Between the Lines

Free Software and Fusion 360 Training for FIRST FRC Teams

We are just a week away from the big 2019 FIRST FRC Destination Deep Space competition reveal and thousands of teams start to formulate their game strategy and begin design their robots for 6 weeks then the competitions begin between teams in regions with some heading for the world finals. Many winning teams see CAD as key to their strategy and design allowing them to better design and simulate as well as generate their Gcode for CAM cutting of parts.... Read more →

Generative Design for Industrial Machinery

Have you heard all the news about generative design, but not certain how it might be a benefit to you and the industrial equipment you design? Here is a great opportunity to learn more in a free live webinar. Generative design leverages artificial intelligence and cloud computing to enable engineers to simultaneously generate and explore multiple CAD-ready solutions based on real-world manufacturing constraints and product performance requirements. Unlike topology optimization, the software explores all the possible permutations of a solution,... Read more →

Happy Holidays

No matter the holiday you celebrate or not, I wanted to wish you a nice time as we at Autodesk begin our annual week of rest. We are taking off the time to see family, friends, and perhaps catch up on email and sleep. The Autodesk Portland Office is extremely festive thanks to our Enterprise Data Management Team filling our large data panels with fireplace videos and a drinking actor Nick Offerman running in a video loop instead of the... Read more →

BunnyBots 2018

If you are in Portland Oregon tomorrow Saturday December 22nd, and have kids or like robots or both, then there is a perfect inspiring event happening and free. The BunnyBot is a bunch of FIRST FRC Teams competing in a pre season events involving stuffed cute bunnies. Its action packed and a competition where the robot design, build, and programming is all by the high school students. The game also takes cooperation and strategy as well as being gracious professionals.... Read more →

Smelly Glitter Bomb for Surprise Package For Thieves Designed Using Autodesk Fusion 360

I have always said that we at Autodesk have the most awesome and creative customers in the world, and to that point I submit another fine example. Having personally been a victim of a package thief that stole my package from my doorstep and made off with my new yoga mat, I would rather have boobytrapped my stolen package like Mark Rober and Sean Hodgins did. These two are in my top admired people doing good things and should be... Read more →

New Version of Netfabb & 3D Printed Awards

There has been a new update of Netfabb released and some may not be aware of what Netfabb is, or the amazing things it can do for 3D printing. The sweet spots in the update are the changes to latticing, update to latticing, the new interface, new machine integrations, and some updates to Netfabb simulation to speed up your process and improve the accuracy of your results. What’s New in Autodesk Netfabb 2019.1 We used Netfabb for the process to... Read more →

LEAP Design Competition in Portland

This weekend the final judging of the Linking Engineering and Philanthropy (LEAP) design contest for local FIRST Robotic FRC Teams was held at Mercy Corp in Portland Oregon. The high school FRC Team 1540 Flaming Chickens from Catlin Gabel that I have worked with for a few years founded LEAP and run it. Autodesk was again a proud sponsor with the prize money and Mercy Corp was the non profit recipient, awesome host, and defined the challenge and need for... Read more →

Puppies, Kitties, Beer, Gifts, Bad Sweaters and Gingerbread all for a Good Cause

Yesterday in the Autodesk Portland Oregon office, we held a fun event in the afternoon. Two volunteer employer groups Ministry of Mischief and Impact Team partnered to have fun and support some good local causes. The Impact Team supported making the holidays better for a local family and gathering things they needed for their family. The Ministry of Mischief organized the donation to the Oregon Humane Society and they brought puppies and kittens into the office. Also for fun by... Read more →

Weekend in the Islands

Its Monday and a gloomy overcast winter one here in the Autodesk Portland office, but the past weekend I finally visited a place in the Pacific Northwest I had been wanting to go to for awhile and thought I would recommend you do the same if you visit Washington State. I drove up to Washington's San Juan islands and then down the beautiful forested Olympic peninsula. The islands are not tropical and can be cold especially in the winter, but... Read more →

My Autodesk Global Month of Giving - ChickTech

ChickTech is a non-profit organization supporting women and girls in tech with community, education, and inspiration. ChickTech is dedicated to retaining women in the technology workforce and increasing the number of women and girls pursuing technology-based careers. It’s a great group of people and cause and they just lost a major source of their funding and need everyone's help. I'm challenging everyone to help ChickTech as they are not just helping Portland young women to get into STEM careers, but... Read more →

Pi Day for PIE

If you are located in beautiful and innovative Portland Oregon and love new technology from startups then you should absolutely RSVP and mark your calendars for Pi Day 2019 and the PIE Demo Day 2019. PIE is the Portland Incubator Experiment and all about nurturing startups and their founders. We believe in PIE so much we provide space in our Autodesk Portland office for the PIE Shop incubator currently with 7 startup companies and also PDX Women in Technology (PDXWIT)... Read more →

Autodesk Generative Design Beta for AEC – Project Refinery

At Autodesk have used our generative design for architecture and layout to design our MaRS office in Toronto and an intelligent flow and layout for Autodesk University, now we are making it available as a beta publicly for you to try it and provide your requests and feedback. “Project Refinery is an Autodesk generative design beta for the architecture, engineering and construction industry that gives users the power to quickly explore and optimize their Dynamo designs. Project Refinery not only... Read more →

Autodesk Proudly Supports STEAM Education

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Spend your #HourofCode this week using Tinkercad and coding with Autodesk Tinkercad Codeblocks: autode.sk/2OIfaHC “No experience preferred All you have to do is start” Read more →

Apollo 11 Command Module in 3D

Autodesk has had a great relationship with one of the most amazing collections and museums in the world, the Smithsonian. Having been there several times and met with teams I have an even greater personal connection appreciation of the museums, collections, and the people preserving history. A few years ago I was involved in the project kicking off on a bold project to digitally preserve 137 million objects in the collection which even includes the National Zoo with living animals.... Read more →