During the first attempt at testing the Photofly technology preview, I was met with a server glitch, but in the end, all went well

  I thought one of the biggest problems was with the interface itself. I’m not sure if this is present on all systems, but with dual wide screen monitors, the first of the images (Scenes?) began very far to the right of the interface as shown in the image to the right….

  And there were no scroll bars to slide things over. It wasn’t until I started writing this article that I found out that you need to drag the thumbnails using your cursor, and I would be willing to bet via touch screen as well. Cool, but unexpected.

Creating a Scene

To begin with, I took  a bunch of images of a globe (shown in the image above) at about 10° intervals while walking around the thing. I went around three times at different levels, and wound up with 54 images. I then fired up the Photo Scene Editor…

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(BUSINESS WIRE)–Autodesk announces the availability of Project Photofly, a technology preview of a web service that allows users to easily create 3D models from photographs using the cloud. Project Photofly is currently available for free* on Autodesk Labs.

The Autodesk Project Photofly technology preview enables architecture, design, media & entertainment and manufacturing firms to easily create 3D models from a series of photographs.

Photofly breaks the barrier to entry to image-based modeling because of its automatic calibration process. The manual calibration of photographs enabled by other technologies is complex and requires a strong expertise to get a good result. Project Photofly utilizes an automatic calibration engine, called “Camera Factory,” which is made available as a web service through a Windows-based client called “Photo Scene Editor.” Customers connect to the Camera Factory through the Photo Scene Editor, and then use their favorite Autodesk 3D modeling software (AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk 3ds Max, etc.) to consume the data in DWG format to model on top of the images.

“Reality capture gives designers and engineers the ability to better measure, analyze, document and plan for projects.”

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With Inventor 2011’s dramatic improvements in graphics, the line between Inventor’s intended purpose and its potential use has been blurred considerably.

Although Inventor can’t do everything by itself —and likely never will, the 2011 version can definitely be used as an integral part of a small suite of programs  for those graphic designers wishing to create a realistic three dimensional graphics. The image to the right (what will be the new archives widget to replace the hopelessly ugly one there now) was modeled in Inventor in less than two minutes….. throw in another minute for adjusting the shadows, and voila!, a new archives thingamagadget is born!

From there I just took a screen shot to get the image into PaintShop Pro where the text and drop shadows were added. I could have done almost everything in Inventor, but it would have taken too long to match the drop shadows to the existing ones on this site. A rendered version from Inventor Studio would have been higher quality, but to what extent I cannot say as I felt there was no need to waste the time. For all intents and purposes, the real-time version right there on screen was plenty good.

Finally a Purpose for Inventor LT?

This could be the elusive purpose for Inventor LT, which has always seemed like a car sold without an engine to cut costs. Sure, the price is attractive….but you can’t go anywhere with it. We tried hard to figure out a use for LT at the shipyard I used to work for, but it was quite the anemic little sucker, and was found to be of no real use.

 If the 2011 version is equipped with the new graphics, has multi solid bodies, and still costs about a grand,  it may have crossed over into the useful column. I am downloading the trial version as I write this, and will post an update after I take a look-see.

As a final thought, if they were to strip away the drawing environment, AEC Exchange, and the rest of the engineering stuff and sell a graphics modeling version at sub $250.00, they may have a hot product on their hands. This new product would also act as a learning tool for eventual up-graders to the design products. At the very least, they would pull in money while gaining name recognition for Inventor –without having to resort to calling Inventor the pathetic ‘AutoCAD Inventor’. Read the rest of this entry →

I received a Google Alert for the keyword BIM this AM that lead to a press release about a construction firm in Neenah, WI (a town just down the road from me). It was hard to figure who the release was aimed at, as it was a boilerplate ‘we use BIM, and are damn excited about it!” type of release, but with a bit of digging it became more interesting.

I clicked on the link to the construction firm in question, Miron Construction, which has a better than average corporate page in that it had quite a few links to articles. Hiding between some greenwashing, was a link to an article by Peter Lawrence titled “Changing the Color Paradigm: Expanding the role of color in construction documentation”. My attention was piqued. The subject is near and dear to me because I have experience on both sides of construction drawings.

In the article, Peter gives an example of a workshop he performs. He gives a group a couple D-size drawings, one monochrome, and the other color. Starting with the monochrome drawing, he asks them to count the number of sinks in the drawing, and the group responds with 7, 8, or 9 sinks. He then asks them to count the sinks on the color drawing, where they all get the correct answer, 10. He doesn’t mention this, but I’ll bet it took less than half the time to get the rightanswer with the color drawing. In my experience, even the best people we had at one company made numerous mistakes on our black and white drawings. It is no wonder why, they looked like black spaghetti served up on king-sized toilet paper. It actually hurt your eyes trying to decipher the mess. Read the rest of this entry →

In my previous post on Project Butterfly Cloud Computing, I stated “I sent two invitation emails to one of my other email addresses which never came”. Well I was wrong. They did come, but they were sent to the junk email folder –probably because the email message below…

Project Butterfly is an Autodesk service that lets you edit and collaborate on design data over the Web.

 Sent to you by Autodesk Project Butterfly.

 AEC Plan Elev Sample.dwg <http://butterfly.autodesk.com/app/message?link=ZZ[aj7eSgBT314e&attid=10178>

…has too many links. In practice, a person would need to be informed of this possibility and to check their junk email folder –possibly by sending two emails the first time, one with, and one without the links. The one without the links could tell the person to expect the second email, and check their junk folder if it does not arrive momentarily. The receiver would then need to add the sender to a safe sender list to avoid the problem in the future.

Having said all of that, this would be a great collaboration tool! I would use it right now if there were Inventor and/or Revit versions. More later…