Computer Graphics World

July 2009 44 n n n n Visualization time finite-element analysis. Regardless of today's personal computer advances, they pale in comparison to what can be accom- plished by a legion of servers 'rented' for just a few seconds." In the case of Showroom, the rented serves let you see, in a matter of seconds, what the room looks like with stainless steel doors and a marble floor instead of oiled bronze doors and ivory tiles, for instance. Currently, Project Showroom offers three prototype environments: two kitchens and a bathroom. But nothing prevents a home decorator from capturing the 3D geom- etry of another environment—say, a living room or a bedroom, complete with bed- ding, curtains, and window blinds—and making it configurable via Project Show- room technology. Just as most manufacturers would gener- ate a bill of materials (BOM) for produc- tion, sourcing, and cost estima- tion, Project Showroom lets you generate the room's content as a list, complete with thumbnails of each cabinet and floor tiles. Currently, the viewport window remains static (you cannot move your cursor around to zoom, pan, or shift perspective), but with increased back-end support, the room could easily be presented as a dynamic panorama. Project Showroom now lives on Au- todesk Labs (labs.autodesk.com), where the company previews its works in progress. You can test- drive it for free. e latest update to the application lets you share your room by e-mailing a link or posting the rendered view to your Facebook profile. Floor Plans on the Fly In March 2008, Joshua Hall, a product designer and software engineer, filed a report titled "Autodesk: Code-named Project Dragonfly" on his blog "Surreal Notions." Hall wrote, "For the last few months I have worked with an extremely talented team. We have explored numerous potential product concepts and several innovative UI models to make those products both com- petitive and unique.… Our product de- signs focus on leveraging existing Autodesk technologies across the emerging Software as a Service (SaaS) distribution channel.… Once a beta of the product is released, I'll speak about it in more depth." e beta version of Project Dragonfly is now live on Autodesk Labs, the same site where you'll find Project Showroom. Like Project Showroom, Project Dragon- fly lets you use a browser to configure a room. Whereas Project Showroom allows you to experiment with applying different materials in a predefined environment (the 3D geometry of the room is fixed), Proj- ect Dragonfly lets you start from an empty floor plan, a template, or a furnished space from the gallery. e drag-and-drop inter- face lets you instantly resize the floor plan, with parametric values visible so you can adjust it to your preferred dimensions. Should you choose to expand your room, you can attach add-on shapes to the area to increase its size. Similarly, you can add walls or wall openings to create partitions or open up space within your plan. When you're placing appliances and furniture in a virtual room (say, a plasma TV in the bedroom), the intelligent alignment sys- tem automatically suggests various possible positions and orientations (parallel to the wall, for instance). You can also rotate the item at will, but if your rotation makes the items collide with nearby objects (adjacent walls or tables), you'll get a visual prompt urging you to seek alternatives. So why call it Project Dragonfly? Amanda Collins, Autodesk Labs' marketing manager, had a theory: "Dragonflies often symbolize change. In Japanese art, they often represent light and joy." But Autodesk's Brian Souder, one of the original program managers be- hind the product, had a more scientific an- swer, explained in a colleague's blog: "e original development team simply liked the engineering behind the insect." Project Dragonfly now has a homepage on Facebook, too, allowing you to join the community and get feedback on your floor plans. If it ever becomes a product, Dragonfly has commercial potential as a solution for facilities managers, decorators, and architects to propose layouts, complete with appliances, electronics, and furniture based on what's currently available from retail and wholesale outlets. CAD Viewing as a Service Frequently, industrial designers and engi- neers working in costly CAD programs faced a quandary. ey felt the need to share their work with colleagues in pur- chasing or marketing, but couldn't deliver AfterCAD uses cloud computing for its AfterCAD online viewing and markup tool. Additional 3D support is powered by Ogre, an open-source 3D game engine.

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