As time goes by the Autodesk logo

With the recently unveiled new face of the Autodesk logo and brand, we searched the depths of our archives and reminisce nostalgically about the older shapes of this logo, as it accompanied us through the common history with CAD Studio.

In the very beginnings of CAD Studio and its ccoperation with Autodesk, we met the original Autodesk logo reflecting calipers - this logo was used in the 1980s and early 1990s. First in an uppercase version:


and later in a lowercase look:


In the late 1990s, Autodesk changed its logo to a then modern "internet" look written in all lowercase:


In the first decade of the new millennium, the logo has undergone first a font-uplift:


and later also a color change - back to a more trustworthy black color:


This logo is still valid today. In March 2013, the already announced change of the Autodesk logo (and not only the logo) will be executed. The new logo should nod to origami, combining (similarly to Autodesk products) art and mathematics, form and function:

Autodesk Project Cyborg - CAD for molecular biology

Activities of the Autodesk Research division lately cover not only "hardcore" CAD technologies but also biotechnology and molecular biology. There are already several interesting Autodesk products in this area - see e.g. Sci-Viz, 3D printing living tissues, etc.

According to a blog post in New York Times, Autodesk now officially enters the emerging nanoscale world of synthetic biology and materials with its "Project Cyborg" - a web-based software platform for delivering services like molecular modeling and simulation. Project Cyborg will be announced at the TED conference currently taking place in Long Beach, CA. This project is developed for two years as a cooperation between CAD software developers and molecular biologists. Scientists, engineers and even students and enthusiasts should soon be able to use the system on individual projects.

Thanks to new devices like 3D bio-printers by Organovo, the worlds of design and digital prototyping of machines and biological tissues come closer. Indeed, both these worlds have many common features, and design processes of biological materials are now becoming less different from designing cars or factories.

In any case, Autodesk is moving on a road that opens wide possibilities for future development.

Company-branded background in Inventor

One of the today's questions in Czech discussions on our portal CADforum.cz was about branding of the Inventor environment for recording pictures and videos (like in our YouTube videos).

The easiest way of branding is to setup a customized picture for the background of your Inventor editing window. This can be changed very easily in Inventor over the application menu and the application options - i.e. using I > Options > Colors > Background. Set the type Image and in the "File name" field choose your customized image file (PNG, BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF). You can prepare such picture in any raster image editor you you can use the online tool Autodesk Pixlr. The picture will be fit to the editing window. The default neutral background image (stored in C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2013\Textures\) is the raster file presentation-5.png. Another option is to add your watermark to the resulting image or video just before publishing.

The look of your Inventor environment depends only on your imagination and personal preferences - e.g.:








Please note that the background of Inventor editing window is stored also to the thumbnails of all saved models - this can be useful to attach a "company signature" to your models, but it can be also potentially dangerous. A background "not safe for office viewing" may be tolerated by your collegues, but maybe you don't want to share it also with your customers ...