Articles tagged with User Interaction

Experts, Like you - AU2008’s strap line - loving the branding scheme.

Autodesk are hosting their huge, annual user event at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas this week. As with all such events, things kick off with Keynotes from the executives and a special guest. For AU2008, this meant CEO Carl Bass, CTO (that’s Chief Technical Officer to you, punk) took the stage with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO. Kelley gave a very foreshorten speech based on his book, “the Ten Faces of Innovation”, combined with Bass’ empassioned whistlestop tour through how Autodesk products are being used to enable innovative design, meant that Jeff Kowalski took the stage to show off some of the future technology that the company is working on. Among the many things shown, a few things lept out.

For those Inventor users out there, a chunk of modelling technology was shown that ‘might’ be the future look and feel of Inventor - the video shown was cropped out so you can’t tell what the application was, but it’s pretty clear where this is headed.

What we can see here is a stripped back ui, a feature tree that’s integrated into the modelling window and some telling geometry manipulation. Whether its Direct Editing, Sync Tech, the 3D design world is going ape for the ability to directly manipulate geometry - this shows this working inside an Autodesk product - an intriguing thought.

Here you can see Marking Menu (something that Alias mastered years ago) being used to extend the operations available at the cursor, on the model and ready to go when you need them.

Secondly, Kowalski offering the thought that we should not think about what we can do with the computing technology now available (which he stated is currently being vastly unused due to legacy code issues across the IT industry). This image shows a concept of having a multi-core workstation or perahps across a cloud, running multiple simulation analyses. What’s displayed appears to be a chart showing results from design optimisation runs, displayed as a strength vs. weight chart, with live previews of FEA results.

The last was something I thought was very cool indeed. It showed a very sparse sketching interface, with tools that interpret your inputs to create not only explicit sketch strokes, but also to create smooth splines. That’s impressive alone, but the demo went further to show how that same workflow and data could then be flipped into a 3D environment and the same sketching-style inputs could be used to generate surfaces (we don’t have an image of that just yet). Looks a lot like this:

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Final thing isn’t particularly new (SolidWorks did it a while ago), and the idea of online rapid prototype order certainly isn’t, but Autodesk has signed up with Z Corp (who in turn have created the Zprint service in partnership with QuickParts.com) and Stratasys (presumably using its RedEye bureau to enable print and delivery)to offer a direct link between AutoCAD and Rapid Prototyping service providers. Available from a File/Menu pick, the tools convert your 3D AutoCAD data to STL and communicate it with the chosen vendor.

This whole bike was built on Stratasys’s FDM machines

Details are sketchy at the moment, but its due to be delivered with the next Bonus Pack (the goodies provided to Subscription customers). No word yet of whether or not this is going to roll out to Inventor and Revit, but its a smart move, for both Autodesk and the service providers involved.

NOTE: Autodesk went to great lengths to ensure that we all understood that what’s shown here is based on technology in development and maybe not even make it to final products and that attendees shouldn’t base purchasing decisions on the back of what was shown. And you should do the same.

But having watched this, it would be a damn shame if it doesn’t.

3Dconnexion has just released details of research they’ve been doing into the return on investment, commercial pay back that can be gained from using its 3d motion control devices. According to the research those using 3D mouse devices users noted that they were comfortable using the 3D mouse within two days from the time they began using it (80% of them in fact) and 70% felt proficient within the first week.

The report (available at www.3Dconnexion.com/productivity) brings many more facts to light about the time that can be saved by adopting a tool that’s designed specifically for the job. It is really worth a read.

The question this raises for me is that that for decades now, many of us have been using 3D based design tools to develop new products on a daily basis, but still many of us are using the same keyboard and mouse combo that we have had since time immemorial. Let’s not forget that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typists on mechanical typewriters so they wouldn’t jam up - is that really the optimum way of interacting with 3D data?

Users are now becoming much more familiar with 3D based working practices, particularly in the professional design related sphere of influence - but I do wonder where we’re headed next?

The last few events I’ve attended have seen references to how Nintendo have changed the 3D interaction world with the Wii and specifically, the WiiMote device.

Dassault demonstrated how the WiiMote device can interact with CAD-related data at the recent DEVCON event in Paris. Of course, Dassault has an interest in Gaming technology because of its Virtools technology (which now supports the Wii platform) and has a head start on many of the CAD company’s not involved in the industry. Dassault’s Bernard Charles also hinted at the same event that their development team is currently working on a hardware-based device for Catia and Enovia users. A chat with the head of their Research and Development team confirmed that this might be in the offing.

Elsewhere, a CAD user has built a drive to allow the use of the WiiMote within Autodesk’s Design Review and the same tool has been made available on the Autodesk Labs website.

I’m reminded of a chat I had with Bill Buxton, the then Chief Scientist of Applied Sciences at Alias Wavefront, who, ten years ago, talked about many of the things that are only now coming to light. If you take a look at his personal web-site, then you can see many of the devices that his team worked on back then. And if you want a further interesting read, get hold of his Sketching User Experiences book. It’s honestly one of the best books on subject I’ve ever read and should be on every designers bookshelf.

