Autodesk and Frame: a blockbuster

If you‘ve seen any of the latest blockbuster movies, driven a supercar, passed through an airport, or entered a skyscraper, chances are high these were all designed with Autodesk software. Autodesk is a great company that makes software for architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, and entertainment. To showcase and train users on this software, Autodesk continues to use Frame to power Autodesk University (AU) events around the world. The most recent AU was held in London, and I was fortunate enough to attend myself.

Since Frame runs on public cloud infrastructure, the teams at Autodesk can immediately offer AU attendees low latency access to their applications by allowing them access to the nearest data center. Frame APIs made it easy for Autodesk to seamlessly connect users to applications. Finally, since Frame doesn’t require anything to be installed on local devices, it is fast and easy to access the applications from any kind of device.

“I love having the ability to try the new features without having to set up a clean virtual machine or workstation. The latency of the cursor is the best I’ve seen, and we’ve been researching VDI possibilities for a couple of years.” — AutoCAD user

“Absolutely fantastic!! It is fast and up to date with all new enhancements without install.” — Inventor user

Training and certification is important to stay ahead of the curve, to keep you up to speed with the latest developments and best-practices, and to maximize the time spent with these solutions. Training and certification and easy access to the latest Autodesk software are important reasons why Autodesk and Frame are working closely together.

Give customers very easy access to ‘Run any Autodesk software in a browser’ and support continuous delivery with powerful APIs. Bring customers up to speed with the latest product insights and best practices and certify them on the latest products. These are the core elements of the teamwork between Autodesk and Frame. — Ruben Spruijt, Frame CTO

Key stats from AU London:

• Autodesk software count in labs: 25
• 2 rooms for hands-on labs (26 computers, 50 attendees per lab)
• 1 media & entertainement lab room (16 computers, 30 attendees per lab)
• 1 certification lab room (60 seats)
• Hands-on lab session total (includes repeat classes): 21
• Frame hours: 3000+

Feedback from instructors at Autodesk University and OTX is:

“This cloud workstation is faster than my physical machine.”

“Whaaat! is this environment running in a datacenter in Ireland? I didn’t feel any lag. It just works.”

Running 25 different Autodesk applications — Cloud Workstation in practice

One of the labs w/ rented “random” laptops running Autodesk applications

“In the past we used physical workstations and AWS Workspaces. But today with Frame, setup, config, and delivery for our highly demanding setup was never so easy.”

Besides powering the Autodesk University training and certification labs we also sponsored the event and had the ability to talk to 100s of attendees. Many attendees with titles such as “BIM Manger,” “Director BIM,” “Architect,” “Digital Strategy Lead,” “Head of BIM and Digital Engineering,” and “Technical Application Manager” attended AU London. A great time and with many follow-ups for sure.

Different applications running side-by-side in the Cloud Workstation

Also, various young adults attended Autodesk University. They showcased their programing skills and knowledge about robots. It’s truly inspiring to see so many young men and women at this event. Autodesk set a great example by giving these youngsters a podium and ability to connect with and learn from others. It was a privilege to share our story about the cloud, applications, our community, and a passion for sharing knowledge with them as well. They liked our story…and our fidget cubes :-)

Move your Frame, spotted while cycling with customers in London the day after AU :-)

It was great to be able to attend the keynotes and learn more about automation and generative design, the future of manufacturing, robots, 3D printing, and the capacity problems we will face in the coming years and decades. These topics are important for many Autodesk customers and partners and it was great to learn more and be able to talk (a little bit) using the same language as our customers.

A detailed report about the keynotes can be found here, a great read:

AU London 2018 — Automation and Generative Design: the future of manufacturing?

Free Cloud Workstation

You can try your Autodesk (or other) applications in the cloud via Frame on a high-end NVIDIA GPU-powered instance for free. Yes, you read that right — if you’re in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction), oil and gas, media & entertainment, or any other industry where a powerful GPU is a must, you can experience the advantages of a workstation in the cloud for free. Try a Frame AWS instance with the NVIDIA K520 or an Azure instance with the NVIDIA M60 completely free of charge with no credit card required. Simply send an email to info@fra.me with a short explanation of your use-case and we will give you a personalized code to access our GPU Test Drive all over the world. You will be able to choose your cloud provider (AWS or Azure) and one of the many available datacenters closest to you.

Thanks so much for reading! If you liked it, please share — much appreciated! Want to read more about Autodesk + Frame? check out this single document. Please don’t hesitate with any questions, feedback, or suggestions. You can contact me at ruben@fra.me or follow me on Twitter: @rspruijt