CAD Studio as a member of Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) has developed hundreds of plug-ins for AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, Civil 3D, Vault and other Autodesk products. Some of these plug-ins are now available also on the Autodesk "appstore" - Autodesk Exchange Apps.
As the most part of our tools is free, you may want to check their functionality by installing them from Exchange Apps. Installing a tool from Exchange Apps is very simple. Start the Exchange Apps - either directly from your CAD or in your web browser - locate the requested tool and click on the Free or Trial button. All installation and integration into your CAD products' ribbon is done automatically. Exchange Apps is integrated into AutoCAD 2013, Inventor 2013, Revit 2013, Vault and other products.
You can locate our add-on tools in the following Exchange Apps URLs:
Here you can find e.g. the JobTime to keep track of your job time spent in AutoCAD or Revit, Anaglyph to make stereographic 3D pictures (for red-cyan glasses) of your models in AutoCAD, Inventor or Revit, DWGsync to zoom/pan two drawings synchronized, GeoRefImg to place your images automatically. More CAD tools can be downloaded from www.cadstudio.cz/download.
The application Autodesk 123D Catch (formerly "Photofly"), which uses web-cloud technologies to convert a series of photos to a realistic 3D model, now works also on Apple iPad and in web browsers (Google Chrome).
So you can control the whole conversion process on your mobile device - from capturing photos, over the conversion the resulting point cloud to a 3D model and its texturing (123 Catch), up to interactive viewing and sharing of 3D models.
The new application 123D Catch for iOS is available for free (similar to the other tools of the family Autodesk 123D) and you can download it to your iPad from Apple iTunes. The version for a web browser can be run from the address apps.123dapp.com/catch/.
In your web browser, you can find a new web cloud storage "My Corner" where you can store your 3D models and other data from the 123D applications.
Yesterday, Google released its long awaited cloud disk - the web service "Google Drive". Other providers of cloud storage services have quickly refreshed their offerings so you can new e.g. upgrade your storage space to 25 GB in "Microsoft SkyDrive".
Besides the storage capacity for your documents (currently 5 GB), Google Drive offers a number of application services - viewers for about 30 file types (office formats, pictures), OCR functions, searching (of course), sharing, versioning, plus the neccessary synchronization tool for your local computer (Windows, Android).
An interesting feature for CAD users is support of DWG and DXF files announced on Google Drive launch. This feature is based on cooperation between Google and Autodesk - it connects the cloud CAD application AutoCAD WS with the file storage in Google Drive. By simple installation of "AutoCAD WS" app-extension in Google Chrome (Google Drive > Settings > Manage applications) you can learn both web apps to cooperate. Any DWG drawing uploaded to Google Drive can be then opened, edited or printed in AutoCAD WS just by clicking on it in the Google Drive web interface. Similarly you can connect another Autodesk web service - the picture editor Pixlr.
The Autodesk's own cloud storage - Autodesk 360 - offers the capacity of 25 GB for each license of Autodesk product under Subscription.
Success of the individual cloud storage services on the market will be driven by their capacity, reliability, but first of all by the portfolio of their application functions, plus by their synchronization functions for local computers (at least till people will use any local computers).
"Project Simulus" is a new 3D simulation tool from Autodesk Labs, developed under the codename "Kraken".
Project Simulus offers integrated editing functionality thanks to the embedded Inventor Fusion and very intuitive tools for simplification of 3D models for simulation studies. Computing-intensive processing is performed in the cloud. Interactive functions are accompanied with tools for presentation and comparing of simulation results.
The first version of Simulus offers the following simulation capabilities for Inventor, SAT and STEP based models:
Linear static stress offering a variety of contact types, loading and constraint options
Modal frequencies
Steady state thermal offering temperature, heat flux, convection and radiation type loadings
Thermal-stress coupling
Project Simulus can be downloaded from Autodesk Labs.
Autodesk ForceEffect Motion is an interesting extension of the functionality introduced in the recently released mobile application Autodesk ForceEffect.
