Computer Graphics World

CAD—and Autodesk is focused on mov- ing them on to its advanced tool families built around Revit and Inventor. As part of the plan, Autodesk has been building out its product line to incorporate more analysis of every kind into its prod- ucts. e idea is that the more users who can test the possibilities of a design, the better the design. While analysis has tra- ditionally been associated with mechanical CAD and, specifically, finite-element anal- ysis, in reality, analysis is part of all aspects of design. After all, the first question of any design is, will it work? Autodesk has been steadily incorporat- ing the traditional types of analysis into its products with technology licensed from Ansys. In addition, the company acquired PlassoTech in the summer of 2007 to in- crease its in-house analysis capabilities, and in 2008, the company further increased its portfolio with the acquisition of Moldflow. And, just a week or so after AU, Auto- desk announced the acquisition of analysis pioneer Algor for $34 million. With this, Autodesk rounds out its analysis portfolio and offers a suite a capabilities quite broad in comparison to competitors PTC, Das- sault/SolidWorks, and Siemens. Like digital prototyping, Autodesk is ex- panding the concept of analysis to include a variety of approaches and disciplines, includ- ing stress analysis, structural engineering, civ- il engineering, site planning, environmental evaluation, cost analysis, project planning, and so forth. e challenge of bringing the cost efficiencies exploited so well in the man- ufacturing side of industry to architecture means enabling contractors from different companies and different disciplines to com- municate, and Autodesk has been putting a set of tools together to enable that. It's All About Design Designers are cool. Industrial designers and architects are pretty much the rock stars of the CAD world. Don't believe it? Go to a Pecha Kucha, a hip party featuring all kinds of designers who describe the pro- cess to a project with 20 slides delivered in 20 seconds per slide. Autodesk refined the idea with DesignSlams—which combined the Pecha Kucha concept with a poetry slam. Designers had 20 minutes to deliver a concept while rock music played and judges watched the designers work. ere were two segments: one for architecture and one for industrial design. Design is cool, but designing with the tools we currently have is hard. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, who some- how manages to embody a stern practical- ity with enthusiastic vision, prowled the stage during his keynote, literally putting the spotlight on cool, new developments and products. He got a lot of help in the oh-wow department from Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski. Neither of them bothered showing the audience the new stuff in AutoCAD. However, Bass did quote Linus Pauling, who said that the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. Autodesk has lots of ideas, and at AU, the company dem- onstrated some of the work in progress. For example, Autodesk showed a conceptualiza- tion approach that enabled users to create variations on a design using biomimicry principles. e idea is that once you have a general shape, the computer can algo- rithmically generate new variations on that shape to help spark new ideas. Now, here's a chicken-and-egg question: Are designs be- coming more organic because the tools are enabling surfaces and more fluid shapes, or are tools better able to handle and produce organic shapes because designers are doing more of this kind of work? ere's a cross- pollination going on, and it will continue. It's technology that has been around for a while and has been demonstrated by Bent- ley Systems as well as Autodesk—and by in- dependent third-party developers that have created plug-ins for products such as 3ds Max. We've also seen similar approaches for color, including Adobe's Kuler plug-in and AIR application. In a phone conversation with designer Eric Adigard of MAD Studio just after the keynote, he agreed that itera- tive design is a powerful tool and says, "e way for the designer to fight back against the computer is to demand that it come up with alternatives." Autodesk also brought its ideas about digital prototyping out to the stage—in a spectacular demonstration of the capabili- ties of rapid prototyping and new materi- als, a motorcycle built entirely out of parts generated by a Stratasys rapid-prototyping machine was lowered to the stage… and started up. Its lights came on, and an en- gine noise emanated from the cycle. But, as a matter of due diligence, it's worthwhile to add that Stratasys competitors Objet and NextGen both expressed doubts that the Douglas Look of Auto desk Labs demonstrates how far more intuitive working in Inventor might be with a multi touch computer. In this case, Autodesk worked with Perceptive Pixel to create a multitouch interface. January 2009 37 CAD n n n n

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