Archive for February, 2013
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
In a webcast this week, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass addressed the company’s financials. “As we near the 2-year anniversary of the launch of our design and creation suites, we couldn’t be more pleased with their progress and growth. Revenue from Suites increased 50% over that 2-year period. Suites now represent 30% of total revenue, up from 23% just 2 years ago. We’re delivering exceptional value to our customers, who get to utilize and experience more of our broad product portfolio. What’s more, we have seen a meaningful increase in our ASPs. It’s a win-win. Growth in our Suites help drive the record revenue results in both our AEC and Manufacturing business segments.”
Bass went on to say that the investments made over the past couple of years in major account direct sales continue to pay off. In the fourth quarter, Autodesk had a record 45 transactions that exceeded $1 million in value. This is up 25% year-on-year. The total value for these large deals increased 36% year-on-year. For FY ’13, large deals increased by 18%.
Autodesk’s AEC business had record quarterly results. Strong growth in AEC Suites to the growing implementation of BIM across all disciplines of the AEC industry, including infrastructure. BIM 360 wins in Q4 were concentrated in construction, reflecting Autodesk’s leadership role in providing cloud and mobile technologies to that industry.
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Tags: AEC, AutoCAD, Autodesk, BIM, Carl Bass, Cloud, Financials
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Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
While the U.S. is trying to figure out where to get the money to pay for much needed infrastructure, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to spend more than $100 billion on infrastructure in the next 15 months to help revive his country’s economy. Half of this growth is expected to be funded by government debt. Further, the country doesn’t have a great need for infrastructure, according to industry experts. It already has man-made islands, bullet trains and elevated highways, the result of its love affair with concrete and steel.
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Tags: AEC, infrastructure, Japan
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Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
IMSI/Design announced TurboSite and free TurboSite Reader for iPad in November. I spoke to Bob Mayer about this release at Autodesk University.
TurboSite is a field and site survey mobile app that facilitates drawing in the field and geolocation using a GPS on an iPad. It also has an indoor sensor based positioning system which tracks your position indoors.
Royal Farros, CEO of IMSI/Design, said: “TurboSite is the first true mobile AEC app… a professional building app that can’t be done on a desktop or laptop computer.”
This product eliminates the need for laptops, full sets of building plans, table and chairs and digital cameras that were all a part of the site visit process in the past. The information gathering is also simplified by having this app on the iPad where all building plans can be electronically viewed and navigated with the touch screen.
According to the press release, GeoWalk tracks location within a structure, while GeoNudge pinpoints exact location. When documentation is required, a photo or video is taken using iPad’s built-in camera and is automatically positioned correctly in a separate layer over the electronic file. Text notes and audio annotations can also be added. Even your orientation when taking notes and photos is denoted by TurboSite’s unique GeoMarks. GeoMarks offers a collection of rich data that are geolocated, according to Mayer. This can includes audio, notes, photos, dictation, and many other data types.
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Tags: AEC, BIM, GPS, IMSI/Design, iPad, site planning, TurboSite, TurboSite Reader
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Thursday, February 14th, 2013
Brooklyn-based design firm Situ Studio is the winner of this year’s annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design. Over the last five years, the Times Square Alliance has invited architecture and design firms to submit proposals for a romantic public art installation celebrating Valentine’s Day in Times Square. This year’s winning design, Situ Studio’s Heartwalk, was unveiled on Tuesday, February 12, 2013, and remain on view until March 10, 2013.
 Situ Studio’s winning entry, “Heartwalk” (more…)
Tags: AEC, architects, Heartwalk, installation, Situ Studio, Times Square Valentine Heart Design, Valentines Day
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Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
In President Obama’s State of the Union address, he specifically talked about rebuilding the U.S. He outlined a “Fix-it-First” program to put people to work on “urgent repairs,” such as failing infrastructure like bridges, roads and other critical infrastructure. He also said on the topic of climate change, “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”
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Tags: AEC, Fix-it-First program, infrastructure, MAP-21 bill, Microdesk, President Obama, State of the Union
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Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
At AU I spoke with TopCon Positioning Systems (TPS)’ Brad Burgess, North American sales manager for scanning products, about the ScanMaster CAD Link which they were demonstrating at the show. CAD Link provides users with an interactive link between ScanMaster and AutoCAD and enables them to efficiently extract and draw objects.
The ScanMaster CAD Link makes editing point cloud data collected by the GLS-1500 scanner through the drawing operation via AutoCAD very smooth and efficient.
The main functions of CAD Link for ScanMaster are as follows:
— Synchronize views between ScanMaster and AutoCAD.
— Send coordinates, distances by picking scans data.
— Send ortho-images as background images of AutoCAD screen.
— Synchronizing UCS (User Coordinate System).
CAD Link had been released several weeks before the show. TopCon is active in various industry segments, and very busy in the heavy construction and machine control industries. The scanning product division covers a couple of vertical markets.
Where once before TopCon was known more as a traditional hardware manufacturer, now they are very involved on the office side. There has always been some software packaged with TopCon hardware.
“It’s a necessity today because once you collect the data it’s got to be processed in some manner so it can be consumed in the traditional design packages like Autodesk and MicroStation, and Carlson,” said Burgess. “You don’t have a solution unless you can move your data off your hardware platform and into your customers’ CAD platform.”
In the past 10-20 years or more, there has always been a multi-step process to move data. There were always a number of hoops to jump through to get that done. “What is different about this is a customer that’s using our scanning technology in conjunction with our ScanMaster software, doesn’t have to export a certain file format and then import that back with the CAD Link data. With the link created, as you’re working in ScanMaster software extracting features, those features are automatically and simultaneously populated in the AutoCAD environment. So there is no import/exporting, it’s just happening in real time.”
By creating this link you’ve really streamlined a couple of keystrokes and there is no glitch of having to have compatible versions, it’s a seamless workflow.
CAD Link provides a link between the two worlds of data production and design. “Even if you went to a surveying engineering company you might find surveyors in the basement and the designers are on the second or third floor,” Burgess pointed out. “Now we truly have a product that links these communities together with one piece of software.”
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Tags: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Autodesk University, Cloud, laser scanning, MicroStation, point cloud, TopCon
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