Autodesk^® Project Vasari is an easy-to-use, expressive design tool for creating building concepts. Vasari goes further, with integrated analysis for energy and carbon, providing design insight where the most important design decisions are made. And, when it’s time to move the design to production, simply bring your Project Vasari design data into the Autodesk^® Revit^® platform for BIM, ensuring clear execution of design intent.

Project Vasari is focused on conceptual building design using both geometric and parametric modeling. It supports performance-based design via integrated energy modeling and analysis features. This new technology preview is now available as a free download and trial on Autodesk Labs.

Latest Updates

• Perspective view navigation fixes including more accurate zoom in and zoom region


• Fixed problems running some external API applications


• Google Earth™ satellite images are no longer saved in the project. Instead, they update automatically from the internet when the file is opened.

Read more about these updates // more

The Project Vasari technology preview is licensed for a limited term and for a particular territory as referenced in the End User License Agreement. The technology preview executable expires on August 31, 2012, and the program will no longer operate after that date.

The Autodesk IDEA Studio is a residency program for students, faculty, and industry professionals who apply design-driven solutions to problems in business, society, and the environment. Autodesk provides residents with a place to work at our Gallery at One Market in San Francisco, free use of software, and access to our design professionals worldwide who serve a variety of industries such as Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC), Manufacturing (MFG), Media/Entertainment (M&E), and Engineering/Natural Resources/Infrastructure (ENI). In turn, IDEA Studio residents address real-life challenges by finding new and imaginative ways to use design technology with compelling and inspiring results. The results push the boundaries of our software in ways we might not have previously considered. It's a WIN-WIN. It's like the old Las Vegas casino saying "Winner. Winner. Chicken dinner."

Recently researchers from University of Southern California sought to revolutionize early stage building design by "designing in" energy and economics through automation and evolutionary optimization.

Team:

• Dr. David Gerber, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California // more


• Penny Pan, PhD student in Computer Science, University of Southern California


• Eve Lin, PhD student in Architecture, University of Southern California

Software:

• Autodesk Revit Architecture // more


• Autodesk Green Building Studio // more


• Project Vasari // more

Using Project Vasari and Revit Architecture while in the IDEA Studio, Penny and Eve created initial project geometries and developed a custom extension for parameterization. This parameterization enabled them to manipulate their designs and rapidly generate many unique configurations.

Using the Project Vasari, Revit Architecture, and Autodesk Green Building Studio application programming interfaces (APIs), they then developed a plug-in to automatically generate, analyze, visualize, and rank various design configurations according to user-defined parameters, like energy use intensity and financial goals.

Embedding their system with a genetic algorithm, the team created a method for essentially breeding the best designs based on the customized parameters. Using the system to evaluate a complex form with two twisting towers resulted in an expansive solution space with varying geometries.

Some designs were stronger than others in the vast solution space. The top designs reflected the best mix of strong financial performance and design scores with minimized energy use. To reduce subjectivity in assigning design scores, they devised a quantitative approach where values were assigned to achievement of design intent, consideration of site constraints, and variability of level-to-level height and space usage.

This result of their efforts in the IDEA Studio offers the potential for multidisciplinary design teams to systematically explore a large number of design options and quickly find the best alternative. This evolutionary optimization loop could conceptually be applied at many scales. At the urban scale, one can imagine a city fully populated with highly optimized buildings, where the energy footprint is minimized and the urban inhabitants’ benefit is maximized.

Thanks to Senior Marketing Manager, Kimberly Whinna, for some of the content in this blog posting.

The process of elimination is alive in the studio.

Do you like to program? I sure do.

Project Vasari is an easy-to-use design tool for creating building concepts with a friendly User Interface (UI). Project Vasari integrates analysis for energy and carbon using cloud computing.

// Download Project Vasari via Autodesk Labs

In addition to Project Vasari itself, you can now download a Software Development Kit (SDK). This kit is intended for power users who wish to use the Application Program Interface (API) to work with Project Vasari.

The API allows a programmer to:

• Create add-ins to automate repetitive tasks in the Project Vasari UI


• Enforce project design standards by checking for errors automatically


• Extract project data for analysis and to generate reports


• Import external data to create new elements or parameter values


• Integrate other applications, including analysis applications, into Project Vasari


• Create Project Vasari project documentation automatically

// Download Project Vasari SDK via Autodesk Labs

Cloud programming is alive in the lab.

Traditionally Autodesk has served 4 industries:

1. AEC - Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (e.g. buildings)


2. MFG - Manufacturing (e.g., automobiles, appliances)


3. M&E - Media and Entertainment (e.g., movies, TV commercials, games)


4. ENI - Engineering, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure (e.g., bridges, roadways)

One of the new industries we are starting to serve is Bioscience. Here is a video from our latest IDEAS Conference.

Scientists in the biological engineering field need visualization software just like traditional engineering. They need ways to see the results of their experiments for themselves as well as to communicate with other scientists. Autodesk is happy to apply our knowledge from our history as a design company to this new area of engineering.

When Carol Bartz was our CEO she used to say "If God didn't make it, one of our customers did." With our foray into supporting Bioscience, the line does start to get blurry.

Engineered DNA is alive in the lab.

In keeping with our sharing items from our internally produced POV (Point of View) Dispatch newsletter, here is a book review.

Question: If you’re a smart, successful, famous, and highly networked Silicon Valley guy, when you write a book, will people buy it, read it, and say it’s good, even if almost every idea in the book has been expressed elsewhere, and recently at that?

