Mod the Machine

ADN Cloud and Mobile DevBlog

The engineers who support the Autodesk Developer Network are getting quite good with cloud and mobile technologies. You can see this for yourself by checking out the articles on this new blog:

Cloud & Mobile DevBlog

This blog focuses on Autodesk cloud and mobile technologies as well as generic cloud and mobile technologies. This post by  Philippe Leefsma who supports Autodesk Manufacturing products should be very interesting to anyone developing on Android.

Fast debugging of Android applications

-Wayne

MFG DevCamp 2012 Material – zip file

The DevCamp 2012 project site on Buzzsaw which we have used during the event will be closed on July 2nd. If you want to take a look at the presentations you can download this file which contains all of the DevCamp material:  Autodesk_MFG_DevCamp_2012.zip

This screenshot shows the contents of the this file. You can find a  brief description of the courses in the pdf file.  

-Wayne

MFG DevCamp 2012 Material

The Manufacturing DevCamp 2012 material is now publicly available. The top-level node provides access to the overviews and the six main tracks:

• Autodesk Inventor App Development for Beginners
• Autodesk Inventor App Development for Experts
• Autodesk PLM
• Cloud and Mobile Technologies
• Business Development
• Autodesk Engineer To Order (ETO)

 

Mancakes Prevail:

One of the things I enjoy about DevCamp is the chance to get together with colleagues. Friday evening after the DevLab, several Autodesk MFG colleagues had dinner at a small restaurant in Portland called Stepping Stone café. Here you see Gary giving a go at eating the mancakes. He gave a gallant performance but in the end, the cakes won out.

From left to right: Philippe Leefsma, Gary Wassell, Wayne Brill, Adam Nagy, Brian Ekins.

Just a few more bites to go.

-Wayne

MFG DevLab

So we’re just reaching the end of the day, and the end of a very busy week for the ADN team here in Lake Oswego. Proceedings were capped off by the hugely popular DevLab, which appears to have been very productive for everyone that managed to come along.

We were all holed up in the Customer Briefing Center, where laptops, pizza and a lot of coffee were the order of the day!

 

 

Several developers were very interested in getting their ideas published as apps in the Inventor and Vault Exchange Stores, it was great to see Gary who manages our DevTech manufacturing workgroup discussing this opportunity with them, and offer hints and tips so they can get published as quickly as possible.

Some developers came along with some long standing issues they’d been having, and went away with big smiles on their faces when our in-house experts could suggest solutions they could try.

There’s no doubt that for many event attendees, the DevLab on its own justified the entire trip to US West Coast.

As for me – I’m looking forward to a road trip to Mt St Helens with Gary and Philippe over the weekend for a bit of fresh air and sunshine!

-Wayne

MFG DevCamp Day Two

Buzz Kross kicked off day 2 (Buzz is Autodesk’s Senior Vice President responsible for all of our manufacturing related products). His keynote address outlined the huge successes the company, our partners and our customers have been having – and all this despite the challenging economic climate we’re experiencing. It’s clear that opportunities for manufacturers and for our developer partners operating in this industry abound.

Buzz reinforced our message with Cloud and Mobile – outlining just how important it is for everyone to understand the impact these technologies are already having on the world. There is no doubt the world is changing, and many of our ADN partners are already operating on this emerging and very exciting frontier.

The rest of the day continued with more in-depth presentations on Inventor API, Data Management, our Engineering To Order, ‘ETO’ product, Advanced API and Cloud and Mobile technologies, all mixed in with a lot of wide ranging discussions on technical issues, business & collaboration, and a fair amount of brainstorming.

Now I’m sitting in on the DevLab back at the Lake Oswego office taking a few minutes breather to write up this post in between helping a room full of partners with some detailed and very specific programming problems they’re having. It’s going to be a very busy day! (For those of you who don’t know – the ADN team runs DevLabs as often as possible, and invite anyone along who is working with our APIs, who also needs to spend a bit of time with one of our engineers to work through a coding problem. It’s a great opportunity to get some really good quality ‘face time’ with an expert!).

