RobiNZ CAD Blog

Free Autodesk Software for ALL Schools, Teachers, and Students Worldwide!

I arrived back from Tibet to find some very welcome news from Shaan Hurley. Autodesk now provides students, teachers and schools WORLDWIDE with free* access to Autodesk software: 3-year licenses of 80 titles of the exact same software that our commercial customers use. Free Software for ALL Schools, Teachers, and Students Worldwide! - No Catch or Fine Print! – Between The Lines Blog Hooray! I have been anxiously awaiting this for years. Effective today, Autodesk provides FREE access to our software to students, teachers and schools around the world. If you are an engineering school or teach CAD drafting or... Read more →

The new Autodesk.com and 2014 products revealed

Autodesk have unveiled a new look Autodesk.com and announced their 2014 product updates. The new look Autodesk, hinted at earlier this month, comes with updates to existing products, new applications, revised industry specific Design Suites and Autodesk 360 Cloud Services. Check out the announcement below and details at http://www.autodesk.com/ I’ve had a peak a some of the 2014 line-up and will be posting about the release product when they are available. Read more →

Preparation before installing Autodesk software (and my 3ds Max removal tip)

I was removing an existing Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium 2012 install prior to test deploying the 2013 version. Most of the components (AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor Fusion, Showcase etc.) uninstalled fine but I struck a problem with 3DS Max Design 2012. It failed as was unable to access a set of user profile related folders on the particular machine. They were standard folders with resources etc. found (in Win 7 at least): C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\ For some reason the (un)installer could not access these folders from the admin logon (as used for the install) and failed. The user logon had been removed... Read more →

A CAD geek walks into a bar… This is my Life

A CAD geek walks into a bar… is not the start of a joke but just one of those small world coincidences that happens when you live in a small country. A couple of years back I went along to Auckland Skeptics in the Pub expecting to meet some interesting new folks (and did) with no idea it would converge with my Autodesk world. About the same time TVNZ were screening a futuristic local drama production: This Is Not My Life. It was set in a fictional seaside town “Waimoana”. This was filmed using a business park near my work... Read more →

The Autodesk 2012 Launch Aquatic with Salesoft CAD Solutions

It takes something special to lure you into an underground bunker filled with sharks. After a photo at the door (easier to ID the remains?) it was quite a trek, stopping to observe the Penguin Colony, to the Antarctic Hut and an auditorium lined tanks of huge stingray & fish. A welcoming drink & tasty finger food satisfied the appetite although you wondered if the seafood watching from the tanks realised some of what we were eating was seafood. No chance of a quick exit as it was guarded by sharks and, anyway, we were here to see design software:... Read more →

Autodesk Labs Project Photofly 2, ready to make models for you!

A couple of weeks back I showed the scene below in a presentation on “bImformation modelling” for the Auckland Revit User Group. It was created with Autodesk Labs Project Photofly technology which assembles a collection of 2D digital camera images into a 3D spatial arrangement then generates a 3D point cloud spatial model. This allows measurement & line geometry to be traced. Using the TV as a reference dimension I was amazed it captured the size of a painting in an adjacent room, not even directly photographed, to within 0.5cm! The Photofly editor also found edges (the white vertical dimension)... Read more →

The Bach - Dan & Zac’s Revit & 3ds Max Tutorial

Dan Jurgens has posted a great Revit/3ds Max tutorial originally presented at RTC 2010. A detailed white paper, Vimeo hosted screen capture videos and sample datasets are available via their post below. An awesome resource for the Revit/Max community, especially if (like me) you didn’t get to see it at RTC. Visualise Revit designs fast with 3ds Max, mental ray and V-Ray (2010) | nzdan | RTC 2010 Zac and I presented the “Visualise Revit conceptual designs fast with 3ds Max, mental ray and V-Ray ” whitepaper at the RTC 2010 conference in May, please see all the details below.... Read more →

Back to the CAD Blog, the old dog, new tricks?

Ok, that post did go live on April 1 and I admit thought there might have been more reaction to RobiNZ Revit Blog. It wasn’t really an April Fool as it wasn’t all false. I do now own AutoCAD Revit Architecture Suite but firmly subscribe to picking the best Computer Aided DESIGN tool that gets the job done. I can’t imagine not having access to the AutoCAD (actually AutoCAD Architecture) box of tricks but likewise wouldn’t want to be without Revit. However with both (and 3ds Max Design) life is Suite, I mean sweet!* So the blog name has reverted... Read more →

It’s Autodesk 2011 time

It’s the time of year when Autodesk unleash new versions of their applications. I just finished watching a webcast announcing the AutoCAD, AEC, Manufacturing and Visualisation products. “With the release of these powerful applications, the 2011 Autodesk product line is truly the best-in-class,” said Autodesk President and Chief Executive Officer Carl Bass. “Building on our long history of making complex technology more accessible to a broader audience, we made our portfolio of 3D design and engineering tools both simpler and more powerful". Full details about the 2011 products are available now at www.autodesk.com (Source Autodesk Press Release) There is certainly... Read more →

The end of the disks, I mean discs? Now it’s download!

I must be getting old… Remember when AutoCAD came on a few floppy disks? Then a handful of CDs, or a DVD? I just finished building CAD application deployments that would require about 26,624 floppy disks. Admittedly it was AutoCAD Architecture/MEP, Revit Arch/MEP and 3DS Max (plus some 64 & 32 bit duplication) so a little more capable than the floppy disk era application. And soon, the end of discs! This arrived in the email yesterday: “Please read this important notice about how you will receive your future Autodesk® software upgrades. In 2010 Autodesk is making download the default method... Read more →