Autodesk University 2012 is just over 5 weeks away at this point and I thought that I would just write a few comments about it for those going to it or considering going to it. If you are a user or manager of an Autodesk product, I highly recommend that you attend this annual conference which will be held in Las Vegas November 27-29, 2012 at Mandalay Bay.
In February 2011, I reviewed a new free beta product on the market for 3D model review named Tekla BIMsight by Tekla, Inc. (Read review) Tekla has just released the new Tekla BIMsight version 1.2, and it is no longer considered a beta software. The big point is that it is still a free product and Tekla stated in a webcast for bloggers that it will continue to be free for the foreseeable future.
As I mentioned in my first article on the BIMsight software, this is a basic clash detection software that allows you to bring several different 3-D models together for project collaboration and collision detection. While it is not a robust software, it performs clash detection that can meet the needs of many people and that I believe warrants consideration. It is a straight forward software that is not difficult in learning to use and also has a decent forum support system that is easily accessible from within BIMsight.
With the new Autodesk 2012 releases being announced this week, Autodesk also announced some new suites of software. These are bundles of multiple software packages that Autodesk offers and is meant to give you a significantly better value than buying each of the packages separately. With each of the new suites, Autodesk has 3 different levels of packages available (Standard, Premium, and Ultimate) which get progressively more expensive. As the AEC industry moves more into Building Information Modeling, utilization of multiple software packages becomes more integrated into organizations and makes purchasing suites more attractive.
It seems that navigating the 3D world of a design software file can sometimes become a pain and it is easy to end up in a strange viewing angle causing you to just want to get back to a default view that you like. Most of the Autodesk products now utilize a tool that allows you to create a default viewing angle and save that view so that you can get back to it with one click of the mouse. That tool is part of the ViewCube.
With Autodesk® Navisworks® being utilized more and more often in the AEC community, the various file formats associated with Navisworks® generate questions as to the usage of each format.
As Autodesk® Navisworks® becomes more common in the AEC community; I thought I would touch base on the basics of the differences of the various Navisworks® products. If you are venturing into the world of Navisworks®, hopefully this will help get you started.
On September 14th, 2010, Autodesk released Service Pack 1 for their Autodesk Navisworks 2011 products. The service pack applies to Navisworks Freedom 2011, Navisworks Manage 2011, and Navisworks Simulate 2011. When running the service pack, any and all of the 3 Navisworks packages installed on the computer will be updated.
The December issue of Autodesk’s AU Quarterly Newsletter is out. As always, there are some excellent AEC-related articles that benefit users of Autodesk’s AEC software.
Autodesk has released a utility that will benefit users that need to create a file to be used with the Autodesk’s Navisworks 2010 program. This is excellent news as users no longer must have a licensed copy of Navisworks Manage installed on their computer to create this file. This has real benefits to companies needing to create the exchange file.
