Research at Autodesk University 2015

For those attending Autodesk University this year in Las Vegas, Autodesk Research will have a booth in the “Central Park” section of the Exhibit Hall where we’ll be showcasing a number of exciting projects.  

The projects represented at this year’s conference will include:

 

The Bio/Nano Research group will be showing the current status of their research on how to fold DNA to create functional nanostructures as well as how to grow artificial bones.

 

 

Project Dreamcatcher will be exhibiting a number of generatively designed artifacts, such as the Optima Bow made by Pier 9 Artist-in-Residence John Briscella of Aminimal Studio, bicycles and motorcycle swingarms.

 

 

The Design and Fabricaction group will be showing Meshmixer and how it is used to 3D print functional parts and body-fitting prosthetics. 

 

Autodesk Within Medical, which allows implant designers to create porous coatings to aid bone and implant fusion (ie. osseointergration), will be displaying a number of their 3D printed medical components and explaining how their technology works. 

 

 

When you enter Sands Hall B & C, just walk to the Central Park and Autodesk Research will be on the right!

In addition to the booth, look for the Hive Project near the Exhibit Hall where Autodesk University attendees will build an architectural scale pavilion guided by human/robot interaction.

A number of team members will be giving talks at AU:

 

Composite Materials and Manufacturing Processes for Automotive Applications

Tuesday, Dec 1, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM, Location: Zeno 4701, Level 4

Massimiliano Moruzzi discusses composite applications in the automotive marketplace.

 

Automated Composite Manufacturing

Tuesday, Dec 1, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM, Location: Marcello 4401a, Level 4

Massimiliano Moruzzi presents an end-to-end solution for the automated composite manufacturing process. This class will cover advanced lay-up design strategies such as fiber placement, tape layering, and robotics lay-up which are utilized when programming automatic material layup equipment. High composite production rates will be covered through automated robotic material nesting and taping.

 

Cultivating Innovation and Developing Intrapreneurs

Wednesday, Dec 2, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Location: Zeno 4704, Level 4

Cory Mogk will be doing a talk on Cultivating Innovation and Developing Intrapreneurs that uses the tools from the Innovation Workshop. This class will talk about how Autodesk is helping intrapreneurs develop their ideas and we’ll provide tools and guidance that attendees can use on their own or in their organizations. 

 

Composite Manufacturing Solution for Optimum Material Nesting and Ply Layup

Thursday, Dec 3, 2:45 PM - 4:00 PM, Location: San Polo 3405, Level 3

Massimiliano Moruzzi will lead this two-part class where attendees will utilize Autodesk TruNest Composites to show the complete process from import to nesting to NC part cutting of ply materials. Special focus will be given to optimal nesting for efficient material usage. During the second half, we will utilize Autodesk TruLaser to perform laser projection for showing composite ply lay-up.

 

Once again, the Design Research team will be conducting user research sessions. This year’s focus will be on collecting feedback for Within and Dreamcatcher.  Look for the OCTO Airstream in the AU registration area.

 

We hope you’ll make some time to come by and meet some of the team. 

 

 

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Autodesk Toronto is Moving to MaRS

Last week we announced that Autodesk's Toronto office will be moving to the MaRS Discovery District next fall! MaRS is one of the largest innovation hubs in the world with residents engaged in things like Health Care, Cleantech, Social Impact and ICT (Information and Communications Technology). 

Autodesk Toronto will have a ground floor presence along with the second and third floors above

This is a great combination of industries as Autodesk Toronto has teams covering all of these areas, including Maya for film and games, Alias for product and automotive design, digital art and fabrication.

From a research perspective, this puts us closer to the local universities as well as hospital research groups. It's also right across the street from the Ontario legislature which sees lots of important visitors from Canada and around the world.

MaRS is at the centre of one of the world's largest innovation communities

The Living, creators of the Hy-Fi installation at New York's MoMA and designers on Bjork's immersive Black Lake music project, will be leading the design and have already shared one concept of how the bright, ground floor space may look. It is conceived as part gallery, part makerspace while being flexible enough to host events to engage with the public.

The ground floor space will highlight work from Autodesk customers and partners while inspiring visitors on how things may be made in the future

A number of government leaders were at the announcement. Toronto Mayor John Tory said:

“I, as Mayor, want the game changers, the disrupters – we want them growing here. Autodesk is a game changer.”

“Our job is to understand and explore future technology trends and to invent new tech,” said Gordon Kurtenbach, senior director of research at Autodesk. “Our new space will give creators in the community access to a collaborative environment, enabling the next generation of makers and doers to push their crafts into new and unexpected directions with our design tools.”

Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS said, “Autodesk’s 3D design leadership is evident in products and services around the world and across a broad range of industries. This capability is at the core of breakthrough innovation and will be incredibly valuable to our community. We know that amazing things will come from this expanded collaboration.”

Earlier this month, Ontario's Premier Wynne recently visited Autodesk San Francisco to get a better idea of what Autodesk brings to MaRS, Canada and the World

This is very exciting news for everyone involved! You can read more about this on Autodesk's In the Fold blog.

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How is a Researcher like an Octopus?

Autodesk Research is part of the Office of the CTO, or OCTO for short. So, we like things with octo in the name. Things like octopuses - octopi, if you like - and their parallels to members of the research world. Octopuses are:

• quite intelligent (shown through maze and problem solving experiments)
• good at learning with strong short and long term memory
• behaviourally flexible
• interested in play
• good at photography

Good at photography?