Answer: Yes.

The famous author in question is Reid Hoffman, the Founder of LinkedIn, the world’s leading professional social networking site, with 150 million members in 200 countries. He was also an early investor in Facebook, and is on the board of the gaming company Zynga.

His new book with Ben Casnocha, The Start Up of You, is about how we all need to think of our own personal, individual careers as "start-ups," because start-up mindsets and strategies are more adaptable in today’s rapidly and radically changing world than the "traditional" approach to careers.

The book is fine: it’s serviceably written, well-structured, and enjoyable enough to read--it’s just that most of the ideas can be traced back to a classic Fast Company article by Tom Peters’ entitled "A Brand Called You," which came out in 1997.

Some of the key ideas in both the article and the book include:

• We all have to think of ourselves as a brands/companies/start-ups, because the days of depending on a company (even a big, successful one) for long-term employment are gone for good;


• Many of the things that good brands/start-ups do--identifying competitive advantage, focusing on sales and marketing, building a network, etc.--are perfectly transferable to an individual career;


• Thinking like a brand/start up can help us be more exploratory, risk-taking, flexible, and adaptable than most people tend to be naturally.

These are all fine, and true, ideas, especially in today’s world of hyperconnectivity, social media, professional networks (like LinkedIn itself), global competition, innovation mania, and other forces that are churning the career and business waters all around us.

But again, and this is the caveat emptor, most people who are working today are already well aware of the need to do these things -- a fact that makes reading the book mostly an exercise in polite head-nodding, as in: "Yes, it’s all true...and yes, I've heard almost all of this before."

There are, of course, some good things about the book:

• Hoffman and Cosnocha give the reader a ringside seat in Silicon Valley, via his successful track record as an entrepreneur, investor, and all around tech/biz-guru; and the stories and examples from the Valley are often interesting, and sometimes enlightening;


• For readers who still think of What Color is My Parachute? when they think about "books about careers," the ideas and strategies here could help them get more in-sync with the times;


• At the end of each chapter there are practical tips and exercises designed to help you put these ideas into practice immediately -- which is an aspect of business books rare enough these days to merit some kudos;


• And finally/unsurprisingly, Hoffman/Cosnocha are at their best when talking about the fine art of networking; in these sections of the book his ideas are often original, counter-intuitive, and valuable.

Also, as discussed in our article in this issue about the value of creating influence networks, the growing necessity of connecting and staying connected with the right people, companies, and ideas in today's rapid-fire economy is so important that this undertone in the book could offer yet another reason for people to check it out.

For people who are kind of "new" to career building, circa 2012, and for people who think they might enjoy reading about the latest doings of Silicon Valley, written by a true player in that world, The Start Up of You could make for a good, and potentially valuable, read. But for anyone who reads at least a few business/technology/career books a year, they will be better served by passing on the book, and instead spending some time on LinkedIn, Hoffman's excellent professional networking site.

Networking is alive in the lab.

This is my once-a-month copy/paste blog posting to let you know when Autodesk Freewheel will be unavailable.

Several times during the year, new functionality is released into Autodesk’s Enterprise Information Systems to enhance the company’s services to partners / customers and help the organization run more efficiently. The next update is scheduled for three hours on May 12, 2011. To implement these changes, Autodesk Freewheel will experience planned downtime from 2:00 p.m. PDT on Saturday, May 12 through 5:00 p.m. PDT on Saturday, May 12. In Greenwich, this would be 12:00 a.m. UDT on Sunday, May 13 through 3:00 a.m. UDT on Sunday, May 13. As I mention every time, 2012 should be much like 2011 in terms of server maintenance.

We realize that any systems outage impacts the operations of Autodesk, our partners, and our customers. We work diligently to minimize the duration of downtime and appreciate your understanding. So take a three hour break and enjoy the down time.

Updating servers is routinely alive in the lab.

Project Vasari is our free technology preview that is focused on conceptual building design using both geometric and parametric modeling. It supports performance-based design via integrated energy modeling and analysis features.

// Download Project Vasari via Autodesk Labs

Today I posted an update. According to Principal User Experience Designer, Lillian Smith, this update contains:

• Perspective view navigation fixes including more accurate zoom in and zoom region.


• Fixed problems running some external API applications.


• Google Earth satellite images are no longer saved in the project. Instead, they update automatically from the internet when the file is opened.

As always, please try the technology preview and provide your feedback to labs.vasari@autodesk.com. It's why we host technology previews. If we didn't want your feedback, we'd go straight to market.

Updates are alive in the lab.

Autodesk^® Project Vasari is an easy-to-use, expressive design tool for creating building concepts. Vasari goes further, with integrated analysis for energy and carbon, providing design insight where the most important design decisions are made. And, when it’s time to move the design to production, simply bring your Project Vasari design data into the Autodesk^® Revit^® platform for BIM, ensuring clear execution of design intent.

Project Vasari is focused on conceptual building design using both geometric and parametric modeling. It supports performance-based design via integrated energy modeling and analysis features. This new technology preview is now available as a free download and trial on Autodesk Labs.

Latest Updates

• Perspective view navigation fixes including more accurate zoom in and zoom region


• Fixed problems running some external API applications


• Google Earth™ satellite images are no longer saved in the project. Instead, they update automatically from the internet when the file is opened.

Read more about these updates // more

The Project Vasari technology preview is licensed for a limited term and for a particular territory as referenced in the End User License Agreement. The technology preview executable expires on August 31, 2012, and the program will no longer operate after that date.