First Year With Autodesk – Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Posted on May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 by ppandria

I got out of Birmingham International Train Station and got into the Uber. I closed the door and sank into the seat, shattered. That was the final leg of a rare 4-day whirlwind trip across Europe. I was wondering how many miles I put on this week alone. Then again, after a year on the new job, how many miles did I travel for work anyway? Did I go around the world? And what did I learn from all these travels in planes, trains and automobiles?

Planes

Flying has taken me to two vastly different cities this year, two places I never visited before. I am not a musician and I never listen to country music. However, there I was in a honky-tonk in Nashville, away from the cold UK spell in March. A local musician was doing her best rendition of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. It was a perfect mix of warmth, the smell of barbeque spices, a local brew and the southern drawl coming out of the speakers. You even sing along after a while. You can forget about all of that when you get off the plane in Milan. It’s all about design, dah-ling. There already was Andy Warhol pop art at Malpensa Airport. The whole evening with Car Design News got me even more immersed with fashion, car design and circularity. When I got off the subway the next day, the Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II towered over me. Breath-taking. I love flying (sorry about the carbon footprint) but how else can you get quickly to the places you need to go to? Turns out all the beautiful people love it too and they know where to go. You should have seen the fleet of private jets lined up in a row at Milan’s Linate Airport.

Trains

The first time I ever visited Birmingham almost 9 years ago, it was a nightmare to get around by car. I got a ticket for driving in a bus lane by accident. That was a charming souvenir to get in the mail a few weeks later in Michigan. I never drove into the centre of that town ever again. I am a car guy indeed but my appreciation for the railways only got deeper, especially over the last year. Heading down the M42 from the airport, you could see all the new roads and new bridges in preparation for the new HS2 railway. Any quick way to get down to London is welcome in my book, no matter how long that gigantic worksite is going to take. I am amazed that I did not travel by train more this year because the network in Europe is phenomenal. I can leave Birmingham at 9h00. I can work while I am traveling and be in downtown Paris by 16h00. Of course, just keep an eye on the strikes or the delays here and there. Case and point, I will point to my memorable race to London from Germany

Automobiles

In the end it is always about the cars. All over Europe, I was fortunate to see behind closed doors what our clients can do with our software. It truly is inspiring. Here are a few other random observations.

· The Lucid Air is really striking in the metal. I mean, there I was in Tennessee visiting the Acropolis and there it was. Yes, I really enjoyed writing that sentence.

· The same observation goes for the Rivian Amazon van. Just as the sun was setting it looked futuristic in the desert.

· In the UK, the garages are just too small. It is not convenient to use them to you know, park a car in it. My Michigan garage was big enough to easily park two cars, a motorcycle, and a barbeque. Then again, some cars will never fit anywhere…

Even if you are well over six feet tall, you can still feel small…

Bottomline

I am fortunate and thankful to work for a company who appreciates and understands the needs of its workforce. In the office or not people get their work done and then some. I really enjoy working from home most of the time. However, there is only so much that can be accomplished via Zoom. The biggest takeaway from last year is travelling remains one of the best things you can do in life. First it is great to meet clients face to face, wherever they may be. Second, there is something magical about experiencing life somewhere new, somewhere you have never been, out of your comfort zone. You can feel the neuro-synapses lighting up in your brain. It puts your mind in another dimension. Travel indeed forms the youth (and the seasoned). In case you were wondering I went around the world indeed. Almost 1.5 times to be exact. And now, off to Frankfurt for the 2023 Automotive Innovation Forum. See you there!

Alias: The Ultimate Learning Guide

Posted on April 4, 2023 by ppandria

I was asked this question so many times recently that it warranted a post. There are tons of great software out there you can use to get your creative ideas across. However, there is one big hurdle: production. Whatever software you use for form exploration, you might come to a point where you want to have your design built in real life, for either 3D printing, concept car or production. For speed, accuracy and the creation of production ready data, Alias is hard to beat. The question is: how do I learn? If you are a student, you could get yourself an industrial design degree. You could also get some specialized courses from some trusted partners like Symetri. If you want to do it yourself, you could go ahead and download the learning edition of Alias. Then, keep on reading!

Note: to download the course material below, I used Firefox because Chrome and Edge gave me some issues.

Fundamentals

F1 Interface Fundamentals

F2 Geometry Fundamentals

F3 NURBS Fundamentals

F4 Projecting, Intersecting, and Trimming

F5 Building with Curves & Surface Tools

F6 Aligning & Matching Surfaces & Curves

All this material can be traced back to the OG: Alias Workbench.

