Today was another full day at Autodesk University. Last night I went to bed early so I missed the Exhibit Hall Opening Reception. But after lunch I did get a chance to take a walk around it and look at some really neat displays.

Here are a few pictures of conceptual designs created with Autodesk products:

RoboCoaster

Building model "printed" in 3D.

Crysler Super Bee concept car model.

Full-size "printed" 3d model of a motorcycle.

Video of the motorcycle being raised (by Scott Sheppard):

I was especially impressed with how AUGI supports the international community. There were a lot of booths for nations around the world at the International Community Pavilion.

Large world map near International Community Pavilion.

Today I took classes on Map 3D, Civil 3D Pipes, and Dynamic Blocks. Those classes were really good but my favorite class today was Painless Productivity Programming with the AutoCAD Action Recorder – Revealed! taught by Matt Murphy. The Action Recorder empowers the average user to start creating custom routines, or commands, to speed up their work. I could have used a tool like this years ago.

Matt mentioned that if a user is comfortable programming with AutoLISP, VBA, macros, and scripts, the Action Recorder may not be all that useful to them because it is a very simple and limited tool for creating custom commands. It was developed for the user that has no programming experience at all. After taking the class and playing with the Action Recorder for a while, I concluded that I will probably continue to create scripts and macros most of the time because they allow for more functionality than Actions, but there may be times when the Action Recorder will be useful. For example, if you have a simple repetitive task, you can create an Action a lot quicker than it takes to create a script or macro because the Action Recorder is very intuitive. But it does have limitations and it doesn’t fully replace the existing programming tools built into AutoCAD.

In the evening I attended the AUGI “Beer Bust” held in the Exhibition Hall. Good food. Good beer. Thanks AUGI!

#AU2008

Keep up with day-to-day happenings at AU Daily.