Pending Post Migration | Alias SpeedForm

[olivier.lp]

Due to several customer requests, the Alias Product management team decided to merge SpeedForm with Alias. The technology of Subdivision surfaces and T-Splines will be integrated in Alias for the first time in the technical preview that is part of an upcoming Alias release. Autodesk will offer a transition strategy in order to ensure that issues regarding the current use of SpeedForm will be considered.

Also in an effort to create a better customer experience and provide maximum visibility for new questions and existing answers, we will  be moving all posts from the Alias SpeedForm forum into this Alias forum on Tuesday August 30th, between 9pm and 12am EST. At that time, the Alias SpeedForm forum will be archived and closed for new topics.

We are taking this step following in-depth analysis of the overall traffic and health of this forum, and after having consulted and receiving signoff from various community stakeholders.

A couple of things to note about the migration:
 
· This forum will remain open, however post will appear out of chronological order as we bring older topics in. This will be fixed at the end of the migration.
 
· IMPORTANT: We recommend temporarily unsubscribing to this board prior to the migration in order to avoid receiving an overload of notifications, then you can subscribe again
 
We do not anticipate that the process will take more than a few hours and apologize in advance for the inconvenience.

[QuasiLoci]

Wow, awesome...I was hoping that Alias integration would be the end result.

When can we expect to see T-Splines within Alias?

Will new functionality be gained as a result?...I assume some alias functionality will now work with t-splines similar to T-splines within Rhino?

Cheers

[QuasiLoci]

Also, how will the SpeedForm interface change
now that it will be within Alias? Finally was getting the hang of the SpeedForm interface...

[rossbau]

We will see first Sub-D´s in Alias. Then T-Splines are supposed to follow. Especially with Sub-d's we will see a technology break through that allows new functionality. In order to showcase our engagement we plan to show a technical preview in one of our next Alias releases.

The UI of SpeedForm? I think it will be inspired from SF UI, but we have to care for the grown Alias community. I am sure our UX teams will do a good job.

Kind Regards

Uwe Rossbacher

[QuasiLoci]

I wanted to check back in...

When should we expect to see the SpeedFrom/Alias Migration?  2018, earlier?

Thanks

[rossbau]

Hello, we will display our development progress with the Alias 2018 release. It this release there will be a Tech Preview, which will show the starting of the integration. Since we do a massive change of underlying code, which will allow us to address many other issues (performance, API …). It must be clear that this Tech Preview is not supposed to work in production. We still have to add code parts and work on stabilization in order to make it ready. With Alias 2019 we aim for being ready.

Regards

[QuasiLoci]

Thanks for the quick reply and great info.

I look forward to seeing the tech preview next year.

Cheers

[maruska]

Does the Alias team have a publicly available roadmap? The Fusion 360 team maintains a pretty in-depth forecast of things they are working on - it'd be nice to see what us Alias users could expect in the future. T-spline integration is certainly a welcome addition.

Cheers,

J.

[QuasiLoci]

Any update on the 2018 Tech Preview?

Thanks

[rossbau]

At AIF in Munichlast week, the roadmap was presented. It is a presentation that goes over some times or some pages, so I guess there is no expectation to do that here.

But in short it can be said, that the 2018 release of Alias comes with a Tech Preview. The Alias Start Up screen has a new option for this Tech Preview. It guides the user to a download location to get this Tech Preview. It displays the progress on the modernization of Alias. The focus for this Preview is on the new UI, Subdivision Surface tools and the integration of Dynamo. A lot of work was done underneath to prepare the code for enhancements towards performance and a public API.

This Tech Preview is just the first impression of the way that Alias will go on the way no get modernized. It was started with Subdiv-workflows used in Concept modeling. Commonly known Alias NURBS-workflows for Concept modeling, technical surfacing including Class A workflows will follow.

Kind Regards

Uwe Rossbacher

[QuasiLoci]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I am excited to see the tech preview and whats to come with Alias in the coming year.

I am not familiar with Dynamo, is this what you mean?

http://www.autodesk.com/products/dynamo-studio/overview

Similar functionality will be integrated into Alias?

Thanks!

[rossbau]

Yes, with Dynamo I mean this.

It is the Autodesk way to work with Generative Design methods. This is a way to explore designs that was hardly possible with conventional NURBS modeling or even never possible.

The integration with Alias is planned in a way that the generative design is done in Dynamo Studio. There is a connection with Alias in a way, that geometries used in the generative design process maintain Alias-history.

Kind Regards

Uwe Rossbacher

[QuasiLoci]

Wow!

This will be awesome...I have lots to learn.

Are you aware if this Dynamo workflow be available in Inventor as well?

Thanks

[rossbau · Accepted solution]

Hello,

i am not aware about plans regarding Inventor at all.

Sorry

Uwe Rossbacher

[QuasiLoci]

Hello,

I wanted to check back in on the status of Sub-D/T-splines being integrated into Alias?

I was never able to find a tech preview in 2018 or now in 2019 that has any of the functionality described above?

Maybe Alias 2020?  Is there anywhere I can get more details on these changes to come?

Very curious as I would like to implement this into my workflow ASAP.

Thanks!

[rossbau]

Hi,

Autodesk increased the number of releases to 4 times per year in order to bring newest technology earlier to customers and to react much faster on requests of them.

This changed our handling of beta versions. Autodesk doesn’t provide a Beta version anymore since the release cycle changed dramatically. Much more Autodesk is testing tools and workflows directly with selected clients to feed back the findings much faster into the development.

Regarding subdivision surfaces and their integration into Alias we are doing this testing already. The tools, functions and workflows with Subdivision Surfaces are with a special cut of the software that is fine-tuned as we speak.

The status is: the Subdiv integration into Alias is as planned. We are fine-tuning the tools and workflows already. The integration will influence the conceptual design workflow in Alias, the detailing workflow in Alias and with this the entire processes in a Studio.

More information about this can be found at the various Alias events around the globe (ALT), the yearly AIF meetings and the upcoming AU in Las Vegas.

With very best regards

Uwe Rossbacher

[QuasiLoci]

Hi Uwe,

Thank you very much for taking the time to replay.  I appreciate the insight and details.

I am really looking forward to sub-d/T-splines within Alias and am excited to learn more about its implementation as information becomes available publicly.

Are you able to say if this functionality will be available in all Alias "package" levels (Design / Surface / AutoStudio)?

Cheers

[rossbau]

Hi,

I am sorry, but I cannot make any statement regarding the Subdiv tools in the different alias packages.

But I do think that modeling with subdivision surfaces becomes a pretty basic or substantial part of modeling in design.

In your posts you mentioned t-splines. In order to be precise in my answers I want to make clear that we integrate subdivision surfaces into the alias software.

Best Wishes

Uwe Rossbacher

[QuasiLoci]

Hi Uwe,

No problem, I understand.  

Thanks for clarifying t-splines vs sub-d.  It sounds like you are hinting of a workflow similar to what can be done in Maya today (Original Alias)?...But with the greater NURBS control functionality of Alias today?  No need to reply to this comment, I am just putting my thoughts out there.

Cheers