Don’t miss:

The Golden Rules.

Learn the golden rules about control vertices (i.e. CVs). Everything derives from the proper use of CVs. It is a cascading effect. If your curves are not well drawn, the surfaces derived from them will not look good. It is vital to understand proper CV placement with the golden rules.

Theory Builders

Once you have a good grasp of CV placement on curves, it is time to move on to surfaces. What the hell is curvature anyway? Read on and find out.

SubD modelling

Linkage Design has a great 8-part course on how to get started with SubDs.

Class A Modelling

The best tutorial I have seen out there is by Adrian Biggins. No wonder he was on my team back in the day.

In conclusion, as you gathered by the amount of material included, Alias takes time to master. When people start learning Alias, they want to build a car right away. I was no different. The first car I ever built in Alias under the tutelage of Brian Baker was a car built with the chicklet method. Imagine flattened bread dough that I tried to shape into a vehicle. No, it was not pretty. Take my word for it, take the proper steps. If you do not learn Alias methodically you will not be successful. Crawl, stand then walk first. And when you can finally run in Alias, you will never look back.

A. I. + Automotive Design Studio = End of Your Job?

Posted on March 17, 2023 by ppandria

Note: the information in this article is either publicly available or my own opinion.

Midjourney Rolls Royce Sketch by Matt Swann

Look at your phone. Now imagine a computer that is eighty times slower and about the same multiple bigger. I know what you are thinking: that is one obsolete piece of computing. On May 11th, 1997, that antiquity captured the world’s imagination. IBM’s Deep Blue beat world champion Gary Kasparov at chess. For the first time, computer programming beat human intelligence. And it only went downhill from there. The machines became exponential better. They beat us at increasingly difficult games like Jeopardy (IBM again with Watson) and Go (Google Deep Mind). They even pass bar exams. As I went through my presentation at the first ever online Creacion Forum, the anxiety about A.I. bubbled up to the surface with questions from the audience. Some of them barely got started in their careers and they were nervous: A.I. was coming for them.

FelGAN’s creations are especially useful when pictured at scale.

A few years ago, computer made patterns were the rage all over my LinkedIn feed. Today it is Dall-E, Mid-Journey, or Chat GPT. Trends come and go but A.I. is something different. Siri landed on your phone a dozen years ago. It is sweeping all fields of human endeavours, everything everywhere all at once, just like the movie. Automotive design is one of its targets. Audi was the first to use A.I. in a design studio context to generate rim ideas with FelGAN. Other A.I. examples include generative design and machine learning. Both disciplines will play a key role in electric vehicles, with definitions given by Wikipedia:

Generative design is an iterative design process that generates outputs that meet specified constraints to varying degrees. In a second phase, designers can then provide feedback to the generator that explores the feasible region by selecting preferred outputs or changing input parameters for future iterations. Either or both phases can be done by humans or software. You can optimize weight and materials costs with this method.

Generative Design with Fusion – Image Courtesy Autodesk

Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as training data, to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machines can learn how to make the most aerodynamic shape using this method. After thinking about it, here is my idea (for free, you’re welcome). Feed A.I. a clay scan and a matching 3D Alias model. After a while, it might learn how to build a model without human input and turn it around in minutes.

Where is all this leading to? A.I. is a huge weapon but like any weapon, it needs to be calibrated and aimed properly. In meetings with students this year, they already generate sketch alternatives with A.I. It is out of the box; you might as well embrace it. Much like today, the use of technology will be on a sliding scale. A design director like Matt Swann can use accessible A.I. like Midjourney with spectacular results.

As you get more technical, people will use it to write scripts, to produce patterns or to automate tasks. As demonstrated by Nick John, modellers will be able to extract basic 3D math from the A.I. sketches to start their 3D models. As we get more technical other users will optimize weight or aerodynamics. If you want to accelerate design cycles, those activities will need to be concurrent to or integrated with design. I predict a new form of I.T. will be in place within the studio to support all those creative activities. For those young people worried about their jobs, it might generate careers for them that are not even being thought of today. Ten years ago, nobody heard of a “parametric modeller”.

To go back to the chess analogy, there are now championships that allow the use of computers. Computers crunch the possibilities while humans direct strategy: that is the key. You calibrate and aim. The choices and the possibilities are endless. That might lead us to a vastly different conundrum: what if there is too much choice?