Techno Babble

Autodesk has recently introduced Autodesk Labs a web-site that provides free, early access to prototypes, experimental and beta applications and technologies.

The intial offerings include:

• Feature Recognition for Inventor 11, User Guide for converting neutral 3D CAD data models (STEP, SAT or IGES) into fully featured Inventor 11 models.
• Autodesk Vault Mirror Beta which provides the ability to create a read-opnly mirror of the files and directory structure in a Vault.
• DGNV8 Translator allows a user to share AutoCAD DWG and Bentley Microstation 2D V8 DGN files.
• Google Earth Extension Beta provides the ability to publish 3D models from AutoCAD 2007 based products directly into Google Earth. (User Guide is available HERE Adesk Google Users Guide.pdf )
• Project Freewheel http://dwfit.com/ both a web-site where you can enter a DWF url for interactive viewing and a web-service that allows you to embed an interactive DWF viewer in your own HTML page.

The software is not intended for mission-critical projects, nor is it supported.

Quoted from a recent article at Yahoo News,

…Since going live about two months ago, Autodesk Labs has received more than 190,000 hits and over 49,000 unique visitors from 150 countries. There have been more than 10,000 downloads of the beta products available on the site, and hundreds of positive emails about the offerings and the overall experience, including suggestions for new products.