Bringing us back to 3Dconnexion and its research, I’m amazed that the company still is the only vendor actively pursuing this area. The potential to do really interesting things has been there for some time. Many have come and gone.

The Dimentor Inspector - combined a trackball and optical mouse - and had around the same lifespan as the average rodent.

There was the Dimentor Inspector device from Sweden, which combined a mouse with a trackball to navigate in 3D (I’ve still got one sat in a box in the loft). It only really worked with SolidWorks and the company was only around for a year or so.

Others have had a crack at it with limited success and I find it strange that its only 3Dconnexion that has managed to actually achieve any form of market penetration - and I take my hat off to them. They took some time to develop truly usable products and made a few mistakes on the way. I still use a prototype of the original, but short lived, SpaceNavigator device, which saw the integration of a SpaceMouse with a Logitech Keyboard (3Dconnexion’s parent company) - and promptly got canned.

I’m off to interview the guys in charge of SpaceMouse products in a couple of weeks and if anyone has any questions, ideas or information they’d like me to ask, to find out, then I’d be more than happy to ask and report back on the response I get.

And don’t get me started on MultiTouch - that’s stuff is coming - its an exciting new world and as professional users of 3D, we’re looking to get the most out of it.

The image above shows simulation results from a Quick Natural Convection on LED light design shown with CFdesign v10 new user interface - nifty looking eh?

Blue Ridge Numerics (at 1pm, UK time today to be exact), released details of the latest release of its CFD application, CFDesign. The big ticket items for this rev seem to be a new user interface, greater CAD integration, better design review features and interactive void filling and external volume creation.

Interesting, UI changes aside (which look pretty good as you can see), the CAD associativity interested me. There are two schools of thought here. To built the app directly within the CAD interface, or to build it standalone and provide tight links. The two are not always as clear-cut as they seem. In all fairness, CFDesign has always been in the Standalone/integrated camp and this release sees that worked on with the ability to extract much more from the CAD data, such as model orientation, part and background, part names and material properties. Blue Ridge also talks about mapping of mouse functions. I guess that this means the user will load CAD data from their workhorse tool and the system can be set to mimic the user interaction methods of that CAD system. Also of interest is the new multi-view mode, which allows you to work with different analysis results sets and have the system synchronise the panning, zooming and rotation of the views. Other updates include interactive void filling and external volume creation meaning you don’t have to do it your CAD system.

Lastly, Blue Ridge has also introduce CFD-tv which provides users with “on-demand, task-specific training in a Web 2.0 format that will appeal to multi-tasking engineers who want to add CFD to their armory.” Apparently, each CFD-tv episode is a short video segment led by a CFdesign power user intended to answer commonly asked questions.

There will of course be a full, indepth review of CFDesign 10 in the next issue of DEVELOP3D - so make sure you sign up for a subscription.

They say computers stifle creative talent, but in Erik Nordenankar’s crazy little Swedish mind the computer - in this instance a GPS in a briefcase - is the driving force for design.

For his graduation project in Advertising and Graphic design Erik sent his briefcase around the world in order to create the Biggest Drawing in the World.

Erik gave DHL highly detailed instructions of where to send his briefcase and over the next 55 days tracked its journey via GPS. The information was downloaded to his computer and produced a wonderful self portrait of the man himself - his ear in Paris, hand in Papua New Guinea and student bed head tuft of hair smack bang in the middle of Iceland.

The amazing results can be seen on YouTube and Erik’s own little website. He’s not a bad looking chap. www.biggestdrawingintheworld.com

Why use a mouse for CAD when you can use a briefcase

OK, i’ll fess up. He didn’t actually send his briefcase round the world - he is a poor student after all - but what a great concept. 700,000 viewers on YouTube to date certainly seem to think so. I wonder what kick back he got from DHL. Probably not nearly enough. You can’t pay for marketing this good.

Seems like Josh over at SolidSmack.com got to it first, but this looks sweet. Its a hacked together rear projection unit with some fancy bits and bobs running on Vista. What’s interesting is the multi-touch manner. A lot of the CAD vendors are talking about this as the future - SolidWorks went multi-touch crazy at their press event preceding the last SolidWorks World. I wonder how it could be packaged up - maybe some sort of hand held device like the Wacom’s Cintiq maybe. One thing’s for sure, we all ain’t gonna be standing in front of a wall to get the job done are we?

As a recent convert to the Apple platform and owner of a macbook air, I have to say multi touch is pretty compelling - as this technology develops, its going to be interesting to see how its implemented in CAD systems. Of course, most of my work is done on a big old workstation running windows, but I do my writing on OSX.. but if I do fancy designing something, I now have the early test version of Rhino for the Mac - and that has multi-touch implemented in a very subtle manner.