Autodesk + Esri = Awesome!

One of the most exciting announcements made at AU was a strategic alliance between Esri and Autodesk. On November 15^th, Amy Bunszel welcomed Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost and Esri CEO Jack Dangermond to the stage to discuss the collaboration during the technology keynote address.

Redlands, CA based Esri is the maker of ArcGIS, a widely-used mapping and spatial analysis tool. The collaboration between Esriand Autodesk is a natural fit, as most AEC customers already use ArcGIS and its related suite of tools.

Anagnost stated that “Ideas have to move smoothly from one team to the next if we are going to address all the big challenges we have to address together.” Esri products model geography and environmental data. This information could be leveraged by Autodesk products to design smarter buildings and cities. Autodesk and Esri will be working together to improve the workflow between GIS (geographic information systems) and BIM (building information modeling).

At the time of this writing, details about product changes or new services have not been released. However, the promise of a more seamless workflow between geospatial data and Autodesk’s collection of AEC tools is welcome news to many users.

In the words of Andrew Anagnost, designers and engineers will truly be able to “make anything; anywhere.”

Esri CEO Jack Dangermond (left) and Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost (right)

For further reading about the collaboration between Esri and Autodesk, click here. To view the technology keynote from Autodesk University, click here (discussion between Andrew Anagnost and Jack Dangermond starts after 48m:30s). 

Note: This article was updated to reflect that Esri is not spelled in all caps. Also, I had Amy Bunszel's name spelled incorrectly. Oops!

How Many Hidden Pop Song Lyrics Can you Find?

Chris decided to make his interview more interesting by incorporating pop song lyrics into his answers.

How many can you find? 

...and the Emmy for "Weirdest eye Movements in a Vlog" goes to....

Connected BIM News Episode 6

http://autode.sk/CBNews6

What Have I Been Up To?

I've been creating content under the official Autodesk umbrella recently.

Check out EP connected BIM News:

• Episode 1: http://autode.sk/CBNews1
• Episode 2: http://autode.sk/CBNews2
• Episode 3: http://autode.sk/CBNews3
• Episode 4: http://autode.sk/CBNews4 
• Episode 5: http://autode.sk/CBNews5 <-just dropped

Also, I've been making some articles on AKN:

• Geolocation Tool in AutoCAD and Related Verticals Broken
• High-Resolution Scaling of Autodesk Products (Using a Manifest File to Fix Scaling Issues)
• Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D Performance Degradation Fix

...and more to come, of course!

Infraworks 360: Can't Open a Model from the Cloud or Model Builder

Infraworks 360 is the new hotness and I am learning more and more about it every day.

A common issue we have been seeing lately is the inability to open cloud models after upgrading to the 2017.3 version. The root cause of this is that older versions of Infraworks were more forgiving about proxy settings.

If you are running into problems with Infraworks, the first place to look is in the Infraworks log files. This will help determine if the issue is on the proxy side or a local permissions issue.

The location of the log files is C:\Users\<<USER>>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Autodesk InfraWorks\logs


The two most common causes for this are:

1) Proxy settings. Infraworks 2017.3 seems to be more "finicky" about having these websites open / marked as safe to your network. The link above contains a list of websites that your IT folks will need to "whitelist."

2) Permissions to the model download location. To access the settings, go to the menu next to your name and click Application Options.

• On the General page, uncheck "use system proxy settings." 
• You will be able to change the cache location paths after a re-start of Infraworks. Make sure these are pointing to a location where you have full read/write access.

Good luck and happy modeling!

Quick FYI: Where is Civil 3D 2016 Service pack 4?

Note that there is a typo when viewing the Civil 3D 2016 sp4 download on manage.autodesk.com.

Also note that starting with this service pack and all service packs going forward, users will be able to access downloads only from manage.autodesk.com. Service packs will no longer be posted to the general www.autodesk.com public site.  Don't shoot the messenger!

☮➾📤