During the opening session Autodesk COO Carl Bass expanded on Bartz three part dictum with adverbs: Create smartly, manage securely, share immediately. The first implies model based design, a design infused with intelligence. The second points towards tools that hold and organize data through the lifecycle. The third defines the need to move information to often non-technical users as quickly as possible to enable the devices to be built, the buildings to go up, the roads to be paved and the maps to be made.
Bass introduced a scenario based on fictitious Global Bubble Corporation, a company that hopes to create a new bubble wrap, one that uses helium to fill the bubbles. He got more laughs from me when the inhaled helium did not have the desired affect, than when it did!
What followed was an Inventor/Product Steam demo that frankly, I did not understand. (My running joke for GIS people here: if you do not understand it, it’s mechanical!) Part of the challenge? I could see the pretty model, but could not see the tools or text on the demo screen.
Next up, MapServer Enterprise, which was used to find a location for the new factory. The demo showed a “property locator” app (AJAX based, which ultimately created a DWF) which did the requisite query. Bass noted regarding MapServer Enterprise, “The open source community will be a powerful force for democratizing geospatial data.”
It appears the new version of AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2007 is coded named Postrio. It was a bit shaky in the next part of the demo, which involved locating the building and placing a park. The speaker quipped, “If it didn’t do this [that is, fail], you could buy it now!”
A Revit demo followed which added a floor to the parametric model of the building. The change “rippled though” the entire model “in seconds.”
A product called “Vespa” (new technology “like Adobe Photoshop”) was used to render the DWF as an artistic image.
The final approvals on the building are done by the various government boards and agencies in the city. Those players used an interactive “Demo Viewer” (more new technology). We saw 3 million visualized polygons of the Bubble Machines. Then, there was real time rendering of the model outside the factory window. Think “Google Earth” from inside to outside based on real data.
The potential contractors received a DWF bid package. One used a “smart” version of what looks like Composer to adding price estimates for a bid submittal.
Construction got underway and the Bubble Machine is ready for installation. The mobile workers installing it needed some info. Two live orange jumpsuit-clad workers used tablets to view the design using Composer. The HP tablets run “all day” on batteries and transferred the images wirelessly live from a real lift truck near the stage to the on stage video, according to the announcer.
Finally, (this was a LONG demo) it was time to take the model out to a “media and entertainment” solution to excite the company shareholders. A product called “Toxic” (I kid you not) allows for real time update of colors and the field of view. The final video showed a rendered factory fly-though enhanced by music from the Nutcracker Suite.
