Beyond Design

Vela Systems acquired by Autodesk to help transform the construction industry

Vela Systems are an exciting company that we have been working with for some time as a partner organization, and late last week it was announced that Vela will be joining the Autodesk team.
This video, posted just a few weeks ago explains in more depth the integration between Vela's products and Autodesk Revit and Navisworks.

Amar Hanspal, the Senior Vice President, Information Modeling and Platform Products Group say "BIM has tremendous value in the planning and design aspects of construction projects, but if you can't get that rich data into the field, at the point of construction, you are leaving out the critical 'last 100 yards' in the process. Integrating Vela Systems and its cloud and mobile products with the Autodesk BIM portfolio transforms the business of construction, delivering valuable information to job sites anywhere in the world".

Read here for the full press release.

API wishlist survey for Revit and Navisworks

One of the things that ADN team does together with various product teams is API wishlist survey. This year's wishlist survey is now open for Revit and Navisworks from the following links:

Revit

Navisworks

Please take a moment to complete these surveys and give us a feedback.  It will take less than 5 minutes to complete each survey. Our engineering teams use this feedback to help prioritize the areas of API enhancements in coming releases. If you leave your e-mail address, we will send you the final results after it is concluded. 

The deadline for the survey for Revit and Navisworks API is June 1st, 2012. We look forward to receiving your feedback!

The wishlist surveys for other products will follow shortly.

via adndevblog.typepad.com

We know you're pushing Revit and Navisworks to their limits, use this opportunity to give feedback on how you can push them even further.

New AEC API Developer Blog

We know that many of you are looking to improve productivity and access to your information models using the API. This new AEC DevBlog will cover Revit, Navisworks and other AEC and BIM technologies and their APIs from Autodesk.

So far there are already posts about the following topics:-

• New features in the Navisworks 2013 .NET API
• How to access the Revit SDK
• How to get a primitive from solid of Navisworks
• More details on the BIM Coordinator 

Head to the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed for new posts: -

http://adndevblog.typepad.com/aec/

You can also ask API related questions through the Navisworks API forum.

SMART board Integration with Navisworks

The team over at SMART Technologies have been working with IDS Engineering to create a plugin to use Autodesk Navisworks on their interactive whiteboards. They're a great tool for coordination meetings, and demonstrating design intent to clients. See the YouTube video below.

Find out more about SMART on their website.

http://smarttech.com/businesssolutions

Autodesk AEC DevCamp – Calling anyone interested in using the API to develop for Navisworks, Revit and Civil 3D

Are you interested in customizing, extending or integrating with Autodesk® Revit^®, AutoCAD^® Civil 3D^®, Navisworks^®,  technologies around Autodesk's BIM 360 vision, including Vault Collaboration AEC and Revit Server, new Autodesk web services and mobile technologies, and more?

If yes then the Autodesk AEC DevCamp is for you!

• When: June 6-7, with a DevLab on June 8
• Where: Boston, Massachusetts -- near Autodesk's AEC Division headquarters
• Cost: early bird discount fee of US $500 valid to April 30, 2012, thereafter US $600

The 2 day DevCamp offers training for beginners and experts on the APIs of each of the products listed above. You get to talk to Autodesk product management and engineering staff, and to meet fellow developers like you. There is also a Business Development track for those steering their company's strategic direction and investments as well as Autodesk specific sales and marketing topics. 

Following on from the DevCamp we are holding a day long DevLab. The DevLab has no agenda as it's all about spending quality time working with you on your specific needs and challenges. ADN DevTech engineers covering Autodesk technologies – Revit, Civil 3D, Navisworks and more - are available to help you – 1 to 1. Bring your laptop and work on your code as you'd normally do in your own office. With DevLab you have a team of experts available to review your code, answer your questions, and make suggestions.

CALL TO ACTION – let us know you're interested!

To receive more information on the DevCamp and DevLab, including the detailed agenda and registration instructions, please send an email to Melrose Ross on email address melrose.ross@autodesk.com giving your full name and company name.

New Navisworks API forum

Where do you get technical support from if you have a problem? The person sat next to you? Your CAD Manager? Your reseller?

Often the quickest and easiest way to get an answer if you can't find the information you need in the Help guides or Knowledge Base is now to search our Autodesk Support Discussion Groups. For a while we've had an active presence in there, helping answer questions, showing you where information is available and suggesting alternative workflows and workarounds.

For Navisworks, we've noticed one of the most popular topics in discussion is the API, since the introduction of the .NET API in the 2011 release we've noticed a lot more people using it and asking how to utilize it, what is the ActiveX control, and how to get round those annoying problems that just need a change to one line of code to make the whole thing work. So we've created a separate forum for it. Especially for you to ask those questions you need.

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Navisworks-API/bd-p/600

This isn't a replacement to ADN, the Autodesk Developer Network, in fact we think it's a healthy addition to it. If you have a project you are working on, looking to sell your plugins commercially, or just want access to Technical Support and the latest releases, the ADN team will help you with examples and more, if you have a quick query, or want to want to ask other API users what the API is capable of and whether ADN is right for you, then head to the forum.

For more information about ADN just go to our site www.autodesk.com/joinadn

Taking BIM to the Point of Construction and Beyond

For as long as I can remember, Navisworks has had an API (Application Programming Interface), which customers and third parties can use to extend and add to the out-of-the-box functionality. Whilst we recognize that the vast majority of customers may not use the API themselves, what it enables our Partners to achieve is something special, and this can be of benefit to everyone.

One such partner is Vela Systems who is successfully taking digital information and documentation into the field on Tablet PCs and mobile devices, including iPads. This is very cool stuff, and that isn't the half of it! As well as access to plans and drawings (imagine no more rolls of drawings and repeated trips to the job trailer), their Field BIM product for commissioning and owner handover helps manage quality and commissioning data, documents, photos and other field-generated data, linking this with the BIM model in Navisworks, for example. With the data synchronized between the Vela system and the Navisworks model, this data can then be accessed by all project stakeholders, whether in the office, job trailer, or out in the field.

Take a look at this video to see some of this in action:

If you're using a Vela Systems product, or another Partner or plugin for Autodesk Construction solutions, why not let us know about your experience.

Free Excerpt from new "Mastering Autodesk Navisworks 2012" book

We know you love freebies; we saw how many of you downloaded the free ground planes we offered a few weeks ago. Well here's another one, a few pages from the newly released 'Mastering Autodesk Navisworks 2012' book by Jason Dodds and Scott Johnson. Both these guys have years of experience working with Navisworks in the field with you guys, implementing workflows, pushing the limits of the product and doing things we didn't even realize Navisworks could do!

We've saved an important part of the book for you. Lots of people ask how they should work with NWC, NWD and NWF files for their workflow, these pages explain a little more about what each file format is, how it is used and a more detailed typical workflow, something many people would pay thousands of dollars for a consultant to do for them! Download these pages here

Now if you think that's a valuable bit of information then you should get yourself a copy of the book from here: -

Mastering Autodesk Navisworks 2012

I've got a copy sat here next to me and just picked up a couple of handy things about Timeliner I never knew, I'd tell you what they are but you'll have to get the book to find them out yourself!