New Google Drive understands DWG drawings

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).

You can run Google Drive from drive.google.com.

Release the Kraken!

"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 - simulation of kinematic mechanisms on iPad

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
  
• Import and adjust image as background
  
• Create functional mechanical joints (welded, pinned, sliding, collar, crossing)
  
• Create supports (fixed pin, grounded, sliding collar)
  
• Mechanism animation and functional drag
  
• Analyze positional data by adding trace points (trace path, velocity vectors)
  
• Interactive graphing of trace points (velocity, displacement, acceleration)
  
• Create Actuators (motors, linear)
  
• Results reporting with picture, animation, graph and graph data table
  
• Save and load files from Autodesk Cloud
  
• Export mechanism directly to ForceEffect to easily conduct static load analysis
  

Autodesk ForceEffect Motion can be freely downloaded from Apple iTunes.