Here are some notes I took this morning at the keynote presentations by Jeff Kowalski, Carl Bass and Emily Pilloton:
Machine learning and generative design.
Identify existing components and their relationships.
Tell the computer not what to do and how to design, but give it the goal we want to achieve.
Computationally grow structures.
Two new kinds of technology: intelligent taxonomies: build new work on all the best existing.
Explore further; don't reinvent the wheel every time by starting every project from scratch.
Bring life to the design process.
Overcome planned obsolescence by designing products that sense, respond and collaborate.
Replace Internet of things, which is often just an Internet of one single isolated thing trying to talk with its owner, by a community of designed collaborative objects.
Take nature's strengths and technology and intertwine them to transcend both.
Capturing reality, point clouds.
Infraworks builds a complete model from all available data.
A360 for collaboration: a free one-year subscription is available to all AU participants.
Fusion 360, the world's first cloud based mechanical CAD product with all the tools required to design and engineer projects plus, more importantly, the tools to understand and collaborate integrated right in.
Branch and merge designs, collaborate, use any device or platform.
TinkerCAD: cloud based design tool for kids.
Getting involved in the real world. Keyboard and mouse were insufficient for input, so is paper insufficient for output.
Enter the 3D printer – still in its beginnings, like the first version PC or first cell phones.
Spark, a free open platform for 3D printing.
$100 million Spark investment fund to support innovation.
Resolution is down to tens of microns.
Open software, open hardware, open materials: spark.autodesk.com/ember-explorer.
Future of making not just 3D printing: also robotics.
3D printing of stainless steel, use in architectural projects, etc.
Unique objects, not just batches of thousands, e.g., panels in a new SF house.
BIM 360 fastest growing product we ever had.
Point layout to query the BIM model and correlate with field reality.
Subscribe to Autodesk: access to any and all tools for a single price, for use on any platform anywhere in the world.
Emily Pilloton of @ProjectHDesign is an architect who gave up her previous career to reconnect to her love of creating, teaching and building, academia and transformation for students and communities.
Why: One kid said, "I want to return to this town and say 'I built this'."
What: A school class said, "We needed a library, so we built it ourselves."
Who: young people, 8, 9, 15, etc., e.g., "I'm a ten-year old girl and I know how to weld. What can't I do?"
We as adults have a responsibility to share what we do.
I, Jeremy, fully agree with that wonderful inspiring statement; it matches exactly what I think and invest energy in through The Building Coder.
This was a really moving presentation for me and I was deeply touched.
Back to Carl: young people are our most important resource and greatest hope.
All Autodesk software is now freely available to any student anywhere in the world.
Addendum
For a much more complete summary of Jeff's and Carl's keynote remarks, please refer to Scott Sheppard's #AU2014 keynote summary part 1 and #AU2014 keynote summary part 2.