-Wayne

MFG DevCamp Day One

Cloud Cloud Cloud! Mobile Mobile Mobile!

The message is coming loud and clear that Autodesk is focusing massively on Cloud and Mobile related technologies and the huge opportunities they represent to our customers and partners.

This year’s Manufacturing DevCamp, which is taking place right now near our Manufacturing headquarters in Lake Oswego - Oregon, is dedicating an entire track of 8 sessions to Cloud and Mobile related content and workshops. Our first keynote speech was by Kevin Schneider, the Senior Product line manager Autodesk Fusion who outlined many of the exciting projects we are already engaged with that are taking advantage of these exciting emerging technologies.

Gopinath Taget (our DevTech Cloud and Mobile technical lead) presented a series of tutorials overviewing Cloud technologies, and some examples of Cloud based applications that Autodesk has already pubished on the web!

Philippe Leefsma Demo’d a really cool app he developed that allows Inventor models to be uploaded to a cloud based service, which can then be accessed from mobile phone and tablet devices to review the models. He then went on to present a session outlining all the technical steps he’d been through to get the system working. Amazingly this was all achieved with about 1 months work from a point of absolutely zero knowledge about the Cloud and Mobile specific elements of the project – clearly illustrating just how easy this technology is to learn for anyone with a background in software design.

Adam Nagy then presented a project he’s been working on integrating Navisworks into a Cloud AND Mobile environment, taking advantage of the skills that Philippe had developed. Adam managed to build his project in a matter of days! Just having someone close by who could explain some of the details of this technology made the whole process more than easy – it became almost trivial!

Gary Wassell presented the beginners Inventor API track, which attracted a lot of interest from partners wanting to expand their business into Inventor related opportunities. The popularity of the track was very refreshing, the attendees consisted of both seasoned developers wanting to apply their skills to Inventor development, and also engineers really wanting to explore the opportunities presented by a highly customisable product.

Doug Redmond and Jared Sund presented an entire track on Data and Product Life Cycle Management. PLM360 is a new Cloud based technology from Autodesk, and Jared outlined the technology to a room full of partners who were keen to find out what the technology was all about.

Jim Quanci ran a business development track, helping business owners understand how Autodesk behaves as an entity that many people interact with on both a tactical and strategic basis.

My co-author, Brian Ekins, presented a series of Advanced Inventor API classes discussing Cameras, Proxies, Reference Keys and the Apprentice server APIs. Brian’s classes proved popular and as informative as ever!

The day was finished off with a ‘beer bust’ in the Lake Oswego office, where everyone could chill out, relax, chew over and discuss all of the topics that had been raised during the day.

Day 2 promises to be just as interesting with a Keynote from Buzz Kross, our Manufacturing Senior Vice President, and a continuation of all the classes started on day 1!

-Wayne

3D equivalent of a 2d curve on a surface

The Inventor 2013 API has several new methods for SurfaceEvaluator. One of these new methods allows you to get the equivalent 3D curve for a 2D curve defined in the parametric space of the surface.

New 2013 method: 

• SurfaceEvaluator.Get3dCurveFrom2dCurve()

VBA Example:

Keep in mind that we only recommend using VBA for prototyping and learning the API but do not recommend using VBA in production.

To use this example have a part file open and run the code. First it will prompt you to select a face. (The second time the code is run it will prompt to find out if you want to keep the existing client graphics).

It will then create several curves in the 2d parametric space. Then it gets the equivalent 3D curves, and creates those as client graphics to allow you to view the results. You can see the curves lie on the surface now, but they were originally defined as circle and five lines, but they came back as curves, because the surface is curved.

