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May 2009

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May 14, 2009

What ya doing Tuesday?

Autodesk is again this year doing a road show highlighting our new products and technologies. It’s called the Autodesk Imagine Tour, focused on turning your “What if” design scenarios into reality. Although we have this event in a dozen North American cities, we realize that not everyone can make it to the show in person. So next Tuesday May 19 we will be hosting a “virtual event” version of the tour on the web. This event will be from 10:00AM to 5:00PM East Coast Time. (meaning it starts at 7AM west coast time – ouch!) 

It’s a pretty cool site - when you enter the Autodesk Imagine Virtual Event site, you see a Plaza simulating a real world event.

 Plaza

There is an Auditorium where various lectures are presented throughout the day.  There is space for networking and general chats.  There is also an exhibit hall with a dozen or so booths, including one for Autodesk Plant Solutions. 

Plant Booth

We will be staffing the Plant Solutions booth with product management, business development and technical specialists. So there will be someone there to chat with you in real time about plant products and plans.  You can also just poke around on your own to download trials, view the screen casts, and get documents such as white papers or customer success stories. 

If you are interested, you can get the details and sign up at our website.  I know I’ll be there for at least half of the day but I’m not sure exactly when – I’m still negotiating to get out of that 7:00AM PDT slot.

May 11, 2009

Green Is the New Black

Last week, I was fortunate to attend a meeting with Amory Lovins, the co-founder and chief scientist from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI).  For decades, Amory Lovins has been influencing governments and corporations around the world on energy efficiency.  We were meeting with him to review some tools that Autodesk offers for Sustainable Design Analysis.  I have to admit I was not aware of options on the “Building” side of the house for green design. Green Building Studio, for example, is an analysis tool that enables architects and designers to evaluate how building elements like window sizes, glazing types, lighting, and roof treatments impact energy consumption. It even takes into account local climate and power production data.  Green Building Studio has this cool “Large SUV” stat, showing a building’s carbon footprint in units of large SUVs.

AutoCAD P&ID 2010 Amory talked about a number of projects that he has been involved with over the years.  The overarching theme was that Green pays for itself if you do it correctly.  He offered an example of retrofitting an existing 20-year old Chicago building – the glass wall windows were failing and needed replacement.  They chose to replace the windows with higher rated ones.  Though the better windows cost more, this cost was quickly recouped and now the building required smaller HVAC units that also ran less often.  He also talked about the retrofit of New York City’s iconic Empire State Building, which will become 38% more energy efficient.  Those were just two of the many examples he offered of “Whole System Design”, in which you may pay more for some parts but you will recover that cost in other systems and in operating costs. 

On the Plant side, one point he made was to consider big fat short pipes and small pumps to get desired flow instead of our more traditional large pumps coupled with smaller but longer pipe runs. Sure, the big fat pipes cost more per unit, but you make up for that in pump costs. He was similarly advocating laying out the pipes first and the equipment second. If you are interested in the details, check out “Tunneling through the Cost Barrier”.

We at Autodesk are still very new to the Plant Design field – but I can see us in the future developing tools similar to Green Building Studio – tools that allow plant designers to quickly and easily do case studies on efficiencies of different plant design options.

The whole system design idea is not rocket science.  And yet, it is not what we are traditionally taught in engineering school.  It’s exciting to see a movement that challenges traditional thought and gives some framework for thinking about sustainable design of plants.  In fact this summer, RMI is undertaking a project they termed 10xE for Factor Ten Engineering.  10xE is an effort to accelerate the adoption of whole system design by, among other things, creating a casebook documenting whole system design results versus standard practice results.   The goal is to show 10-fold increase in resource productivity.

RMI is actively seeking engineers and teachers to join them in 10xE, and they’re looking for existing designs that can be redone by the whole-system approach.  If you are interested, I urge you to check out 10xE and get involved!

April 23, 2009

It's Thursday it must be Holland.

I'm in the Netherlands for a software test drive.  They've given us a video camera.  It's not my thing to watch videos, preferring to read my news and entertainment, so I've already missed a ton of video opportunities.  On the way over here I took a few days in New Orleans - but sadly I have no video to share for there.  Wait, actually, I do have a minute of some street musicians singing one of my favorites standards, Saint James Infirmary.  I'll try to have more trip video to share in a post soon.

