We have broke the 100 members so far running, walking, biking, swimming getting ready for the AU 2020 5K Walk Run or Cycle in a couple weeks. See the activity just this week as we are over 800 miles just this week by members as I look at it this moment. The Autodesk University 5k has gone virtual! Join us in the lead-up to AU 2020 and complete your 5k from November 9-16th, 2020. You can walk, run, cycle, swim--... Continue reading

Rachel Hartley an Autodesk Customer Community Program Manager, recently announced the new community called the Community Dojo. “Defined as a “place for immersive learning,” the Japanese word “Dōjō” was perfectly adopted for a new immersive learning site launched August 24, 2020, for and by the Autodesk Group Network program. https://www.communitydojo.net/ As the name implies, the purpose of the Community Dōjō is to create inspiring learning opportunities for everyone—employees and customers alike—by connecting them with peers and group leaders; providing easy... Continue reading

Here are the early Revit release packages in the historical collection that I maintain from 2000 and 2001. Revit 1.0, Revit 1.01, Revit 2, Revit 2.01, Revit 2.1, Revit 2.11, Revit 3, Revit 3.1, Revit 3.11, Revit 4 Continue reading

Announcing a new Autodesk Construction podcast named Digital Builder: Some of the key episode themes include: An inside look at what’s in store for this year’s Autodesk University, including emerging technologies and trends to help you achieve your new possible Roadblocks the industry is facing when it comes to diversity and inclusion Strategies on how to create a safe environment to discuss diversity in the workplace Details on finding Cliff Cole’s session on diversity and Allison Scott’s keynote construction presentation... Continue reading

Congratulations to all of the inspiring winning projects, and all of those companies and projects that were nominated. AEC Excellence Awards 2020 Winners: Reimagination During Extraordinary Times INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR Wajdi Mereb, BIM Manager, RTA, United Arab Emirates Infrastructure Design – Small Project (less than $100 Million) Winning project: Chandrawal Water Supply Project – 477 MLD Advanced Water Treatment Plant RWS & UWWM-EDRC, WWW SBG, WET-IC, L&T Construction, India Infrastructure Design – Medium Project ($100 Million – $500 Million) Winning project: Route... Continue reading

Want to get moving before Autodesk University 2020? Join us from Nov. 9-16th for the AU5k! The Autodesk University 5k has gone virtual! Join us in the lead-up to AU 2020 and complete your 5k from November 9-16th, 2020. You can walk, run, cycle, swim-- however you like to stay active. Join the Strava club and come train with us! You can use a free Strava account and just join the group. http://strava.com/clubs/AU2020 I hope to see people share some... Continue reading

Today is a guest post by Brandon of CADintensions with some great AutoCAD Tips to make you more efficient. You can follow Brandon on Twitter at @cadintentions and visit his blog http://cadintentions.com/ for many more great tips like these. If you would like to guest author a blog post on Autodesk product tips and tricks email me. Thank you, Brandon! -Shaan 4 Easy Tips To Save Time and Work More Efficiently in AutoCAD 1. Setup and Use a Drawing Template:... Continue reading

Every year Autodesk produces videos to showcase our products and most importantly what our customers produce using our products. The showreel videos are produced to feature our major industries and also one main Autodesk themed one featuring a video combined with a music background in a short format, usually around 2 minutes. These showreels are a great way to see what Autodesk customers produce around the world. Here are the Autodesk 2020 Showreels: Autodesk Official Show Reel 2020 Annual showcase... Continue reading

Congratulations to Hill Fang, Software Engineering Manager at Autodesk. Hill Fang summited Tianhaizi Shan with its peak 6070 meters high in Sichuan Province on Oct-06! Of course he also took his AutoCAD flag with him to the summit. This wasn't his first summit with an AutoCAD flag, and I'm certain it wont be his last. 35 Years of AutoCAD Celebration Goes Way Up Continue reading

I hope you will join me and the many others attending the kick off of the AEC Hackathon Online 2.0 Friday October 9th. It is online and open to people around the globe. Come see what it is all about, or jump in and get involved in and pitch an idea in the lightening round or join a team that forms around an idea – you may change the AEC Industry. AEC Hackathon Online 2.0 Opening & Lightning Round Presentations... Continue reading

Autodesk’s Christopher Young, VP Autodesk Entertainment Creation Products announced: ”To allow customers to create without limits, Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, Inventor & Revit are integrated in the platform along with USD open source format.” NVIDIA Announces Omniverse Open Beta, Letting Designers Collaborate in Real Time — from Home or Around the World bit.ly/2F9DNy5 ”Photorealistic, 3D Simulation and Collaboration Platform Open Beta Follows Early Access Program with Ericsson, Foster + Partners, Lucasfilm, 40+ Others GTC – Tens of millions of designers,... Continue reading

This is a heads up to start preparing for the annual 5k run, walk, and now bike ride all while being remote from each other. We have held a Autodesk University based run for the past 6 years and made many new friends and had fun, but this year AU is online, lets keep going and stay connected until we can again safely meet in person again. AU 2020 5k: Walk, Run or Cycle More details will be coming from... Continue reading