 

VBA Code:

' Demonstrates the conversion of a 2d parameteric
' space curve into the ' equivalent 3d model space
' curve.  To use this sample you must have a part
' open.  You can select any face and 3D curves
' will be drawn on the face using client graphics
Public Sub ParamCurveto3D()
   ' Have the user select a face whose parametric
    ' space will be used
    Dim testFace As Face
    Set testFace = ThisApplication. _
             CommandManager.Pick _
           (kPartFaceFilter, "Select a face")
   
    ' Get the surface evaluator from the face
    Dim surfEval As SurfaceEvaluator
    Set surfEval = testFace.Evaluator
   
    ' Get the parametric range of the face
    Dim paramRange As Box2d
    Set paramRange = surfEval.ParamRangeRect
   
   ' Get the transient geometry object
    Dim tg As TransientGeometry
    Set tg = ThisApplication.TransientGeometry
   
   ' Get the active document.  This assumes
    ' a part is active
    Dim partDoc As PartDocument
    Set partDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
   
   ' Create a client graphics object.  If one
    ' already exists, give the user
    ' the option of re-using it, or creating
    ' a new one.
    Dim graphics As ClientGraphics
    On Error Resume Next
    Set graphics = partDoc.ComponentDefinition. _
             ClientGraphicsCollection.Item("Test")
    If Err Then
     Set graphics = partDoc.ComponentDefinition. _
          ClientGraphicsCollection.Add("Test")
    Else
        If MsgBox("Yes add to existing graphics No = new", _
        vbYesNo + vbQuestion) = vbNo Then
            graphics.Delete
           
            Set graphics = partDoc.ComponentDefinition. _
            ClientGraphicsCollection.Add("Test")
        End If
    End If
   
    ' Create a new graphics node.
    Dim node As GraphicsNode
    Set node = graphics.AddNode(1)

    ' Do a loop that creates 5 lines that go
    ' from the minimum range point to
    ' five points along the maximum u parameter.
    Dim startPnt As Point2d
    Set startPnt = paramRange.MinPoint
    Dim endPnt As Point2d
    Dim i As Integer
    For i = 1 To 5
       ' Create the 2d line in parametric space
        Set endPnt = tg.CreatePoint2d _
          (paramRange.MaxPoint.X, (((paramRange. _
                MaxPoint.y - paramRange.MinPoint.y) _
             / 4) * (i - 1)) + paramRange.MinPoint.y)
       
        Dim surfCurve As LineSegment2d
        Set surfCurve = tg.CreateLineSegment2d _
                                    (startPnt, endPnt)
       
        ' Get the equivalent 3d curve in model space
        Dim resultCurve As Object
        Set resultCurve = surfEval. _
                       Get3dCurveFrom2dCurve(surfCurve)
       
        ' Create client graphics for this curve
        Dim crvGraphics As CurveGraphics
        Set crvGraphics = node.AddCurveGraphics _
                                          (resultCurve)
        crvGraphics.DepthPriority = 2
    Next
   
   ' Create a 2d circle in parametric space
    Dim center As Point2d
    Set center = tg.CreatePoint2d _
      ((paramRange.MaxPoint.X + paramRange.MinPoint.X) _
                         / 2, (paramRange.MaxPoint.y + _
                              paramRange.MinPoint.y) / 2)
   
    Dim radius As Double
    radius = (paramRange.MaxPoint.X - _
                           paramRange.MinPoint.X) * 0.25
    Dim paramCircle As Circle2d
    Set paramCircle = tg.CreateCircle2d(center, radius)
   
    ' Get the equivalent 3d curve in model space
    Set resultCurve = surfEval. _
                       Get3dCurveFrom2dCurve(paramCircle)
   
   ' Create client graphics for this curve
    Set crvGraphics = node.AddCurveGraphics(resultCurve)
    crvGraphics.DepthPriority = 2
       
    ThisApplication.ActiveView.Update
    ThisApplication.ActiveView.Fit
End Sub

-Wayne

Manufacturing DevCamp next week

I am really excited about DevCamp next Wednesday and Thursday in Portland Oregon. It will be two days of insightful presentations and a great chance to meet other people who are customizing Autodesk manufacturing products.

I am also looking forward to seeing colleagues from different geos  flying in from Europe to do their presentations. Other teammates are traveling from California and Michigan. I guess I am one of the lucky ones in that I do not have to travel very far to attend. I will be driving from the Seattle area. (~4Hour drive).

The two presentations I have focus on Inventor ETO and are scheduled for Thursday. On Wednesday I will have time to attend a few other sessions. If I could be in many places at once I would attend them all.   

