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Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Expiration Dates for Free Revit-Related Technology Previews from Autodesk Labs

Courtesy of Scott Sheppard from his It's Alive in the Lab blog:

With the start of the new year, it is time to repost an updated version of my milk carton blog article. We do have a few technology previews finishing soon, so act now if you want to be able to throw your two cents in.

Most technology previews are like milk cartons. They have expiration dates on them. When a technology preview expires, the technology preview no longer operates. A preview has a time-bomb in it that makes it stop working on a particular date. We do this so there is a sense of urgency to try a technology preview and get back to us. Our customers are busy people, and without this, they would just say "I'll get to that later."

When a technology preview expires, any data that has been created by it continues to be valid. It's just that the data cannot be edited using the technology preview since the preview does not run anymore. Certainly, new data can't be created either.

This time-based approach allows us to get timely feedback, early in the technology life cycle, on the general idea, user interface, performance characteristics, and correctness of the results.
Here is a list of active technology previews and their associated expiration dates. The list is sorted by expiration date — so act fast if you want to provide feedback on these technology previews before they retire or graduate.

Project Monolith
Try voxel-based modeling engine for multi-material 3D printing.
Expires: January 31, 2017


React Structures
Connect your BIM process to intuitive structural analysis.
Expires: March 18, 2017

Dynamo Plug-in for Robot Structural Analysis
Connect Dynamo to Robot Structural Analysis.
Expires: March 31, 2017

Project Play
Make amazingly rich interactive 3D presentations on the web.
Expires: March 31, 2017

DWG Sync for Revit
Manage DWG files imported into Revit families.
September 1, 2017


Technology previews have a specific end date so no one confuses them with alpha, betas, or subscription offerings. A development team is focused on a technology preview for a project interval. While they are, they want the feedback and the ability to make a decision so they can continue development of the technology or quickly move on to something else. We appreciate it when we debut technology previews, people try them right away, and they provide us with an up or down vote. Your experience shapes the future of our technology indeed. As I always say, "Trying a technology preview, liking it, but not telling us, is the same as not trying it."

Checking the expiration dates to see what can still be tested is alive in the lab.



There's more information available on the It's Alive in the Lab blog.

2 comments:

Scott Sheppard said...

Thanks for helping to spread the word about these technology previews from Autodesk.

Tim Grimm said...

It's our pleasure Scott.