Autodesk Inventor Punches Its Way into Robot Combat League
This is a new kind of hand-to-hand combat. Here, size doesn’t matter. In this arena, a geeky software engineer has just as much a chance of landing a crippling blow as a hurdle-jumping Olympian, and a video game player can be just as lethal as a National Guard veteran or a professional Muay Thai fighter. Welcome to Robot Combat League (RCL), SyFy’s new reality TV show, where human opponents battle each other through mechanical avatars. Continue reading
The New Frontier in Digital Design: Automating Optimization
Editors like to nitpick, not just about when to use semicolons and em dashes but also about the way specific terms are used in publications. The term that has lately been stirring up discussions and debates among DE editors is optimization. Last weekend, after visiting Altair‘s office in Troy, Michigan, I found myself deep in conversation with managing editor Jamie Gooch and executive editor Steve Robbins about the very topic. It’s important for us to have consensus because we’re considering a number of articles devoted to the subject in the year-end issue. The tone, the stories, and the perspectives of these stories will very likely be determined by how we define optimization. Continue reading
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Autodesk 2013 Product Line: Naturally Cloud-Centric
Two weeks ago, under an overcast March morning sky, a group of tech reporters began arriving at the Autodesk Gallery, a customer briefing center and a showroom overlooking the Ferry Building. The two-day event was Autodesk’s annual media summit to give members of the trade press a glimpse of the upcoming products in 2013. Outside, gray clouds above the Bay Bridge were a constant menace to commuters struggling to stay dry. In the conference room, however, Cloud (with a capital C) carried the promise of sunnier days in design and engineering. Continue reading
Autodesk Inventor Engineer-to-Order: Your Customers May Now Design Their Own Products
Mass customization — the use of configurable product definitions to allow buyers to specify their own requirements — has been a dream for many manufacturers for quite some time. Imagine being able to offer a website where car buyers can specify the bumper, hood, tire, engine, and even sticker they want to create a product that fits their own tastes and preferences. It’s not that difficult to offer such a function through a series of drop-down menus on a web page, of course. But can you provide instant visual feedback and spit out a new quote every time the customer changes something? That’s the market Autodesk is now going after with Autodesk Inventor Engineer-to-Order. Continue reading
Autodesk Subscribers Get Cloud Club Membership for Free
If you have ever purchased something through Amazon.com (perhaps a book, CD, or DVD), you may already be an Amazon cloud club member, with the privilege to access up to 5 GB of online storage space. Through this free storage offer (launched in March), people who have registered with Amazon can get what amounts to a virtual vault, available to store sound files, digital images, video clips — pretty much anything that can be saved in bits and bytes.
This week, Autodesk announced something similar. If you’re an Autodesk subscriber, the privilege to access Autodesk Cloud — roughly a dozen cloud-hosted functions embedded in the company’s design software titles, along with 3 GB of storage space — is now yours.
Going Beyond Online Vaults
Critics often cite security and encryption — or a lack of them — as vulnerabilities of the emerging cloud-computing model; however, the use of virtual vaults is clearly gaining momentum among consumers and professionals alike, as seen by the increasing usage of cloud-hosted storage like Dropbox in group projects.
Data storage is part of the recently launched Autodesk Cloud. Perhaps more important, Autodesk’s strategy also includes the deployment of remote servers — equipped with far more processing power than what’s typically available in desktops and laptops — to deliver software functions.
The list of initial web services made available to Autodesk subscribers include:
- Autodesk Cloud rendering, which allows you to render photo-realistic scenes and 3D images of products through remote hardware;
- Autodesk Inventor optimization, which allows you to experiment with multiple design alternatives and select the best;
- Autodesk Revit Conceptual Energy Analysis, which allows you to analyze building energy consumption and energy-related costs;
- Autodesk Green Building Studio, which allows you to obtain environmental footprint of architectural designs and experiment with alternatives; and
- Autodesk Buzzsaw software as a service (SaaS), which allows you to collaborate, manage data, and manage projects online.
Some functions, such as remote rendering and Inventor optimization, are available only to subscribers with Premium or Ultimate editions of Autodesk product suites. Autodesk plans to work with third-party infrastructure providers, including Amazon and Citrix, to operate a scalable cloud computing setup.
The initial round of web services are not available to Autodesk customers without subscription. The plan may be the company’s strategy to lure more people to sign up for its annual subscription, making it easier to justify the added cost with cloud-hosted benefits.
New Territories for the Design Software Maker
The use of web services, which bypasses the need to install and master professional software packages, has led Autodesk to tiptoe into consumer-friendly offerings (historically not Autodesk’s primary focus) with applications such as Autodesk Homestyler software and Autodesk Seek. Though not highly publicized, Autodesk business segments now include a Consumer Group, formed less than a year ago.
Products introduced through Autodesk Consumer Group showed “mixed success,” but “something started to change with tablets,” noted Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk’s VP of suites and web services. Among Autodesk’s tablet and smartphone apps, consumer-friendly SketchBook Mobile stands apart as one of the greatest successes.
Some desktop clients that used to be a standard part of Autodesk products, such as Autodesk Design Review, may also be transitioning to become mobile apps. Design Review Mobile, released on September 25, is now available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch at Apple app store. Design Review Mobile gives tablet and smartphone users instant access to drawings and files saved on Autodesk Cloud.
As Autodesk expands its web services, the company may have to consider new licensing schemes: For example, giving away a basic level of rendering rights for free, but charging subscribers additional fees for excessive demands. In addition, Autodesk must now take on additional responsibilities to ensure its cloud-hosted storage and services are reinforced with robust fail-over, replication, encryption, and data synchronization plans — something the company previously didn’t need to worry about.
