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Check this out:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20081112_earthrome.html
This is not only very cool but Bernie Frischer with Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities / University of Virginia, who I met in Oaxaca, Mexico recently, had a big hand in this effort. You guessed it, Bernie and his team are Autodesk customers!
While at Autodesk University this week I had a chance to sit down with Dave Graveline to talk about the Autodesk Easter Island Project. You can watch and listen by picking HERE.
Check it out, Autodesk has it's own YouTube channel.
Hans Hess (standing) on site at Monte Alban
Recently I took a few days off to join my good friends at CyArk to participate in conducting a laser scan of the Monte Alban site in Oaxaca (Mexico). As any reader of this blog knows I am fascinated by laser scanning and will seize all opportunities to promote this exciting and inevitable technology.
The process of working with laser scan data (aka point clouds) in a CAD environment continues to improve on a regular basis. Indeed Autodesk recently announced the acquisition of Ambercore Software. Needless to say I am really excited about this!
The Monte Alban site, the weather, and the other attendees were just great. To be in the field with my old friend Ben Kacyra, widely regarded as the father of laser scanning, and with my new friend Hans Hess, former CEO of Leica GeoSystems, was a real treat.
I know, I know - It's true. I spent my last vacation laser scanning on Easter Island! What can I say? It's addictive!
I'm a bit late in posting about the recent convention held a few weeks back in Hartford, CT. This annual event gathers representatives from all of the US departments of transportation and their contractors and vendors.
What a show it was! We enjoyed the company of a steady stream of enthusiastic visitors at the Autodesk booth all interested in the very loud buzz Civil 3D is making in the US DOT community.
It was also fun to see a competition for local school kids that AASHTO held. The task was to create a model of a community focusing on transportation and sustainable design. I was blown away to see what these kids came up with. We simply cant get these up and coming engineers and designers graduated and licensed soon enough!
Richard, Ben and Mike from Irving R. Robbins Middle School and their model
Please feel free to attend this very cool event at AU!
http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2008/09/autodesk-univ-1.html
Cadapult has just released their Civil 3D and Map 3D 2009 courseware. See http://www.cadapult-software.com/index.php/c/books/cPath/1 for details.
It was GREAT to see my friends on Rapa Nui last week. Things are changing so fast on the island. The effects of tourism and erosion are even more pronounced as are the islander's continuing efforts to meet the challenges they and their island face. They continue to fight the good fight.
Now, it's back to work. If I ever get through all of this email it will be a miracle!
An update for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 posted today, 8/8/08 on Autodesk.com Here's the link: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=11687614&linkID=9240698
Here's a reply to my post about the future of aviation and fossil fuels from my friend Robert Green. If you're a physics geek . . . hold on!
"About 320 years ago, after the breakthrough work of Isaac Newton’s 1687 Principia Mathmatica (and its revolutionary quantification of gravity) he and fellow English scientist Robert Hooke theorized the construction of gravity tunnels through the earth’s crust to achieve rapid travel from point to point on the globe. The calculations show a trip time of 42 minutes from any point to any other point via a straight line to take advantage of the Earth’s tendency to make us “fall” to the center then using conservation of momentum to catapult us back to the surface on the other side (minus, of course, any frictional losses).
That’s right, New York to Hawaii in 42 minutes. New York to Shanghai in 42 minutes. Los Angeles to Milwaukee in 42 minutes. You get the idea.
It seems to me this idea could work just like a submerged subway infrastructure (think BART in the Bay Area) using magnetic levitation (MagLev) concepts to constrain the vehicle inside the tunnel and deliver energy to overcome frictional losses during the catapulting out phase of the trip. Surface rail could then take you from the main tunnel ports to your ultimate destination.
I admit that I am a physics geek who masquerades as a Mechanical Engineer and CAD consultant but I think this idea has merit. What we need are your Civil Engineering buddies and their Geology brethren to start computing the stresses and infrastructure requirements for such a series of global tunnels.
It may sound far fetched now, but did anybody fathom routine air travel a century ago?"
Robert has a great BLOG.
