Autodesk Solution Day

Desclaimer:I am typing this post on an old dusty AMD K6 machine running on Win98 whose ancient cherry keyboard has been lying unused for ages, because the new computers are being hogged by other inmates of my house.V on this keyboard is very moody and works only when I thak-thak-thak it half a dozen times.So to spare me and my keyboard all the pain you guys'll have to do without V for the rest of the post.I will refer to V as wee.

1st June was Autodesk Solution Day Conferance at Hyatt Regency, Delhi.I attended it with my father who has been using AutoCad for about 13 years now and wants me to walk along his footsteps in 3D.Though I am tempted to give you a blow by blow account, I understand all the details might be too boring for most of the people.I'll just giwe you the highlights.

Since teenagers and young students like me weren't officialy invited, I figured it wouldn't be smart to go in there in my usual capris and tees and look 16.That does not mean that I put chalk in my hair and wore a sari to look 60.I just donned a professional looking attire of black shirt and trousers.Apparently I managed to achieweee the desired effect with it.An elderly web developer who sat next to me in the conference asked me which company I served and at what post.I decided against lying and said I was a student.When he asked me the name of the college I said I was just a high school student. For one moment I was afraid he was going to yell,"Guards, seize her!!" but he said he was amazed and impressed that somebody so young could sit though all those demos and speeches with intrest (that is without nodding off like the guy in front of me did)

The morning half of the conference was slightly dull with the only intresting things being a demo of AutoCAD 2007's radical new features(Unless you want to nod off too,you don't want to hear me talk about them) and a fabulous demo of 3DS Max.To my dissapointment that was the only Discreet product they showcased from the unbelievablely large range of software they for multimedia and movie deveopment.They pretended as if Maya did not exist(I suspect they plan to kill Maya now that they own Alias.They'll just upgrade 3DSMax with Maya's features)The rest of the morning they spoke about User Liscenses,Autodesk Dewelopment Network and stuff like that.

Lunch was served at Djinns,one of the hottest night clubs for the uber rich people of Delhi.I couldn't believe I actually got a chance to see it from inside.The decor was a beautiful mosaic of old world artefacts.There were intresting things all over the walls and the ceiling like a pig's head,a life size wooden fish,a dart board,old guitars,an ancient yellow parchment sign asking wisitors to keep their horses in the stable and their swords with the owner of the inn,beautifully crafted models of old airplanes just to name a few.There was an old western style telephone booth in front of the bar.The music was great.The lighting was breathtaking.I didn't notice what I ate for lunch but the dessert (Apple struddles and custard caramle) was wery good.

The second half was broken out in 4 different fields called breakouts by the Autodesk people.Manufacturing Solutions, Building Solutions,Infrastructure Solutions and Education Solutions conducted by domain experts from the respectiwee fields.I sat in the education one for a while and got bored with the people on stage yakking about Autodesk's efforts in the field of education over and over again.I sat for most of the time in the architecture break out which was excellently conducted by architects using Autodesk Software in architecture.They demoed Revit(I hawee typed "wee" here with a lot of efforts) and Architectural Desktop.They made designing magnificent buildings look so easy that for a moment I was tempted to think about architecture as a prospectiwee career option.There was this guy who designed and airport right in front of our eyes.

The best part of the whole conference was one right at the end.A demo of Alias Studio in the Manufacturing Solutions.I went into manufacturing break out just for that and it sure was worth missing some of the last bit of the Architecture solutions.It was presented by a Canadian who was using a Wacom Intuos 3 drawing tablet which is one of my ultimate fantasy gadgets.He sketched a conceptual wrist watch and converted it into a streamlined 3d model.The end product was beautiful.Since Alias Studio is used world over for styling cars he designed one right there in front of us.

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From this post onwards I will be starting a blog series (for want of a better word)called Flotsam.They're just random thoughts floating through the ocean of my brain that come on the blogshore carried by my brainwaves.

Flotsam:I wonder why web logs are called blogs.Wouldn't it be fun if they are called
Ogs? Then we will all be Ogres.


BlueGeneMaid