February 2023 Autodesk Update: What’s New

February 15, 2023

| 3ds Max, Architecture, AutoCAD, Autodesk Collections, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk News, Autodesk Products, Building Design Suite, Civil 3D, Collections, Construction, Defence, Fusion 360, Infrastructure, Inventor, Inventor Professional, Manufacturing, Maya, Plant Design Suite, Product Design & Manufacturing Collection, Product Design Suite, Revit, Revit, Uncategorized, Utilities, Visualisation, Visualisation

Discover the latest news and new features from Autodesk, Click the links below for more information.

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT

Update to AutoCAD 2023.1 – see what’s new (blog post)
Get bite-sized fixes, shortcuts, advice & tips (AutoCAD Community)
Subscribe to the AutoCAD podcast (blog post)

Architecture, Engineering & Civil Engineering

Revit update: see what’s new in Revit 2023.1 (blog post)
See what’s New In Civil 3D 2023.2 and InfraWorks 2023.1 (blog post)
Sheet Set Manager for Civil 3D updated to be cloud-first (blog post)

Design & Manufacturing

Inventor update – What’s new in 2023.2 (blog post)
Fusion 360 update – What’s New November 2022 (video)
Share ideas for future product features directly with the Inventor team (forum)

Media & Entertainment

See What’s New in Maya (timeline)
New learning courses for 3ds Max, Maya & Arnold (courses)
Level up your Games Studio with ShotGrid (webinar)

Admin resources and more

More Information

Contact us on 1800 490 514, [email protected], by live chat or fill out the form below to get more information on how to best manage your Autodesk software. Our team of experts have saved our clients thousands of dollars by helping them make smart decisions around how to best structure their investment in technology for maximum return on investment. We’d be happy to audit your existing technology and recommend any changes that you could benefit from.

Is the Automotive Industry just Big Tech on Wheels?

June 18, 2021

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| Autodesk Labs, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Products, CAM, Collections, Fusion 360, Information Technology, Inventor, Manufacturing, Maya, Visualisation

Is the Automotive Industry just Big Tech on Wheels?

With more and more tech going into cars with connected systems suing IoT, global positioning systems (GPS) and the technology for semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, will the automotive industry and big tech converge into one.

Transformation of the Automotive Industry

With the push for greener vehicles, more and more electronic systems and sensors, a connected digital supply chain, robotics, digital design, virtual reality and other technologies, it seems like we are already there.

Connected Automobiles

Our smartphones are already connected to vehicles via bluetooth and many cars have sim cards and these software platforms are all connected and can be used for consumer and industrial applications that can benefit the driver, passengers and payloads with a huge growth potential.

With these connected system, comes big data and analytics feeding into a centralised system give automobile manufacturers insights into how automobiles are being used and IoT diagnostics on component wear and tear, maintenance and failure

Manufacturing Big Tech Automotive

Most automotive factories are already using digital prototyping, design, machining and analysis software where the CAD models and metadata are used to in manufacturing processes, systems and machines to manufacture.

In the concept and design phases, virtual reality and high-end visualisation systems are used as standard, however, the automotive industry needs to be more agile and innovation to connecting not only cars to human interface devices but also other cars and systems and infrastructure that connect to cars.

Automotive Needs More Programmers

With today’s cars packed full of tech, the industry needs more programmers than ever to create in-built applications and integrate systems with external devices and applications.

“Today’s car infotainment systems use more than 10 million lines of code,” said Audi’s Member of the Board of Management for Marketing and Sales, Hildegaard Wortmann, speaking at NVIDIA’s GTC21 event this year. “That’s as much code as an entire vehicle needed just a few years ago.”

While the advantages of technology in cars and trucks is self-evident, the overhead to innovate, design and manage applications for essentially what is a mechanical smartphone device on wheels, adds to the cost of manufacturing and development.

What Does the Future Look Like for Automotive and Big Tech?

The Hollywood vision of driverless hybrid flying cars running on a anti-gravity fuel system is still far away but if we look at the gains we have made in the last 5 years, it’s probably not as far away as you think.

With over 50% of the workforce wanting to work from home these days, do we really need a car with all that tech if the days of being stuck in traffic for an hour or more are gone but we only have to imagine the magical drive down the ocean or trekking to the mountains and the justification of paying for all that tech and comfort makes sense in a car full of screaming kids.

Contact Us

If you would learn more about Autodesk software, please contact us by calling on 1800 490 514, by filling out the form or clicking the live chat in the bottom right-hand corner.