Have you ever wanted to automate AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, 3ds Max tasks in a nearly headless way using the power of the cloud and some limited code calling APIs? Design Automation is the critical secret method. The Design Automation API allows you to access the automation capabilities of Autodesk’s core products as cloud services. Almost any task you can automate on your desktop application can now be automated at scale using the Design Automation API. A common and extremely popular... Continue reading

I may have found someone with the oldest AutoCAD release software outside of Autodesk. Of course internally we had early 1.0 alphas, betas, and development copies that were never released. In fact AutoCAD-80 and AutoCAD-86 version 1.0 was never commercially released. I found a early AutoCAD customer with AutoCAD-80 version 1.2 from 1982 for the CP/M operating system on an 8” floppy disk. I recognize many may be younger than this floppy disk, and may not have ever seen one... Continue reading

On Friday, Autodesk released the People Flow Toolkit, an add-in that helps you automate path of travel analysis with tools for social distancing. “The People Flow Toolkit extends Revit’s Path of Travel toolset to help you understand how people will move through your design. The People Flow Toolkit is available as an add-on with Revit versions starting at 2020.2. With the toolkit, building designers can automate, visualize, and analyze the routes within a model to understand the impacts of physical... Continue reading

Excellent article on Generative Design in AEC with an associated companion class from Autodesk University 2019 by Dieter Vermeulen Technical Specialist AEC Autodesk. “In the AEC industry, we're challenged to consider many design options, to find the fittest solution in the shortest time, and to be leaders in economic and sustainable designs. In this article, you’ll discover how to generate better design outcomes using computational and generative design techniques. You’ll get an overview of how ‘traditional" design improves with design... Continue reading

LIVE WEBINAR: Tuesday September 22 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET Return to Workplace: People Mobility and Design Simulations Get people moving with confidence. Health recommendations are changing the way people commute to work and move from their cars to their desks as they return to the workplace. Mobility Simulation in InfraWorks models people movement, bringing data-driven insight to physical-distancing needs and efficiency of travel. In this session, you’ll hear from Autodesk’s Technical Specialists as they explore tools that help... Continue reading

Autodesk’s Global Delivery Consulting (GCD) employees create innovate and impactful tools and solutions for our customers. Autodesk Global Consulting Delivery employees – Paolo Serra, Ian McGregor and Mohamed Ahmed – turned a manual and error-prone process for transferring data from Civil 3D to Revit into an efficient and scalable solution that enabled real-time information exchange using Dynamo. Over the course of several years, the solution evolved into a popular product feature and eventually moved to open source. CivilConnection and CivilPython... Continue reading

I hope you will again join the AEC Hackathon organized by an independent group of AEC technology and built environment superheroes.These events are normally held in person, but with the current COVID-19 they pivoted this summer with the first online version being a hit in light of all the quirks and challenges online live sessions and collaboration can bring they pulled it off. I really enjoyed being mentor and speaking with some of the teams. The speaker sessions were very... Continue reading

AutoCAD 1.4 circa 1984/85 and the Space Shuttle drawing by Autodesk founder John Walker. This is one of the earliest known DWG sample files used to show AutoCAD-86. I captured this on a retro 286/287 that I run in my home office for geeky fun. Update: Here is the AutoCAD 1.x sample file, one of the earliest sample files from 1984. Download SHUTTLE.DWG (7.1K) -Shaan Continue reading

Register for Autodesk University 2020 today, its free, great classes and sessions, no travel costs, and you wont get chapped lips in the dry Las Vegas air. Register now to reserve your spot to attend this year’s global, digital event . https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/conference/overview Stay tuned to this Between the Lines Blog for much more AU related information and announcements as well as looks back on all the amazing memories from past AUs. Perhaps a virtual drink happy hour together online following... Continue reading

My heart goes out to all of my fellow western united States residents dealing with the concerns and fear due to unknowns and unsubstantiated conspiracies circulating on the internet, and some experiencing the loss of homes and life due to the unprecedented wildfires. I wanted to thank those that read my previous post about the fires including one that was 1.5 miles from my own home and several sending private offers of assistance and a place to stay if evacuated.... Continue reading

Attention teachers, join a free webinar on Thursday October 1st at 4:00 PM PT to learn how to get set up and get started using Tinkercad for distance learning. “We are excited to announce a series of free webinars called Teaching with Tinkercad that will run over the next few months. This series was designed to help you successfully integrate Tinkercad into your class and utilize the great resources we have available to help make learning STEM even more fun.”... Continue reading

I took last week off of work to drive from Oregon to see my 3 adult kids that live in Utah, including one that is attending the University of Utah as a senior in engineering. I also got to see my cute sweet granddaughters. Due to Covid 19, I haven't seen my kids and grandkids since January. We had a couple dinners in parks socially distanced with masks since my daughter in law is currently pregnant. It was so good... Continue reading

Coming this Thursday is an Ask Me Anything session where you bring the questions and Sasha Crotty, Harlan Brumm, and Aaron Vorwerk deliver the answers. An AMA with the product people that make Revit. Join Autodesk product experts Sasha Crotty, Harlan Brumm, and Aaron Vorwerk as they take questions from you and the community about what goes on Inside the Factory. What happens to error reports? When will Revit have slanted walls? Ask Me Anything “AMA” Thursday: 12pm EST: https://youtu.be/hoinpQq1Gbo... Continue reading