Autodesk University 2016 - the future of making things

See our wide-scale coverage of the Autodesk University proceedings - live from Las Vegas - in Czech on:

News from Autodesk University - AU 2016

Apple iPad Pro for engineers and designers

CAD Studio company organized a a CAD workshop in the hotel ANDEL‘S BY VIENNA HOUSE - the main theme was using Apple mobile devices for professional design and business.

The workshop attendees had a chance to learn the professional mobile tool Apple iPad Pro - a true helper for engineers, architects and designers. Thanks to iPad they no more have to limit their teamwork on 2D and 3D CAD and BIM projects in cases they are travelling or on site.

CAD Studio experts have presented several mobile applications running on Apple iPad and their functionality in real projects:

• interactive work on drawings and models synchronized with desktop CAD (AutoCAD 360)
• annotation, markup and measuring on designs in any format, everywhere (A360 Team, A360 Mobile, DesignShare)
• conceptual modeling of BIM projects (FormIt 360)
• project and construction documents accessible anytime (BIM 360 Docs, InfraWorks 360)
• factory models (Factory + BIM 360 Glue)
• conceptual simulation tools (ForceEffect and ForceEffect Motion)
• product customization (Configurator 360)
• 3D modeling tools (123D Make, Sculpt)
• GIS for PC and mobile devices – twiGIS

There are even more Autodesk's mobile applications for iPad but it was not possible to cover them all in a limited schedule of this workshop. We recommend to try the "3D scanner" 123D Catch, the interactive tool for mechanical 3D models - Fusion 360 Mobile, or the remote access tool for your CAD application - Autodesk Remote. Most iPad apps by Autodesk are free.

Contact CAD Studio if you need more information about mobile design tools.

New version of Desktop App with product downloads

A new version of the system component "Autodesk Desktop App" (formerly "Application Manager") now manages not only product updates and learning materials but also the downloads of your Autodesk products. This tool installs automatically with any Autodesk 2017 product, updates itself on-the-fly, and is available (under the origami "A" Autodesk logo) in the Windows system taskbar.

Since version 6.1.0.272 - you can also identify it by its colored left column - you have convenient access (under the first top-left icon "PRODUCTS") to the installation software images of your CAD products, including your personal serial numbers and product keys. So you don't have to go to your Autodesk Account anymore to download software for installations and re-installations. It offers your purchased licenses, made available for you by your company's Account Administrator.

Beside this, you have of course still access to notifications about any released update (service packs, hotfixes) to any of your installed Autodesk software and to the installation of these updates. All these updates on any computer in your company are controlled by your Autodesk software Administrator in his/her Autodesk Account.

You can also download the "Autodesk Desktop App" from our Download page.

Autodesk Print Studio now supports the 3D printing format 3MF

The 3D print application Autodesk Print Studio (see older article) for preparing 3D prints of models and for communication with 3D printers now supports in the newly released version 1.6.0 also the new XML-based printing format 3MF. Besides the STL and OBJ models you can print also models supplied in the .3mf-extension files. Autodesk is a founding member of the 3MF consortium defining the 3MF format. Print Studio, built on the Autodesk Spark platform, is a part of the installation of Inventor and other Autodesk products. You can also use it separately.

You can use Autodesk Print Studio also for conversion of mesh models between the formats STL, OBJ and 3MF as it supports not only import but also export of 3D data in these formats. But its main purpose is 3D printing. You can use Windows 10 embedded support for 3D printing - this system support was jointly developed by Autodesk and Microsoft.

See conversions of CAD formats

See Print Studio Help

For Win64 and MacOSX download, see www.cadstudio.cz/download

CADforum.cz now in AC Cloud on Microsoft Azure

The popular international web portal by CAD Studio - CADforum.cz - is one of the most visited web sites in the category CAD. E.g. Alexa ranks it currently on the 8th place worldwide, and in some countries, e.g. in Germany and Czechia, on the 1st place. Over 710.000 registered users and monthly traffic with more than 650.000 visits, 3 million pageviews and over 1TB of transferred data puts demands on hardware performance of the web server machine behind this portal. This was one of the reasons we decided to replace the aging but still reliable HP NetServer with a modern cloud web hosting service.

We have choosen the AC Cloud service operated by our mother company AutoCont on the Microsoft Azure platform, from a Czech datacenter. The servers (besides CADforum.cz we were moving also CADstudio.cz, Helpdesk and a couple of minor web services) were transferred in two phases - you may have noticed a planned 6-hour outage last Saturday which was used to upload the data contents to the cloud, and yesterday evening (CET) we have performed the final update of files and SQL databases, plus the domain switch. All transferred web domains (there were over 20 of them) are now running from the new cloud hosting.

We wanted not only to increase reliability but also to increase performance of the web site, preparing it for further development. You may have noticed faster responses of our web sites running in the AC Cloud since today. We plan to employ the performance reserves for planned enhancements of user services. We already use the AC Cloud and Microsoft Azure platform for our other web services - e.g. for the mobile GIS application twiGIS, for the cloud service BIMforMe or for our BIM portal BIMfo.cz.

If you see any unusual responses on our web sites these days, please let us know.

New software projects released by CAD Studio

CAD Studio has recently released a couple of interesting new software products. All these tools can streamline your workflow for handling CAD and BIM data in AEC projects and in GIS/mapping.

BIMsign for Revit

BIMsign is a new Revit add-on application. It can protect your BIM content by adding a unique permanent invisible watermark signature to all your Revit projects and families. You can use it to protect your intellectual property (IP) as you can prove the ownership of the original content in any future BIM files which are based on this signed document. You can "sign" individual RVT/RFA files or your company templates.


More on BIMsign

BIMForMe - facility management on top of BIM data

BIMForMe is a new cloud application which opens BIM data from Autodesk Revit for all types of users. BIMForMe is an advanced software that helps investors, owners, contractors, managers and users of buildings to easily navigate in a building information model (BIM) and quickly find any requested information. This web tool does not require any knowledge of complex BIM authoring and 3D modeling systems and so it opens valuable BIM data not only to building professionals but to all non-technical users.

The application BIMForMe brings features for working with BIM data created in Autodesk Revit software and any accompanying documents - all in an intuitive and user-friendly environment suitable for both experienced professionals and laymen.

More on BIMForMe.com

twiGIS - freedom for your mapping data

twiGIS is a new web mapping application by CAD Studio. It enhances existing slow, complex and hard to maintain mapping portal and GIS clients which are often incompatible with modern touch-based mobile devices.

The main advantages of twiGIS are the quick and intuitive user interface, compatibility with mobile devices, handling graphical and textual data, independence on your enterprise GIS system, low requirements on IT infrastructure and a very wide range of supported data types. Any untrained person can immediately start to use twiGIS.


More on cadstudio.cz/twigis (in Czech)

BIMfo - BIM portal

The latest member of the CAD Studio product family is the today released web portal BIMfo.cz operated by the CAD Studio and CASUA companies. It helps Czech and Slovak architects and AEC professionals implement BIM standards and processes. You can find here the latest BIM news, best practices, a catalogue of Czech BIM-ready companies, sample BIM projects (screenshots, photos, BIM data in an interactive A360-viewer) and other BIM-related goodies.

Visit BIMfo.cz (in Czech)