Autodesk

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and R.K. McSwain at the Expert Elite Lunch, Las Vegas, NV, 2012-11-28

One of the events at AU2012 was a special luncheon on Wed., Nov 28. to announce the creation of the Expert Elite group, a select group of individual community members who have been recognized for their extraordinary contributions, helping customers by sharing knowledge, providing community leadership, and exemplifying an engaging style of collaboration that drives a healthy and valuable Autodesk customer community.

I was honored to be included among this groups initial members, composed of approximately sixty worldwide members. If you participate in the Autodesk forums, you may have noticed the term "Expert Elite" in use on some of the user titles. We have been empowered to better share our knowledge, while supporting our peers and the Autodesk Community in general.

It's been a busy summer and fall 2012, you may have noticed fewer posts here than normal. Things are going to pick up starting Monday, the first day of AU2012. We'll be in Las Vegas blogging and tweeting, live from the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino

Here is some recent AU2012 news from Shaan Hurley over at Between the Lines.

If you are attending AU and this is your first time, try to make the Freshman Orientation, Monday, November 26, 5:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. 

Freshman or not, the AU survival tips are always good to read, and practice.

See you next week!

Autodesk has published a knowledge base article describing the products which are currently supported on Windows 8.

The article is pretty short, essentially two sentences. But those two sentences are very interesting.

1. Autodesk intends to support many of our key products on Windows 8 and will add additional products to the list of products supported on Windows 8 as updates and future versions are released.
2. Product Support will provide its best effort to assist customers who have issues with products that are not currently supported.

So, it looks like more products will be supported, going even back to 2010 versions, and they will provide some support for products that are not "officially supported". The full KB article is here.

Although Autodesk Revit is not a tool I use, I did want to pass on some news that hit the Revit world recently. Autodesk Revit LT was announced this week. This is a simplified application designed to help small AEC firms transition to a BIM workflow with a cost-effective tool built on the Revit platform.

Below is some basic information from Autodesk. Please visit the home page for Revit LT for more details.

Image Courtesy Autodesk

I was excited to be invited to the Autodesk Media Summit last week at the Autodesk Gallery at Market One, in San Francisco. I arrived on Monday evening, a little late for the pre-event get together hosted by TechSoft 3D. However, the next morning we met next door at the Autodesk Gallery for a light breakfast and then quickly got started with the main event – a live webcast to introduce the Autodesk 2013 product line. 

The media room just prior to getting started Tuedsay morning

Users from all over tuned in via the Autodesk facebook page, while about 90 of us watched it live in person. I am sure we were burning up the Autodesk_Guest WiFi with all the live blog posts and tweets being sent out from the event. Carl Bass, President and Chief Executive Officer (@carlbass), led off the event by discussing how Autodesk received grief for predicting 10% growth last year. They ended up at 14% growth. Some of the interesting facts mentioned: 75% of Autodesk’s business is from outside the United States; in the past 30 years, AutoCAD has built a user base of about 12 million (legal) users, while the cloud based product AutoCAD WS has built a user base of over 7 million in only 2 years, with drawing uploads to AutoCAD WS over 300,000 per week.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass - Image Courtesy Autodesk

Last month, I wrote an article for the CADSPEED blog describing a great program where Autodesk and Lenovo teamed up to outfit a deserving small business with new hardware, software, and training - at no cost. Yes, you read that right. FREE software, hardware, software, and training. Who? How? When? Why? Check out the article and watch the YouTube videos linked on that page.

So why am I bringing this up again? Because Autodesk and Lenovo are going to do it again! Are you a small business in need of a "Technology Makeover"? Are you running "non-current" Autodesk software? State your case from now until February 23, 2012 on the AutoCAD > Tech Makeover Contest page on Facebook. Your small business could be the next recipient of this awesome deal which includes up to five Lenovo® ThinkStation® workstations and five licenses of the Autodesk® Design Suite software of your choice. Full details and all of the contest rules are available here.

Final winners will be announced on March 22. If you would like to speak with anyone from Autodesk or Lenovo about why they are doing this, leave me a comment and I will put you in touch with the right people.

Well, probably....if you are in the U.S. and unless you have to work on Friday or the weekend. I had planned on another informative AU2011 post today, but I'm finishing up work because I do have ZERO work days in between today and the week following AU.

So because time is short, I'll just leave you with Lynn Allen's latest AU Las Vegas 2011 Primer

Get ready for a BIG announcement from Autodesk tomorrow, August 16, at 10AM PDT.

You can get a sneak preview by checking out this Youtube video, and the AutoCAD facebook page.

Once upon a time, it was reported that the Autodesk assistance program which provides free software and training for "veteran or unemployed individual who has...previously worked in the architecture, engineering, design or manufacturing industries" was going to expire in January 2011.

At last check, there does not seem to be an expiration date for this program

The Autodesk Assistance Program provides FREE versions of the latest software, and free Autodesk product training. Click on the link below for important DETAILS.

Autodesk assistance program

Some of the products eligible for a FREE software license include:

• AutoCAD®
• AutoCAD® Civil 3D®
• Autodesk® Revit® MEP Suite
• AutoCAD® Architecture
• Autodesk® Alias® Design
• AutoCAD® Electrical
• AutoCAD® Mechanical

View the full list at http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=download_center

If you missed the Autodesk webcast this afternoon, some quick highlights are...

• Focus and attention swaying towards "Design Suites" and visualization.
• Some of the Design Suites available are for AEC, Manufacturing, Entertainment, and Generic.
• Design Suites will ship on a USB key.
• Design Suites will be available in three levels; Standard, Premium, and Ultimate.
• The Autodesk Design Suite will include the 2012 versions of AutoCAD, Sketchbook Designer, Mudbox, and Showcase, 3ds Max, and Alias Design.
• The Infrastructure Design Suite will include Map 3D, Civil 3D, 3ds Max, and Navisworks.
• You can still purchase individual software applications, you do not have to purchase a suite to get AutoCAD 2012 for example.
• Inventor Fusion will be included with AutoCAD 2012.

More details coming soon.