The main purpose of this trip is to get feedback from some of our European clients on Stella beta software.  We are looking to validate that we did not miss something big regarding this market's piping software needs.   Until now, most of our feedback has been from North America, so it was time to talk more to people in the Northern European market.  As a secondary aim we hope to gather input on enhancements desired for the next release.  Along the way, we will make a video postcard documenting our visit -- I do hope it turns out well!  We've been having fun with CADTEAM, the reseller here.  Damian (on the left) may even be having too much fun with CADTEAM's senior technical application manager B.J.

DSC02921 DSC02922

clip_image002On the P&ID front, AutoCAD P&ID 2010 has shipped!  This release has several exciting new features such as curved schematic lines, improved inline equipment, end connections on instruments, and project specific tool palette setup.  You can learn more about P&ID 2010 by checking out "what's new" on the learning on the website.  Or you can get a copy via the download a trial link on the AutoCAD P&ID landing page.

April 09, 2009

AutoCAD Plant 3D - Beta 2 Available Now!

Stella_Artois_can_and_bottle copy I guess I could have mentioned this earlier, but AutoCAD Plant 3D Beta 2 is now on the MyFeedback site and available for download.  Beta 2 contains many updates to the functionality of Beta 1.  One highlight is that Beta 2 now works with metric units.  We've also restarted the "Question of the Day" threads on the Stella discussion group.  But please, don't let that stop you from posting other concerns and issues! 

We pay great attention to what is on the MyFeedback site and appreciate all feedback we get. Just last week I did a requirements presentation to our VP staff that was peppered with Beta feedback quotes. It’s great to have quotes so they know the requests are from real users and not just something I made up ;-)

For our Beta users in the US and Canada, we've just kicked off a Model Creation contest. We are looking for models that best demonstrate the features and completeness of AutoCAD Plant 3D. Other criteria used will include the size and complexity of the project, the degree of innovation and the overall quality of the project story. Again, check out the MyFeedback Stella discussion group for details.  What would you do with a $250 Amazon gift card?   

Oh, and no, Beta 2 does not make isometrics . . . yet.  (sigh.)

March 13, 2009

Amazing how it grows

One whirlwind trip to Las Vegas and I'm back already.  I didn't even have time to gamble, not even with the $50 slot credit that came with the hotel room.  Although I did manage to enjoy some fine sushi, some good rum & tonics, to lock myself out of my hotel room at 2:30 AM, and to almost miss my flight home. 

I did not attend the first OTC after we released AutoCAD P&ID.  But last year I did attend OTC and our Autodesk Plant reseller day.  Then, Stephanie and I gave an overview of AutoCAD P&ID 2009 to the resellers.  I want to say there were about a dozen of us in the room.

Today we had another plant reseller day, and I am amazed at the turnout.  We had people from Mexico, Japan, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, England -- and of course for over a half dozen U.S. states.  It is very encouraging to see that Plant is catching on in the reseller network.  I rallied everyone into a photo before the Plant 3D Beta demo - too many to fit clearly into one photo! 

OTC 2009

By the way, the new Plant 3D Beta 2 will post on Monday March 16th - this one has metric along with imperial units.  Please check out Stella on the MyFeedback site if you are interested in taking a look.

March 12, 2009

One night in Vegas

Vegas Baby! I'm off to Las Vegas again for our annual sales conference OTC. That stands for One Team Conference, where our business development, sales and reseller community gets together to see the new products and plan for the upcoming year.  I'm going just for one day to present what is new with AutoCAD P&ID 2010 and to give a Plant 3D preview.

Just briefly, the new items in AutoCAD P&ID 2010 are :

Ribbon P&ID 2010

  • User Interface Enhancements - particularly the Ribbon
  • Restricted access to Project setup - only the people with write access can get into setup
  • Project specific tool palettes setup - making the tool palette changes when the project changes 
  • Curved Schematic Lines  - for those rare times you need to draw curved pipelines
  • Inline Equipment Improvements  - improving behavior when equipment is placed in the middle of existing lines
  • End Connections for Inline Instruments - for example, being about to show control valves as flanged
  • Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) Instrumentation Symbols - we're selling in Japan!
  • Integrated P&ID and Plant 3D environment

This last one will make more sense when we actually release a Plant 3D . . .stay tuned . . .

March 05, 2009

Imagining Data

I'm grabbing lunch (well, at this point, finishing lunch) at my desk and mulling over the topic of data visualization.  Recently I mentioned to a friend that I liked maps, and he sent me to this link to a map by Charles Joseph Minard.  This shows the size and location of Napoleon's army and the low temperatures during the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812.

It's more of a graph than a map and amazingly innovative, especially considering it was first published in 1869. 