The "Motion" version of Autodesk ForceEffect allows to analyze and simulate moving kinematic mechanisms and mechanical systems. So you can examine different concepts of the designed machines and perform engineering calculations on the screen of your iPad.
Main features:
Freehand sketching of elements and construction lines with snaps, constraints, inferencing and dimensions
One of the new features in the Autodesk 2013 product family is the enhanced "Autodesk Exchange Apps" store. This online "AppStore" is integrated into AutoCAD 2013 (and most industry versions of AutoCAD), Inventor 2013, Alias 2013, Inventor Publisher 2013, Revit 2013, Simulation 2013, Vault 2013 and Autodesk PLM 360.
Exchange Apps contains hundreds of free- and shareware add-on applications and block libraries by third-party vendors (Autodesk developers) and also by Autodesk. All applications were tested by Autodesk and are very easy to install - expect similar user experience as in Apple AppStore or Google Market (Play).
One of the interesting AutoCAD plug-ins available in this Apps store is the "SketchUp Import" (developed by Autodesk). This easy to use tool converts SKP files from Google SketchUp into 3D models in AutoCAD. Model geometry is composed from block references containing 3D meshes. An example of a converted 3D model (battery):
Exchange Apps for AutoCAD, Inventor and Revit contains also several applications by CAD Studio.
Plugins developed directly by Autodesk bring a new aspect into the structure of the respective CAD product. E.g. AutoCAD now contains 3 levels of functions and modules. These 3 levels differ in the terms of license, quality assurance, support and author's responsibility: internal core functions (with full support and reliability), Express Tools (unsupported legacy add-on tools) and now Autodesk's apps in the AppStore. Autodesk here acts more like an independent vendor, despite adding new functions to its own software product.
In any case - try yourself the Exchange Apps and discover interesting add-on tools - from games, over productivity tools, to full-featured professional applications.
Most Autodesk products were (or will be in next couple of days) released in new versions "2013". These new applications emphasise integration, communication and web cloud services, now called "Autodesk 360".
Many existing CAD users consider online functions as something unnecessary, disturbing and alien to the CAD world, but latest trends in IT clearly define a path to web cloud technologies. Even conservative CAD users are using cloud technologies daily (without realizing that Facebook, GMail or YouTube is a "cloud"). The cloud advantages are "infinite" (easily scalable) computing power, simple UI and access to advanced functions even on low-performance devices - typically mobile devices. Probably not necessarily mobile phones but rather tablets, with higher resolutions and bigger screens more suitable for CAD work. Autodesk is deservedly perceived as a leader on this market.
Success of cloud CAD technologies is proven by rapidly increasing numbers of online users. While the existing about 12 mil. users of classic desktop application were "collected" by Autodesk for 20 years, only a single year brought already 7 mil. users of the cloud application AutoCAD WS. A similar growth occurs also on other popular cloud and mobile applications by Autodesk - e.g. Sketchbook Mobile, Pixlr, Cloud render, HomeStyler.
"Autodesk 360" services share a common message "find, connect, crunch" - cloud is strong in these areas: finding information, connecting data and people, and crunching large volumes of information. Today, Autodesk 360 services cover storing and sharing documents, analysis, simulations, optimizations, rendering. A special case of advanced cloud application is the new, cloud-based PLM system "Autodesk PLM 360".
Part of Autodesk 360 functions is available for free for anybody, some more advanced functions are bound to Subscription (no other costs). For most users, Subscription is now primarly a way to get new versions of CAD software. In the future, the primarly advantage of Subscription will be the ongoing access to cloud services.
An important factor of the 2013-versions is emphasis on Design Suites and product integration. Composition of Suites was enhanced in the 2013 versions - they now include more tools and so they are even more attractive to customers. An interesting example of very tight integration and live sharing of design data between two standalone applications (Autodesk Maya + MotionBuilder, members of the Entertainment Creation Suite) is illustrated on a video:
Another common feature of many "2013" applications is the "Exchange Apps" store (online AppStore containing add-on applications, plugins). So you can easily add pretested plugin applications (freeware or shareware) directly from AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, 3ds Max and other software. Exchange Apps already contains many applications by CAD Studio.