When we saw this video from Sony we were impressed as we also like exposing ourselves to new experiences and documenting our learning. It's also just really cool.

The behind the scenes video is also fascinating. Before learning to take a picture the octopus decided to taste the camera, perhaps thinking it was a new type of clam.  

Pictures from Autodesk University 2014

Here are a couple pictures of things the Autodesk Research team is talking about at Autodesk University. There's one more chance to come by the booth and find out more today.

 

Here's where you can find us on the Autodesk University Exhibit Floor. We'll be there from 11:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Also spotted in the Registration Hall:

For those not at Autodesk University, feel free to hit us up with some questions here!

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Research at Autodesk University 2014

Autodesk Research will be at Autodesk University 2014 and the theme this year is the Future of How Things are Made.

The Research team will be displaying some of their work and views on the future in the Exhibit Hall and you are cordially invited to come by, have a look, be inspired and share your feedback.

In the Exhibit Hall, you'll find people and displays for the following projects:

• Cyborg
• Draco and Kitty
• Dreamcatcher
• Hy-Fi

Cyborg

Autodesk is researching how design tools can be applied to synthetic biology, problems like fighting diseases, such as cancer, and improving drug discovery. 

Draco and Kitty

Answering the challenge to make animation (Draco) and authoring interactive content (Kitty) as easy as drawing, you not only see this in action but try out it out for yourself.

Dreamcatcher

Showing that computers can help you design - not just produce design documentation - structurally sound and interesting pieces based on your specified goals.  

Hy-Fi

If you missed Hy-Fi on display at New York's MoMA, you can get a little taste of it at AU. Haven't heard of Hy-Fi or its creators The Living? Check out this video showing Hy-Fi and some of what The Living are doing. 

The Autodesk University Exhibit Hall will be open at the following times:

• Tuesday, December 2: 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. for the Community Reception
• Wednesday, December 3: 11:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
• Wednesday, December 3:  6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. for the AUGI Reception
• Thursday, December 4: 11:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Beyond the Exhibit Hall, there will be a number of presentations from Research team members:

Design Computation Symposium (AB7537)

The Design Computation Symposium will explore how advanced firms are bridging the gap between Computational Design and Building Information Modeling. Speaker topics will include both pragmatic aspects of digital design in daily practice, and forward thinking ideas and research. There are three main areas of interest under this theme:

• Performance-based design, simulation and analysis.
• Digital fabrication and construction processes.
• Data Flow between real and digital environments.

The Future of Design: 3 Case Studies (LF8217)

Three experts from the Office of the CTO will talk about some unbelievable developments in the fields of synthetic biology, advanced MFG design, and infinite computing.

Capitalize on Fusion 360 for Digital Fabrication Workflows in Revit  (AB6016-L)

Would you like to get your designs out of the screen and into your hands? While 3D printing has become an exceedingly useful tool for demonstrating and prototyping design ideas, preparing files for 3D printing can be frustrating and time consuming. In this 90-minute course we will generate a complex surface in the Fusion 360 3D CAD design app that takes advantage of the T-Splines modeling technology. We will bring this model into Revit software where it will serve as the base for a panelized solid form using the Dynamo visual programming language extension. Once we have generated the complex parametric model to the required specifications, we will export the model to a STL file for 3D printing. A 2-step process of healing the mesh for optimal printing is described with the meshmixer tool and Project Miller. Finally, we will inspect the mesh and prepare it for output to various 3D printing platforms.

 

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Question marks, light bulbs and the Autodesk Research blog

Have you ever noticed the similarity in shape between question marks and light bulbs? Or that a comic strip character might have a floating question mark in one frame followed by a floating light bulb in the next? Or that asking exploratory questions can lead to a discovery?

Image by Life Mental Health, cropped and shared under the Creative Commons 2.0 License

Autodesk Research is dedicated to discovery and the innovation that follows to help people imagine, design and create a better world. We are a classic research organization that publishes our work in scientific journals. As part of the Autodesk Office of the CTO, the research team is not tied to any specific product though our Research Transfer team converts our work to software components that can be integrated into Autodesk products and services.

The groups and scientists in Autodesk Research ask important questions like:

Bio/Nano/Programmmable Matter: how do traditional CAD tools apply to synthetic biology? how do you design at the nano scale? what if we could design custom materials for our buildings and products?

Computational Science Research: how can we make software more scaleable? can we optimize algorithms for distribution?

Design and Fabrication: are there new ways to digitally design physical objects? can we make 3D printing more efficient?

Design Research: can we disrupt CAD? how can cloud and mobile technologies help the design process?

Environment and Ergonomics: how can we minimize the impact of the built environment on the natural environment? can we build a fully functioning digital human to help people design better?  

Research Transfer: how do we get these learnings into the hands of our customers?

Simulation and Graphics: can we simulate and visualize real world physics? how can this benefit diverse industries from film and games to engineering and design?

User Interface Research: can we make it easier to learn with computers? as computing devices change, how can we adapt our tools? what new tool possibilities do new devices offer?

In future posts, we'll go beyond these questions and start to look at the cool answers and solutions that the Autodesk Research team is developing. Of course, if you have questions, we would love to know about them.

Welcome to the Autodesk Research blog and thanks for reading! 

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