Then today I came across this interesting data visualization blog.  It shows how artist/educator, Jer Thorp used the open source "processing" engine to visualize New York Times data.  (New York Times has open APIs, who knew?)  Looking at the cool graphs, it is enough to get me back into coding for a spell.  I'm pondering what I want to use as my source data, what story I want to tell, and how much of my weekend I will dedicate to it.  Yes, I know, I'm living the dream.

These data visualization links got me thinking about Worlde, which produces tag clouds that visualize the frequency of word usage.  I loaded in the data that we collected during our recent interviews in Houston and Calgary to see what the tag cloud would look like.  After minimal massaging, the tag cloud came out like this: 

Research Results

Not surprisingly, Model, File, Project, Drawing and Specs took top billing as data "words".  Surprisingly, Newfoundland got more of a front & center placement than expected.  This clearly needs more research.  Neat, no?

February 23, 2009

Mid-winter Rituals

It's that time of the year again - no, not Mardi Gras -- although Mardi Gras is this week.  I am referring to daratechPLANT 2009.  The Daratech event is where software providers to the Plant industry, large and small, gather in Houston to showcase the latest in solutions for designing, building and maintaining plants of all types and sizes.  I managed to tear myself away from Mardi Gras in New Orleans for this show  - here, a photo of me with A.J. Murphy, who is in charge of business development for Autodesk Plant in the Americans.  In this picture we are about to enjoy a traditional king cake at my turkey fry.  (I have other photos but my editor wouldn't let me post them.)  

I believe this is the 7th time I attend Daratech.  It has been interesting to see all the changes across the years.  When I started attending, there was a focus on software performance and stability -- after all, computers in 2002 didn't have the power we are used to today, and some of the software was a bit raw.   Then there was a shift to data lifecycle management engendering the rise of data warehouse solutions.  In the last few years the focus has become data exchange and integrated solutions.

Autodesk has been exhibiting for the past several years - this year we are showing Autodesk Inventor 2009, AutoCAD NavisWorks 2009, AutoCAD P&ID 2009, and AutoCAD Plant 3D 2010 Beta 2.  We have pods for each application, as well as a demonstration of the integrated solution showing these different applications working together in a plant project environment. . . .ok, I'm going to go back to booth duty.  And to stop dreaming about the trouble I won't be getting into Mardi Gras day.

February 12, 2009

I don't want to brag . . .

... but I will brag anyway.  AutoCAD P&ID 2009, our current shipping version, got an "A" rating in a recent Cadalyst Magazine review.  Way to go, AutoCAD P&ID 2009!  Also, many major Oil & Gas Companies -- I mean "Energy Companies" -- as well as many EPCs, large and small, now have AutoCAD P&ID 2009 in-house.  It is among the best selling products for P&ID creation today with thousands of seats!  Not bad for a product that has only been available for 2 years, no?

I can't say that I'm that involved in AutoCAD P&ID development anymore, so I can't personally take credit.  In my current role on the Autodesk Plant Solutions team, I am mostly involved with bringing client concerns to the team, filling in when our lead designer is out, and showing up to an occasional bug scrub meeting to cause trouble fight for critical fixes.  So I wanted to shout out a big "Good Job!" to the AutoCAD P&ID 2009 team.  Keep up the good work - and I'm excited about what's to come in 2010!

By the way, if you happen to be in Houston next week attending the daratech PLANT 2009 conference (February 23-25) like I am, please swing by the Autodesk booth and say hello! 

February 05, 2009

Bag Envy

A few posts back I showed the messenger bag that was one of the coveted tchotchke offered to Autodesk University (AU) attendees. These bags are made of recycled Autodesk banners, meaning each one in different. Or as marketing material says, "Each one is unique, just like you!"

AU_BannerBagsROTATING I am big fan of a good bag, and this one has displaced my last laptop carrier to become my bag-of-choice.  Why?...Good pockets, nice long adjustable strap, sufficient padding to stop me from cracking another laptop.

Anyway, it turns out we have a few of these bags leftover.  Autodesk is offering them "below cost" via this website, for US$29.99 plus shipping.  The site says : "Sorry, but we cannot accept requests for specific colors or styles. Enjoy the few surprises you get in life! :)"

Yay, surprises! However, if you happen to get a pink one, I'd be more than happy to trade. 

Speaking of AU, you can vote for Autodesk University 2007 in Live Design’s Excellence In Live Design Awards.  Apparently I'm not the only one blown away by AU's event production each year.  That was the "Experience it before it is Real" year, with the big 360 surround screens and the Metropolis demo - a 3D city model presented with a soundscape of city noises. Awesome stuff - this general session eye candy video doesn't do it justice.