Autodesk’s annual users conference, Autodesk University, was opened on Monday, 28, in Orlando, Florida.
A record number of attendees from around the world have joined together for four days of training sessions designed to help users maximize productivity and proficiency using Autodesk solutions.
Featuring Autodesk customers, partners and executives, Autodesk University provides attendees with key insight into implementing the latest product and technology innovations to solve creative business problems across multiple industries. Autodesk features its Chief Executive Officer, Carol Bartz as the keynote speaker yesterday, 29, with her focus on the power of 3D.
There are 50 Latin Americans attending the event. Countries like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina have sent their professionals to check the latest tendencies of the world’s leading construction, engineering, infrastructure and manufacture software developer.
GIS highlights
Infrastructure section, where GIS is in, represents 35% of participants – the same as last year’s edition, in Las Vegas.
The highlights in geospatial solutions are Autodesk Map 2006 and its new applications, interoperability between CAD and GIS data and the launching of new Topobase, ready to be launched after a three-year testing period in Germany.
The ‘big thing’ for GIS, however, comes along with the releasing of Mapserver Foundation, announced yesterday during the Infrastructure Industry Section.
Mapserver Foundation is an open source foundation dedicated to driving innovation and expansion of new web mapping technology and creating broad-based market development opportunity. It enables developers to rapidly develop and deploy valuable spatial applications. The foundation works with the latest PHP, .NET, and Java tools to quickly build powerful applications for Windows or Linux server environments.
Developers can also publish spatial views internally, over the web, or using Autodesk’s DWF viewing technology for offline portability. Applications built using MapServer Enterprise give users a faster and more flexible way to query, analyze, and view critical spatial information.
Autodesk plans to offer a commercial version of the product called Autodesk MapServer Enterprise in 2006, as well as an authoring environment which handles geospatial data collection and preparation of the data for distribution via the Internet