There will be keynote presentations starting off each day and at past DevCamps these have been my favorite sessions. It is inspiring to hear about what is being planned for the future of Autodesk Manufacturing.

-Wayne

2012 Inventor API Survey

It’s time again for the annual API survey.  Please help us help you by taking a few minutes and filling out the survey.  Everyone is welcome to respond.  Your answers help us to determine what to work on in upcoming releases of Inventor and help us to justify resources to work on API enhancements.  The more responses we get the more we know people care about the API and the more accurate the results will be so we can work on the areas that will best benefit the majority of those using the API.

In question 5 you can choose up to three items that are important to you.  If only one or two of those items is important to you then only check those one or two item.  If you only pick one then your full vote will be for that single item.  If you pick two or three then it is split between those two or three items.

Here’s the link to the survey and thank you for help out and taking the time to respond.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22FVZCJTCQN

-Brian

Extract partial curves from 2d and 3d transient geometry

Another enhancement in the Inventor 2013 API related to transient geometry allows you to get partial curves from splines. You will find two new methods called ExtractPartial and Split on the BSplineCurve and BSplineCurve2d objects. These new methods make it easier to create new curves based on existing curves. Using ExtractPartial you can extract any portion of the curve as a new transient geometry spline. Using Split will get two transient curves from the original.

New 2013 methods used to extract a partial curve from a Spline

• BSplineCurve.ExtractPartial
• BSplineCurve.Split
• BSplineCurve2d.ExtractPartial
• BSplineCurve2d.Split

VBA Example:

Keep in mind that we only recommend using VBA for prototyping and learning the API but do not recommend using VBA in production.

Note: This example is only using ExtractPartial. (Not Split)

Before running this procedure create a Sketch with a spline. When you run this example it will prompt you to select a “2d  spline”. If you select a spline the selected entity will be a SketchSpline and the BSplineCurve2d is returned from the Geometry property of that object.

 

Remember that these methods are creating transient geometry so it is not affecting the real Inventor geometry. This example uses that transient geometry to create real Inventor geometry (3 splines) using Sketch.SketchFixedSplines.Add(). The code deletes the original spline. After running the procedure notice the three new splines:

VBA Code:

' Demonstrates the ability to extract partial
' curves from a transient geometry curve.  This
' sample has you select an existing sketch
' spline and extracts three curves from the curve.
' It then creates real curves using the extracted
' curves and deletes the original sketch curve.
Public Sub ExtractPartialCurves2D()
    Dim partDoc As PartDocument
    Set partDoc = ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
   
    Dim spline As Object
    Set spline = ThisApplication.CommandManager _
    .Pick(kSketchCurveSplineFilter, "Select 2d spline")
   
   ' Get the spline geometry from the entity.
    Dim splineCurve As BSplineCurve2d
    Set splineCurve = spline.Geometry
   
    ' Get the parameter bounds of the curve.
    Dim startParam As Double
    Dim endParam As Double
    Call splineCurve.Evaluator.GetParamExtents _
                           (startParam, endParam)
   
    ' Extract three curves where they are in
    ' thirds of the original
    ' relative to the curves parameter space.
    Dim curves(2) As BSplineCurve2d
    Set curves(0) = splineCurve.ExtractPartial _
         (startParam, (startParam + endParam) / 3)
    Set curves(1) = splineCurve.ExtractPartial _
                 ((startParam + endParam) / 3, _
               ((startParam + endParam) / 3) * 2)
   
    Set curves(2) = splineCurve.ExtractPartial _
           (((startParam + endParam) / 3) * 2, _
                                       endParam)
   
    ' Create new sketch curves using
    ' the extracted splines.
    Dim splineSketch As sketch
    Set splineSketch = spline.Parent
    Call splineSketch.SketchFixedSplines. _
                             Add(curves(0))
    Call splineSketch.SketchFixedSplines. _
                             Add(curves(1))
    Call splineSketch.SketchFixedSplines. _
                             Add(curves(2))

    ' Delete the original curve.
    spline.Delete
End Sub

-Wayne