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.
Archive for November, 2011
Carl Bass Q&A at AU 2011
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011One of the best parts of Autodesk Media Day yesterday was the Q&A conducted with CEO Carl Bass.
Media Day at Autodesk University 2011
Monday, November 28th, 2011Today’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.
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Bentley i-models description
Monday, November 21st, 2011Bentley 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.