Inside Hues
Product Marketing Manager Lisa Crounse takes you on a behind the scenes tour of what goes into developing a new technology for Autodesk Labs. Lisa introduces you to members of the Impression development team and shares their unique ideas and insights.
Latest Post
- posted 10/29/07 by Lisa Crounse AU Update - Custom Styles Class moved
- There was a bit of a scheduling snafu and one of our Impression classes got moved. I just wanted to let you all know about it, as it should be a great class.
The class called "Signature Styles and Entourgae for Autodesk Impression" and will be taught by Yan Schober. Yan is a product designer on the Impression team, and I think that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who knows more about creating custom styles and blocks for Impression. This will be a not to miss class if you use Impression. As always, other members of the team will be on hand, so its a great opportunity for Q and A if you have some burning questions on these topics.
This is class DV300-4 and will take place on Thursday, November 29 at 8 AM. Sign up now!1 comments In Inside Hues >
Previous Posts
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Scale and Block Subsitution
Posted 10/22/07 by Lisa Crounse
As Todd mentioned in his blog - we had a small booth at the Americal Society of Landscape Architects show a couple of weeks ago. Because we are a small team, I was lucky wnough to be a demo jock for a day. It all went pretty well, and I demo'ed block substitution A LOT!
So, my tips today are about Blcok subsitution and scale.
When you create a block substitution, you can set the substitute to retain the dimensions of the original block after the replacement.
The Scale to Fit Bounding Box setting, in combination with the Scale Style setting, produces different results during block substitutions.
- If Scale Styles and Scale to Fit Bounding Box are off: Block styles are automatically scaled to match the scale of the sketch.
- If Scale Styles and Scale to Fit Bounding Box are on: The block styles are cumulatively scaled to account for changes to sketch scale, and the block size changes to fit the original block’s bounding box.
- If Scale Styles is off and Scale to Fit Bounding Box is on: The styles for each block retain their original scale.
- If Scale Styles is on and Scale to Fit Bounding Box is off. Block styles are automatically scaled to match the scale of the sketch.
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Are you in Europe? We need your help to get the word out!
Posted 10/17/07 by Lisa Crounse
I'm working on a some new marketing programs for Europe. We really need to have some quotations and images from European users that we can include in our materials. No one wants to hear what we have to say about the application - they want to hear about it from real users!
Specifically, we need participation from folks in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
If you have something nice to say, let me know at lisa.crounse@autodesk.com
Thanks.
Lisa
Here is an example of a typical quotation - "Autodesk Impression is a tremendous time saver. It took me only a few minutes to get up and running; and within a couple of hours I had my first image complete." — Jeremy Noftle, Focus Architecture Incorporated
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New Technology Preview Posted!
Posted 10/10/07 by Lisa Crounse
If you are using Impression Technology Preview 5 (read: if you live in Northern Europe or parts of Asia), then the software that you downloaded will stop working on 31 October 2007 - about three weeks from now. A new version - Technology Preview 6 has been posted for you to download. This version includes the hotfixes that we posted over the summer, and will work for many months to come.
Check out your local website for the latest download of Autodesk Impression:
Australia
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Finland
Ireland
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Singapore
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
As always, please send us your feedback at feedback.impression@autodesk.com. -
Creative Writing
Posted 10/02/07 by Lisa Crounse
One of the great things about the Impression team is our diversity. We have folks from all around the world working on Impression. We also seem to have at least one person who interprets "please answer these questions" as "please approach this as if this were a creative writing project." I'll leave it to you, gentle reader, to determine what Jon's real story is...
Developer Spotlight: Jon Rossen
Q: Who are you and why are you here?
A:My name is Jon Rossen and I ask that question constantly. I find that working on the Autodesk Impression team has given me an appropriate outlet for my self expression. I was quite artistic in school and was told I was a very talented musician. After studying music theory and composition in school I was lead bassoonist for the Cleveland symphony. I found that the rigidity of this format stifled my creativity so I started dabbling in free form avant garde jazz. I formed a quintet called the Jon Rossen Project and toured the world. I did have to switch over to my other instrument which was tenor sax because the bassoon didn’t lend itself well to the free jazz idiom. But after 5 years I found that my creative juices were still not satisfied and I gave up on music; I felt that I had nothing left to say musically. Then I discovered Autodesk software and I liked it so much I became an employee. I find that working on the Impression team is the best outlet for my self expression; there are much more colors, textures, fills and strokes than musical notes.
Q: What is your position?
A: I’m a Quality Engineer (QE) and my main responsibility is to test the software. Basically I get paid for finding fault with other people’s work and then documenting it publically to the team in the form of bug reports. It’s actually a nice symbiotic relationship: The developers create bugs so I can stay employed, I try to write them up in such a way as to not enrage them
Q: What do you do during an average day, or do you even have such a thing?
A: All my days are average; they are an amorphous mass of stress all blending together to form one big lump. My biggest dilemma is how to minimize the level of failure; of not being able to do everything in front of me. The big question is this: Do I disappoint a small number of people greatly, or do I spread the disappointment around to a greater audience so that each individual resents me less? If I make it imbalanced so that a very small number of people resent me strongly, their judgment of me will be at odds with the majority of others who think I am doing a good job. If I spread the disappointment evenly, it may become so faint that no one will even notice it. So, this is my dilemma: How do I prioritize and work well with others?
Q: What has been the most exciting part of working on Impression?
A: It’s hard for me to answer this because the antidepressants that I am taking tend to smooth out my mood swings to such a point that I’m pretty much emotionally inert. My therapist has also encourage me to fight the urge to be exuberant because we all know what the flip side of that is and once you cross that line it’s a slippery slope. Of course if I was to go over to the dark side and express any type of enthusiasm I would have to say it would be over the work that I’ve seen our customers create. They are much more creative than me, and quite frankly I sort of resent them for it; I suppose it is something I need to discuss with my therapist.
Q: What is the most interesting conversation you’ve had with a customer?
A: I can’t remember because I was so boring during the conversation I nearly put myself to sleep. But as a whole I’d have to say that the one common thread about our customers that I’ve noticed is how knowledgeable they are about our software, particularly AutoCAD. I used to consider myself an AutoCAD gearhead; I could recite all the sysvars back and forth along with their defaults. Most of the customers I’ve talked to have a lot of interesting things to say about our software and I have learned a lot from listening to them discuss their various workflows. Lastly, they all seem like nice people and that it makes me happy to have them be so nice to me when I talk to them. Hmmm…and all this time I thought they hated me because of the things they write to me in the CERs.
Q: What is your favorite baseball team and why?
A: I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. The reason? That is probably a question for my therapist. They say baseball is not merely a sport but a metaphor for life. If that’s the case then I guess I’m one of the biggest losers on the planet. I just hope they win the World Series just once before I die but I suppose they will win it right after I die. So, at least I now have an inkling of my mortality and when I will leave this world; it’s an easy formula: (the date of the SF Giants World Series win - 1 Year).
Jon in his native environment.