some good local causes. The Impact Team supported making the holidays better for a local family and gathering things they needed for their family. The Ministry of Mischief organized the donation to the Oregon Humane Society and they brought puppies and kittens into the office. Also for fun by... Continue reading

Its Monday and a gloomy overcast winter one here in the Autodesk Portland office, but the past weekend I finally visited a place in the Pacific Northwest I had been wanting to go to for awhile and thought I would recommend you do the same if you visit Washington State. I drove up to Washington's San Juan islands and then down the beautiful forested Olympic peninsula. The islands are not tropical and can be cold especially in the winter, but... Continue reading

ChickTech is a non-profit organization supporting women and girls in tech with community, education, and inspiration. ChickTech is dedicated to retaining women in the technology workforce and increasing the number of women and girls pursuing technology-based careers. It’s a great group of people and cause and they just lost a major source of their funding and need everyone's help. I'm challenging everyone to help ChickTech as they are not just helping Portland young women to get into STEM careers, but... Continue reading

If you are located in beautiful and innovative Portland Oregon and love new technology from startups then you should absolutely RSVP and mark your calendars for Pi Day 2019 and the PIE Demo Day 2019. PIE is the Portland Incubator Experiment and all about nurturing startups and their founders. We believe in PIE so much we provide space in our Autodesk Portland office for the PIE Shop incubator currently with 7 startup companies and also PDX Women in Technology (PDXWIT)... Continue reading

At Autodesk have used our generative design for architecture and layout to design our MaRS office in Toronto and an intelligent flow and layout for Autodesk University, now we are making it available as a beta publicly for you to try it and provide your requests and feedback. “Project Refinery is an Autodesk generative design beta for the architecture, engineering and construction industry that gives users the power to quickly explore and optimize their Dynamo designs. Project Refinery not only... Continue reading

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Spend your #HourofCode this week using Tinkercad and coding with Autodesk Tinkercad Codeblocks: autode.sk/2OIfaHC “No experience preferred All you have to do is start” Continue reading

Autodesk has had a great relationship with one of the most amazing collections and museums in the world, the Smithsonian. Having been there several times and met with teams I have an even greater personal connection appreciation of the museums, collections, and the people preserving history. A few years ago I was involved in the project kicking off on a bold project to digitally preserve 137 million objects in the collection which even includes the National Zoo with living animals.... Continue reading

AU 2018 Day 4 November 15th, 2018 On day 4 of Autodesk University 2018, even the dogs were sad it was coming to an end. My final day at AU started off with some great presentations in the AU Theater around stories. In addition to the great presentations, I loved that Darren Brooker used photos of our team with the lunar rover we built out at Burning Man. The Expo Hall was a buzz with discussions and many interesting solutions.... Continue reading

AU 2018 Day 3 November 14th, 2018 The day kicked off with classes, AU Theater presentations, and then two industry keynotes for AEC and Manufacturing. Architecture, Engineering, & Construction Keynote Announcement: Autodesk and Unity Expand Collaboration to Design, Make and Virtually Experience Anything Product Design & Manufacturing Keynote Autodesk University 2018 Product Design & Manufacturing Keynote – Video Announcement: Autodesk Ups the Ante on Advanced Manufacturing with Technology Updates, New Alliances After the keynotes, the crowds made their way to... Continue reading

Announced this week new releases of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT for Mac and new langu... Continue reading

RIP ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ Creator Stephen Hillenburg. Myself and my kids always got a good laugh from SpongeBob cartoon episodes and the theme music was an earworm that would get stuck in your head “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!”. It is sad to hear the creator of this whimsical and loved series has passed. I even modeled SpongeBob in 3ds Max years ago for some fun. His legacy will live on in the hearts and minds... Continue reading

AU 2018 Day 2 November 13th, 2018 The day started off extremely early with the annual AU5K and this year Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost joined a couple hundred of us at 6:00am to run a marked course along the strip. It was a blast! The fastest this year was a person that ran the 5k course in 15 minutes! My hyperlapse of the AU5K run. https://youtu.be/EgMPfvczods Inside the Sands Expo AU was beginning which means – the halls and escalators... Continue reading

AU 2018 Day 1 November 12th, 2018 Always a bit of a trip to see the entrance to the Venetian. My mind immediately thinks of the old Q*bert video game. = The morning started extra early with a run of the route for the AU5K down the strip the day prior to the event. I wanted to make sure there were no surprises along the 3.2 mile route. I then went to the rehearsals for General Session and Keynotes. The... Continue reading

A fun and creative interview was posted today by Youtuber Myrin with our Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost and playing Jenga. “Last week I had the privilege to interview Andrew Anagnost, the CEO of Autodesk. It was a huge honor and one really interesting interview. I had 1 whole hour with Andrew to ask him all the questions I have ever wanted to ask a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. We covered a good variety of topics ranging from the... Continue reading

A couple weeks ago at Autodesk university I ran into a longtime friend and colleague. He was at AU with his wife and two cute young daughters. I found out his home was one of the thousands destroyed in Santa Rosa California last year. It was heartbreaking to hear all of the details of what he and his family went through, but it gets more difficult. Many like his family were left paying monthly mortgage payments for a home that... Continue reading

I am so very thankful for all the attendees, partners, sponsors, employees, and the Autodesk University event staff for making it an amazing Autodesk University 2018. Over 11,000 attended the event last week in Las Vegas. I am now going though over 1000 photos of mine and will post them starting after the US Thanksgiving Holiday. I also want to thank all the bloggers and social media that attended the super packed suite meetup this year HTC, Unity, The Wild... Continue reading

The Forge DevCon was held on the first day of Autodesk University. The keynote was great and you can now watch it on YouTube. It was apparent from the Forge DevCon they will need to expand the are as it was packed with Forge developers,partners, customers, and employees this year and many amazing 3rd party solutions built upon Forge being shown. Forge DevCon Keynote 2018 “Watch the full Forge DevCon keynote from November 12, 2018. Featuring Jim Quanci, Brian Roepke,... Continue reading

It was just announced that Autodesk is acquiring PlanGrid. ”Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PlanGrid, a leading provider of construction productivity software, for $875 million net of cash. This acquisition will enable Autodesk to offer a more comprehensive, cloud-based construction platform.” Read the announcement for all the details. Autodesk to Acquire PlanGrid to Accelerate Construction Productivity I can’t wait to meet our new Autodesk employees from PlanGrid. -Shaan Continue reading

On Sunday November 11th, I flew to Vegas and got ready for Monday Day 1 with the Forge DevCon, Connect & Construct Summit, Computational BIM Workshops, Leadership Forum, and others occurring essentially Autodesk University is a 4 day event Monday through Thursday. Here are some of my memories in photos from Sunday and more days to be posted tomorrow. Some people got in earlier to setup AU and some even more energetic attendees ran in the Rock & Roll Marathon... Continue reading

Spotted this from my Toronto Research colleague Hali Larsen @HaliLarsen this morning: Have an innovative project in mind that you are trying to get off the ground? In need of support for hardware, software, or fabrication? Apply to the Residency Program at Autodesk Toronto! https://startupheretoronto.com/type/startup-news/autodesk-technology-centre-in-toronto-accepting-residency-applications/ “The Toronto centre – one of four Autodesk Technology Centres in the world – supports a range of activities related to machine learning, generative design, robotics, artificial intelligence, and more. The centre provides facilities, technology,... Continue reading