Wow…. we’re having an absolute blast here at AU 2007!

Autodesk has outdone themselves this year with the entire program, from the organization to the actual classes. This is the fourth time I’ve attended, and this year has by far been the best. They say there are about 10,000 attendees here and I believe them. That being the case, however, the Venetian seems to be very adequate in terms of available space. The exhibit hall / dining area is huge and the ballrooms where the general session and AUGI annual meeting were held were plenty big enough to accomodate those who chose to attend those events.

The general session was very impressive. They had the presentation stage setup in the center of the hall (in-the-round style), with huge projection screens wrapping around the entire perimeter. The stage itself had more screens above. Digital media was a major theme this year and the way they presented the program was top-notch. I was quite impressed with the content of the presentations, which included demonstrations from planned future Autodesk products.

As far as actual classes go, so far mine have focused mainly on setting up and managing styles within Civil 3D 2008. This has been a major challenge and point of apprehension for myself and others in my company when planning and implementing our software rollout. The sessions that I’ve attended have really made me feel more comfortable about tackling this duty. I now have a pretty good idea of what I need to do to get our standard template(s) created.

This afternoon I have a class on subdivision grading and commercial site grading. I’m excited to see what the software can do to streamline our design process and help speed up the visualization and revision aspects of day-to-day tasks. Once I get a little down-time, I’ll be writing a series of articles that include what I thought of each class I attended.

Finally, I’ve added a bunch of photos to the AU Gallery (top-left). We’ve yet to venture out into the night on the strip, but once we do, I’ll have alot more photos to share.