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Posts Tagged ‘AEC’

Dell displays new mobile workstations

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Richard Runnells, Precision Workstations & IVS Mktg.for Dell Precision Workstations, spoke with AECCafe’s Sanjay Gangal at Autodesk University 2011 in Las Vegas in December. Between 9,000-10,000 attendees were reported at the conference.

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NVIDIA Demos Multi-tasking Graphics Card Options

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Andrew Cresci, General Manager for NVIDIA talked with AECCafe’s Sanjay Gangal about NVIDIA’s news at Autodesk University 2011.

Sanjay: What brings you to this conference?

Andrew: AEC, Media and Entertainment and Manufacturing are the meat and potatoes of our business. We offer visualization and computation which makes this the perfect show for us.




Sanjay: Tell us about NVIDIA – how much has the company been involved in the CAD/CAM world?

Andrew: It’s the heart & soul of our business – 40% of our business. Autodesk is a big partner with huge volume. Historically, we’ve been providing high quality displays and visualization. More recently, we focused on simulation and rendering. We’re announcing Maximus technology. Because of the collapsing workflow, more people doing more workflow than ever before. People doing solid modeling and rendering multitasking and wanting to do these activities simultaneously. Maximus puts a huge GPU and graphics GPU into the same machine, and so you can keep running Autodesk Inventor or AutoCAD and can kick off 3D Studio Max rendering at the same time. People love this. If you’re running Inventor, it keeps running your analysis as you did before.

Sanjay: If someone says I need a graphics card for modeling or simulation, what’s the most powerful option?

Andrew: I would suggest the Maximus configuration, all the OEMS are shipping Maximus configurations, which is basically two GPUs in the system, one is for graphics and one for computing. Other than that you can ask for Quadro. We do some great Quadro cards all the way from Quadro 600 to 6,000. The cards have 6 GB memory. On the Tesla family of GPUs, there is the C2075, if you want to go down to the card level. Or use Maximus.

When Carl Bass was talking to the press, he spoke of Project Pandora. This is for the 3D Studio Max audience and allows you to render in the cloud. Users have wanted us to build a bigger machine for their rendering. When you click render in Pandora, instead of rendering locally it will render in the cloud. And it will shoot it off to the cloud. It can throw 32 GPUs at this. Something that would take a day and half I can get done in an hour. Pandora is in technology preview, and will release in an upcoming version of 3D Studio Max. It is a joint project with Autodesk.

Sanjay: How do people find out more about NVIDIA?
Andrew: Go to NVIDIA.com

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.

Be Inspired Bentley Thought Leadership Conference starts Monday in Amsterdam

Friday, November 4th, 2011

On Saturday, I fly to Amsterdam to attend the Be Inspired Bentley Thought Leadership Conference held at the Hotel Okura.

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Coming soon: SolidWorks LiveBuildings AEC product

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

At SolidWorks World this past week a new AEC type product was announced: SolidWorks Live Buildings (SWLB).  Its focus is on offering designers and architects an immersive environment to quickly design structure, floor layout and even put in furniture. Positioning the building for better sun access may also be possible with the product, making it a candidate for building sustainability. Watchers say the product feels like SketchUp at first glance, with similar abilities to pull in information from other models and drag and drop information.




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