Design Consulting Promoted to Autodesk Gold Partner

The Ultimate Guide to AutoCAD vs AutoCAD Architecture

AutoCAD Map 3D: The Perfect Mapping Tool for Engineering and GIS Professionals

AutoCAD Mechanical vs AutoCAD. AutoCAD and AutoCAD Mechanical are both powerful CAD software programs, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. AutoCAD Mechanical is better for mechanical engineering design, while AutoCAD is a more versatile option for general engineering and design.

AutoCAD Mechanical vs AutoCAD: A Comparison for Mechanical Engineers

AutoCAD vs Plant 3D: Which Software is Right For You?

Plant 3D Vs AutoCAD: Piping Design and P&ID Schematics

AutoCAD Vs AutoCAD LT

What’s New in Civil 3D 2022

April 26, 2021

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| Infrastructure, Maya, Visualisation

What's New in Autodesk Civil 3D 2022

The Autodesk Civil 3D 2022 release brings new alignment and ArcGIS workflows, enhancements with pressure networks and for AEC Collection subscribers, new functionality to the Project Explorer.

Alignment Workflows

The better handle complex geometry for ramps and interchanges, there has been new enhancements to connected alignment functionality:

Curve group combinations
- Free Reverse Spiral-Curve-Spiral-Spiral (From entity, end curve)
- Free Reverse Spiral-Spiral-Curve-Spiral (From curve, end entity)
- Free Reverse Spiral-Spiral-Curve-Spiral-Spiral (Between two curves)
Curves grater than 180 degrees
Connected alignments can now be created at offsets from parent alignments to support slip lane and off-ramp scenarios.
A preview option to view before executing the command

Pressure Networks

The color and diameter of the compass can now be specified using options on the ribbon when laying out a path-based pressure network.
The Profile Layout ribbon tab has been updated for path based pressure networks to make it more consistent with the plan layout ribbon.
Spanning labels for pressure networks can now be created in plan and profile views.
PVIs can now be removed from overridden station ranges of pressure network in profile view that are set to static (non-dynamic) state. When selected, the Clean Up PVIs check box on the Pipe Run Profile Settings dialog box removes PVIs from overridden station ranges. You can use the Apply button to preview the changes in the drawing.
A command named RegenPressureSolid was added to regenerate 3D solids for pressure network parts.

ArcGIS

Raster data imported from ArcGIS can now be refreshed from ArcGIS. For more information, see To Refresh Data from ArcGIS.
When importing and refreshing raster data, users can configure the resolution for each raster layer separately.
The number of available resolution levels has been extended for importing ArcGIS raster data from 19 levels to 23 levels.

User Profile

Users can create their own custom profile based on information about their disciplines and job roles.

Project Explorer

Support has been added for pressure networks in Project Explorer:
- Added support for displaying and editing pressure network information, such as name and style.
- Added support for displaying dynamic profile views for pressure pipe runs in the Project Explorer window.
- Added support for editing multiple pressure network properties and pressure part properties.
- Added support for editing the layout and view style of pressure networks and pressure parts.
- Added Object Set support for pressure networks and pressure parts.
- Added support for generating reports for pressure networks, pressure parts, and pressure pipe runs.
- Added support for generating AutoCAD tables for pressure networks, pressure parts and pressure pipe runs.
- Added support for comparing pressure pipe run sample points with other surfaces.
- Added support for searching for pressure networks by name.
Support has been added for feature lines in the <None> site (siteless feature lines).
Project Explorer is now launched from the Home tab of the Civil 3D ribbon.
Project Explorer is now available in all languages currently supported by Civil 3D. The assigned language for Project Explorer is determined by the regional language settings in Windows.

Grading Optimisation

For AEC Collection users, Civil 3D now includes Grading Optimisation which works as a preliminary terrain optimisation tool for site designers. It uses design data and automates otherwise repetitive manual grading tasks according to customized object constraints.

Available objects include:

zones
drain lines
low points
building pads and reveals
curbs
sidewalks
paths
parking lots
ponds

Once these objects are defined with their project relate constraints, Grading Optimization delivers an optimized terrain surface and 3D geometry back into the design tool for further detailed design.

Contact Us

If you would to discuss Autodesk software, please contact us by calling on 1800 490 514, by filling out the form or clicking the live chat in the bottom right-hand corner.

What’s New in Maya 2022

April 14, 2021

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| Maya, Visualisation

What's New in Autodesk Maya 2022

Maya 2022 brings seamless USD integration, improvements to animation, rigging and modelling toolsets and the latest version of Arnold.

