Back from Autodesk University, and I got to say, that was fun! I do not get many chances to meet with customers and learn about the great tools they are building using the API, so I really appreciate the opportunity to go to AU. This year was a total rush. The energy was unbelievable, and the quality of the sessions was top-notch.
I assisted many good sessions, but I want to point you to one that I really enjoyed, and I am sure you will appreciate also. “Programming AutoCAD with C#: Best Practices” was presented by Scott McFarlane, and despite the technical difficulties, it was a great session full of good practices and recommendations that you can use in your every day programming work.
Scott’s presentation demonstrates the use of some advance language features and best practices to minimize dependencies and make your programs more testable, maintainable, and reusable. This session by itself it is worth the price tag.
I had the pleasure to watch some demos of extensions being built using the Civil 3D API. It is amazing the power and creativity development partners bring to the application, and it is highly satisfying to see our work put to good use in ways we have not expected. Watching the way partners use the API, it is a breath of fresh air and re-energizes me to keep the hard work and provide them with the tools they need to build their products.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who provided feedback for my sessions. There were some interesting comments, and I want to apologize for not making clear that these were Programming sessions targeted to developers and power users, and not entry-level classes for users with no programming experience.
I have learned that you should not use “API” in the title of a session because misleads people who signs for a class trying to learn what an “API” is, to then find it is not relevant to their work and the topic is cumbersome for a first exposure to programming.
I try to talk about more advance topics because usually there are plenty of entry-level programming classes being offered, but maybe this is not the conference to cover advance features and introductory classes work better at AU.
Overall, AU was a wonderful, reinvigorating experience. It was great to see you there, and if we did not have the chance to meet, I hope we can do so in the future at AU or some other Autodesk conference.
Sounds like it was great. Are there any resources online from the "Programming AutoCAD with C# Best Practices" class? A recording or slide deck?
Posted by: Drew | 12/07/2011 at 12:01 PM