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Archive for November, 2011

Top ten trends of social media — innovation as per Randi Zuckerberg

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

At AU 2011 today, Randi Zuckerberg, Harvard grad and sister of the infamous Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, spoke on her experience and the impact of social media on our lives today. She went to work for her brother’s company after a stint of advertising in New York.

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Carl Bass Q&A at AU 2011

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

One of the best parts of Autodesk Media Day yesterday was the Q&A conducted with CEO Carl Bass.

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Media Day at Autodesk University 2011

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Today’s Media Day at Autodesk University at the Venetian in Las Vegas attracted 95 bloggers and journalists coming from 80 different countries. Also they expected 8,000 attendees to attend the event.

Chris Bradshaw, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, spoke on the topic, “Autodesk’s Evolving story,” in which he outlined the company’s history in relation to the changing technology.

He said revenues come from all three geographies – more than half the revenue comes from outside North America. Revenue breaks down to 28% from AEC, 24% from manufacturing, 10% from Media and Entertainment and 38% from PSEB.

He talked about how Autodesk was born during a disruptive time period of the mainframe shifting over to the personal computer. Yet today’s times are more disruptive, as the desktop internet went to a billion users. “With mobile devices we’re projecting 10s of billions of units,” said Bradshaw. “Many will have more than one of these things. I would guess many here have more than one mobile device, more than one accessing the cloud.” Which was proven with a show of hands in the room.

Steve Blum, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales & Services, spoke on “Customer Challenges.” He said that with the cloud you can leverage infinite computing and run a thousand different “what if” scenarios is 15 minutes and choose the best design option that meets your needs. The cloud and mobile are changing the way people get their jobs done.

Amar Hanspal, senior vice president, Platofrm Solutions and Emerging Solutions and Emerging Solutions, talked on “The Age of Empowerment.”

“Today we have to look at what do we do when everyone is connected, how do we reimagine this?” Hanspal pointed out that social media wouldn’t exist if everyone wasn’t connected. “The minute we use the cloud, people assume we’re using a vendor made cloud product. What we’re trying to do is use the cloud where it’s useful and adds to the cloud, not cloud for cloud’s sake.”

The cloud is good for Connectivity, Content, Infinite computing, and Design for everyone.

Brian Matthews talked about 3D printing and laser scanning, stating that 3D printing “will change the world.”

Additionally he listed six major technology disruptions:
Reality capture, cloud data, infinite computing, simulation, digital to analog.

See @editorgisaeccafe on Twitter

Bentley i-models description

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Bentley i-models are being used greatly by many of the finalists for the Be Inspired Awards. I thought it would be a good idea to do a refresh on Bentley i-models.

Bentley i-models are a container that can hold an entire 3D model, a revision history and where the information comes from, and can be exported to those who need to see this information or series of files. The author can embed access rights into the model, support digital signatures and take measurements or extract information from this information. It cannot be changed, but notes can be attached to it. It is a .dgn file, but it has the capability of bringing in other material such as Revit files using the previously released Revit plug-in. It honors all file formats and standards such as ISO 15926, IFCs, XML.

The i-model is not really another format, it’s another way to share information with team members or other stakeholders. Similar to a zip file, when you open it you can see its contents. It will be particularly useful for plant and process and other large-scope projects with multiple and diverse processes.

A big question is, how big is it? In comparison with a regular model file, perhaps a BIM file, the i-Model would be at a ratio of 10 to 1.

Point cloud data made usable

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

At Bentley Be Inspired last week, one of the most profound announcements was that of the company’s acquisition of Pointools Ltd. in order to integrate point cloud processing into its entire product portfolio. Bentley plans to merge their code streams with those of Pointools to create a new fundamental data type. Up until now, Bentley has embedded the Pointools Vortex engine into MicroStation, but now they plan to incorporate point cloud processing in their ProjectWise and AssetWise platforms.

This signals an acknowledgement of the importance of Lidar data for various applications, not only for retrofit projects but also for planning and presentation value. The technology has been circling around the AEC industry for awhile but has been hampered until recently by the inability to efficiently get the large amounts of 3D data processed accurately. With great advancements in point cloud processing, it is now being integrated into mainstream CAD products like Bentley’s.

At Be Inspired, many of the winners and finalists were using 3D laser scanning in innovative ways in their projects, for example in the areas of multimedia, water and wastewater, and process manufacturing.

The Pointools/Bentley relationship is not the only evidence of this trend – Autodesk also has announced rather quietly the acquisition of technology assets and and hiring of individuals associated with the Alice Labs technology, according to Michael Oldenburg, manager, Corporate Communications, Autodesk.

The announcement of what Autodesk plans to do with this new acquisition is most likely being saved for Autodesk University, to be held December 28 in Las Vegas.

Another company that has just acquired 3D laser point cloud software is AVEVA, with its recent acquisition of LFM Software. This addition to the AVEVA portfolio offers a comprehensive range of technologies exploiting the power of 3D laser surveying. This technology is said to allow users to import 3D data from various 3D laser scanning formats and export them to plant design systems.

On the path of point cloud processing is ClearEdge 3D, a company that has developed algorithms to identify and extract pipes, walls, structures and other complex building and plant features from point clouds. Their Automated Feature Extraction algorithms are designed to reduce modeling time and eliminate a lot of the manual production associated with 3D models.

This is a topic we will be hearing more about in the near future.




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