USD Plug-in for Maya

Universal Scene Description (USD) support in Maya is now available:

Animation Ghosting

In previous versions of Maya when you wanted to change the way ghosts appeared with multiple meshes selected, each of their attributes had to be edited individually in the Attributes editor.

The new Ghosting editor gives you an interface to apply Ghost attributes individually or as a group.

Component Tags for Deformers

Component Tags let you create node-independent named groups to deform geometry, letting you modify tag membership on the fly.

Using Component Tags replaces the groupID node previously needed to transform vertices, as well as cleans up the Node Editor by eliminating Tweak nodes. Component Tag nodes are automatically created with a subset of components selected whenever you create a deformer.

Create and edit Component Tag membership with the Component Tags table

Python 3

In Windows and Linux, Maya starts in Python 3 by default and available on all platforms

Bifrost 2.2.1.0 plug-in

The new Bifrost plugin has simulation workflow enhancements, e.g. resume simulation from cached frame, spawn new particles and low-resolution Aero refinement.

Graph Editor Improvements

Peak Removal Filter to clean up noisy animation data

Added to the Graph Editor Curves menu, is a new animation filter, the Peak Removal Filter.

Similar to the MotionBuilder filter of the same name, the Peak Removal Filter lets you clean up unwanted spikes and peaks in your animation curves.

Smooth filter (Gaussian) for curve "noise" reduction

Another new MotionBuilder filter, the Smooth filter (Gaussian) has been added to the Graph Editor Curves menu, to let you remove jittering and noise in curve channels. See Smooth filter (Gaussian) options for details.

New Display Option

A new Show Animated Shapes option in the Graph Editor List menu lets you set whether the Graph Editor displays all curves downstream from a node, or just the animation curve of the selected node. This is useful if you have custom rigs with specialized connections or when animators only want to view the transforms for a selected object.

Preserve Tangent Type: Now for Added Keys

The Preserve Tangent Type option, formerly only for Inserted Keys, is now available for Added Keys.

Previously, when you added a key to a curve, by default, the new key respected the tangents on either side of the key. This ensured that added keys did not change the neighbouring tangents type while still changing the shape of the curve. This behaviour continues to be the default setting.

Customise Key Selection

You can now shrink the active selection area of keys in the Graph Editor graph view by using the Min key selection size in the Animation (Settings) preferences.

Sweep Mesh

Meshes can be created from simple curves using the Sweep Mesh feature using various profiles letting you create a wide array organic and hard surface forms like:

Tubes
Pipes
Ribbons
Cables
Ropes
Roads
Horns
Hair Cards
Architectural features (e.g. crownmoulding)

Security Preferences

Flag specific commands or plugin locations to be blocked when Maya loads them in the Preferences window.

Rokoko Motion Library Plug-in

Drag and drop professional mocap assets into your scenes, leveraging on assets built for big productions like Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Doctor Strange, Assassin’s Creed, and Horizon Zero Dawn in your own projects.

Cached Playback Improvements

In previous versions of Maya, you could turn on Caching support for dynamics nodes such as Boss, or Nucleus. Now, Cached Playback for dynamics is on by default and dynamics simulation content caching is shown in a separate pass that appears as a pink status line in the Time Slider just above the Animation Cache Status line.

New Solidify Deformer

The new Solidify deformer lets you create areas of geometry that appear more solid on deformed geometry, which lets you define rigid parts of a character’s clothes, such as buttons or a belt buckle.

It works by analysing deformed sections of geometry and dividing it into separate polygon islands. Each polygon island is then replaced by the original geometry moved and blended into place based on the approximation of the matrix derived from the deformed vertices.

OpenColorIO v2

With an emphasis on visual effects and computer animation, the OpenColor IO v2 colour management system has been integrated into Maya 2022

Start up Experience Improvements

A number of improvements have been made to Maya’s startup experience, including:

Faster start up and quit times
No longer steals focus during start up
Remembering the state of the Output Window
Ability to copy specific preferences from a previous install
A new, more informative splash screen

New Morph Deformer

The new Morph deformer is like a GPU-Accelerated version of the BlendShape deformer.

With a GPU-Accelerated version of the BlendShape deformer, it provides simple AB morphs, partial to whole mesh morphs (or whole mesh to partial), as well as the ability to incorporate legacy CPU deformers in deformation chains without blocking the rest of the chain from GPU evaluation.

It features:

Absolute, Relative, and Surface Space morph modes
Object and World morph spaces
An option that automatically creates a topology Mapping feature for alternate vert table lookup
Neighbour options for stabilizing Relative space morph mode coordinate system

HUD: Updated Evaluation Manager Status Messaging

Changes have been made to the Maya Heads Up Display (HUD) Evaluation Manager status messages to better reflect the condition of the Evaluation Manager (EM).

