Some software updates….

Autodesk 123D Beta 6 is now available for download.  Some of the new features are:

• NEW Text feature! Write text and convert it to 3D using any of the solid creation and editing commands.
• NEW! Tools in the 2D sketching environment that help you make precise models even easier.
• NEW! 3D solid creating and editing tool updates, including shelling enhancements for material reduction when 3D printing.

Autodesk 123D can be downloaded from here.

IMSI today announced the launch of TurboViewer Pro, a professional version of its popular free TurboViewer app for the iPad® and iPhone®.

TurboViewer Pro for the iPad and iPhone does everything the free TurboViewer does and more. Extra features include:

Visual styles that support:

• Hidden line
• X-ray
• Shaded
• Shaded with edges
• Grayscale mode
• Adjust edge color range from white-gray-black
• Adjust x-ray transparency factor
• Option to use default or model lights (if any in drawing)
• Option to render both inside and outside model (force two-sided rendering)

Layer Manager (turn on/off layers, invert layers, turn all layers on/off).

Additional settings (turn on/off 2D/3D autosense navigation, option to use two fingers to 3D rotate/tumble or constrain orbit, etc.

Support for 14 languages: Chinese (simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

No onscreen advertising.

You can check out TurboViewer Pro over on the App Store.

It must be fun to be Tom Cruise…

Opinions on Tom Cruise can split a room. His devotion to Scientology and its views are well known, but like him or loathe him, he sure knows how to have fun!

Why can’t Red Bull bring me on a day like this?? God knows over the years, I have drank more than enough of the stuff, I’m practically a brand promoter!!

#Design816

After weeks of waiting, August 16th finally arrived. What was so special about today? Well Autodesk had a publicity event scheduled for 6:00pm Irish time. For 2 weeks CAD users around the world speculated just what this event might be about. Ideas ranged from AutoCAD LT going free to AutoCAD being released on Linux. In the end, neither of those ideas were even close to the mark.

What happened today was based all around OS X Lion and the Mac. AutoCAD 2012 for the Mac, AutoCAD LT 2012 for the Mac and a standalone AutoCAD WS app for the Mac. Since AutoCAD launched on the Mac last year and AutoCAD WS has been available through the browser since it launched, the biggest news of the day was that Autodesk have finally released AutoCAD LT for OS X. LT is available only through the Mac App Store for the princely sum of $899.99. Oh and it is only available in the US & Canada and according to the Q&A, there are no plans as of yet to release it to the rest of the world. I would imagine that will change sometime soon.

So, did all that rock your world?? It didn’t do much for me to be honest. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I certainly didn’t think all the hype would be for the Mac based AutoCAD products. On the plus side, I found the facecast on Facebook to be quite interesting and the Q&A afterwards was quite informative.

Still though, I can’t help but feel that Autodesk tried to pull an “Apple” on this and hype the event beyond its worth. Reading posts on Facebook, Twitter and other blogs, I know a lot of users were very disappointed with today's event.

For more information, Shaan Hurleys blog “Between the Lines” has more information on the three products above or you can watch the Facecast below.

Watch live streaming video from autocad at livestream.com

Another freebie…

I feel bad now, I never mentioned the fantastic rucksack/laptop bag that I won in a Draftsight competition.

It’s a fantastic piece of kit made by Ogio and it now serves as my work bag. Thanks to the Draftsight Facebook team!

The Autodesk Dinosaur

During the week, Autodesk ran a Webcast on Facebook from the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco.

One of the exhibits was an 8.5 foot tall Dinosaur made out of Lego. At the end of the webcast, a competition was held. The question was How many Lego pieces were used in the the Dinosaur?.

I had no idea, but my friend Google did. There are 62500 individual piece in the model. My prize for getting the correct answer was a Lego Dinosaur kit which arrived this very morning!

As you can see from the picture below, I wasted no time in constructing my Lego Dinosaur. I have since disassembled him (or her, I didn’t check…) and have packed it away to give to my nephew when I see him. I’m sure he will love it as much as I do, it’s Lego and it’s a Dinosaur!!!

Anyway, thanks to Autodesk and in particular Gabrielle for the prize, it was my first Autodesk freebie since Autodesk Actrix many years ago.

Creo Sketch from PTC released

I mentioned Creo Sketch, the free 2D sketching package from PTC a few posts back. Well it is finally available for download from this link.

I’ve only just installed it myself and have not had time to really give it a good workout. My first impression though was that the user interface was a tad strange, it seems a tad bland….

It does seem to have all the tools I need to create sketches with though, and unlike Sketchbook Pro by Autodesk, this is free. I’ll persevere with it for now and see how I get on with it.

AutoCAD WS hits 1 Million Android Downloads…

The AutoCAD WS team passed two huge milestones last week. Firstly, they have reached one million downloads of the AutoCAD WS mobile app for Android. Not bad for an app that was only released back in April.

The AutoCAD WS team also announced that they had surpassed over 2 Million registered users for the service and since September 2010, over 3.5 Million drawings have been uploaded to AutoCAD WS.

Congratulations on both counts.