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 04/30/07 by Lisa Crounse Technology Preview 4 just expire?
- Did you version of Impression Technology Preview 4 just expire? Check out your local website for the latest download of Autodesk Impression:
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As always, feel free to send us your feedback at feedback.impression@autodesk.com.2 comments In Inside Hues >
Previous Posts
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Another Developer Spotlight - Cleve Ard
Posted 04/25/07 by Lisa Crounse
My last entry was about a guy named Nikolai and this one is about a guy named Cleve. If nothing else, the Impression team has some of the coolest names in the development world!
Q: Who are you and why are you here?
A: I am Cleve Ard and I have been at Autodesk for 8 years. I am at Autodesk and working on Impression because I enjoy it. Working on Impression and in computer graphics gives me the chance to solve lots of interesting problems and learn new things. I have been working with computers for over 30 years and it has usually been a lot of fun.
Q: What parts of the application do you work on?
A: The display subsystem is one of my major areas. This part of Impression is used to display the scene in the viewport and render it for exporting or printing. I work on the thumbnail manager, which renders the style and layer thumbnails. I am also responsible for the core functionality of appearance styles.
Q: What has been the most exciting part of working on Impression? (Have you had any “aha” moments?)
A: The most exciting part was getting R1 shipped. The end of a successful project is always an exciting time. When I started to get appearance styles working was very exciting, too.
Q: Stats – How many cups of coffee do you have a day? How many miles do you commute to work?
A:I don’t drink coffee. I work from home in North Carolina, so when I go into the office three or four times a year, it involves a long plane ride. I enjoy reading mysteries and science fiction and bicycle and play the guitar and piano when I get the chance.
A development engineer that doesn't drink coffee? As I've said many a time, we truly have a unique team!
Here's Cleve when he's not writing code:
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Developer Spotlight - Nikolai Sander
Posted 04/16/07 by Lisa Crounse
As part of my continuing series of entries which introduce you to Impression team members - today I present Nikolai Sander.
Q: Nikolai, who are you and why are you here?
A: I’ve been searching for this answer for about 40 years and still haven’t figured it out - Ok, I guess you want a more serious answer… My name is Nikolai, I’m originally from Germany and have been with Autodesk for over 10 years. I love solving puzzles and finding creative solutions to tricky problems.
Q: What parts of the application do you work on?
A: I work mainly on Media and Fill types (Pencil, Marker, Gradient, Noise, Watercolor etc.) as well as some geometry (Stroked Fill, Hatches etc.)
Q: What has been the most exciting part of working on Impression?
A: The most exciting part was when I did the first prototype for the Pencil media. It looked much better than I ever hoped it would. Working on watercolor is also very exciting (did I say watercolor…?)
Q: Stats – How many cups of coffee do you have a day? How many pets do you have? Anything interesting like that?
A: No ECO’s so far, usually 1 cup of decaf in the morning.
Here are some other stats:
Typical commute time: 30 sec. - 3 min (working from home vs. in the office)
Patents applied for Impression (3 + 2 in progress)
# of Computers at my home: 6
Yes, Nikolai is the one to thank for all of those great media types in Impression (not the pre-built content, but the styles themselves). I wonder what will come next... -
Tip - Impression Toolbar in AutoCAD 2008
Posted 04/10/07 by Lisa Crounse
Our team is all about experiments. And we also sit in the same building as the AutoCAD team. This naturally led us to think, "what would happen if Impression were to ship in AutoCAD?" And thus, the idea for the Impression Toolbar in AutoCAD 2008 was born.
Becuase we know that not everyone has downloaded Impression yet, the toolbar first offers you a link to your local Autodesk Impression web page. (By the way, Impression is English only for now, and is available in only select regions.)
Once you have installed Impression (or if you already have it installed), the toolbar becomes a useful way to see Impression output inside of AutoCAD. Basically, it lets you see the current view rendered in Impression with two clicks. A customer wrote me the other day saying how useful he found this.
P.S. for you 64-bit AutoCAD fans - This toolbar does not show up in the 64-bit install of AutoCAD. -
What would you do at AU?
Posted 04/04/07 by Lisa Crounse
Interested in teaching a class on Impression at Autodesk University? As this is our first year as a "real" product at AU we'd love to see some intereting topics covered. How about a class on making custom styles and blocks or the power of layers for style mapping.
Got an idea for a class? Contact Impression Product Manager Michael Perani at michael.perani@autodesk.com and he can help you with your course submission.
If you are interested in speaking on other topics, you can register for the Autodesk University Speakers Bureau and they will send you all that is needed for a submission.