The previous “Rebuild Required”, then “Ready” (but still requiring partitioning) status messaging was unclear if the EM was performing Parallel evaluation.

The new status messaging is now Rebuild Required, then Built, followed by Ready, states that depict each stage of the Evaluation Graph as it is unbuilt, built, and partitioned.

To display this information on the Viewport, go to Display > Heads Up Display and choose the Evaluation option.

Time Slider Bookmark Improvements

New functionalities have been added to Time Slider Bookmarks:

Interactive Move and Scale
Step through bookmarks
Move frames with bookmarks
Bookmark Manager

Deformer Updates

HumanIK: Neck Motion Reduction setting

A new Neck Motion Reduction slider has been added that lets you minimize the movement from a character’s body to its neck.

Updated System Requirements

Minimum Linux system requirements for Maya have changed, and new Visual Studio and gcc versions are now supported.

On Windows, Visual Studio has been updated to 2019.7. There are no changes to Windows system requirements.

On Linux, gcc has been updated to 9.3.1. Linux users will require CentOS 7.6 or higher to use this preview release. They will also need to ensure that these additional libraries are installed to run Maya:

libxcb-icccm.so.4 from package xcb-util-wm
libxcb-image.so.0 from package xcb-util-image
libxcb-keysyms.so.1 from package xcb-util-keysyms
libxcb-render-util.so.0 from package xcb-util-renderutil

Create VR for Maya

Create VR for Maya is an immersive conceptual design tool that empowers artists and designers to start their creative process directly in 3D. Using simple curve and surface tools designers can explore form and shape while being fully immersed in virtual reality alongside their design. Sketches and models can then be easily exported to Maya or other content creation applications for final realization.

Arnold for Maya 4.2.1 plug-in

Maya 2022 includes MtoA 4.2.1 which introduces Arnold 6.2.0.1, and is a feature release that brings light mixing, bloom and interactive denoising through imagers, better USD support to improve your experience working with USD in Maya, an improved layout to the Arnold Render View, and OSL syntax highlighting to the OSL shader.

Auto Tangent Types

New options for Auto Tangents in the Graph Editor offer an improved algorithm, giving animators better control and more predictable results.

Contact Us

If you would to discuss Autodesk software, please contact us by calling on 1800 490 514, by filling out the form or clicking the live chat in the bottom right-hand corner.

What is #TheFutureofMakingThings ?

February 19, 2015

| 1 Comment

| 123D App, Alias, Autodesk 360, Autodesk 360 Products, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Labs, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Research, Fusion 360, Hardware, Manufacturing, Maya, Product Design Suite, Simulation, Visualisation

Autodesk has launched The Future of Making Things. A vision of how they see future human and business interaction with technology when it comes to engineering, design, analysis and collaboration. At the Autodesk University Keynote address in December, 2014, Jeff Kowalski, Autodesk SVP and Chief Technology Officer, discussed how Autodesk is looking at technology and design through the lens of…

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT

Architecture, Engineering & Civil Engineering

Design & Manufacturing

Media & Entertainment

Admin resources and more

More Information

Is the Automotive Industry just Big Tech on Wheels?

Transformation of the Automotive Industry

Connected Automobiles

Manufacturing Big Tech Automotive

Automotive Needs More Programmers

What Does the Future Look Like for Automotive and Big Tech?

Contact Us

Related Blog Posts

What's New in Autodesk Civil 3D 2022

Alignment Workflows

Pressure Networks

ArcGIS

User Profile

Project Explorer

Grading Optimisation

Contact Us

What's New in Autodesk Maya 2022

USD Plug-in for Maya

Animation Ghosting

Component Tags for Deformers

Python 3

Bifrost 2.2.1.0 plug-in

Graph Editor Improvements

Peak Removal Filter to clean up noisy animation data

Smooth filter (Gaussian) for curve "noise" reduction

New Display Option

Preserve Tangent Type: Now for Added Keys

Customise Key Selection

Sweep Mesh

Security Preferences

Rokoko Motion Library Plug-in

Cached Playback Improvements

New Solidify Deformer

OpenColorIO v2

Start up Experience Improvements

New Morph Deformer

HUD: Updated Evaluation Manager Status Messaging

Time Slider Bookmark Improvements

Deformer Updates

HumanIK: Neck Motion Reduction setting

Updated System Requirements

Create VR for Maya

Arnold for Maya 4.2.1 plug-in

Auto Tangent Types

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