Details are just starting to emerge from the gathering of the good and great from the world's CAD related press in San Francisco this week -- you can tell all the good guys are there - I'm not. I'm told that Autodesk has realised the benefits of its Alias acquisition. I'm told the majority of visuals are Alias derived rather than Inventor. In product specifics, it seems that Inventor and AliasStudio are going to talk to each other - using the DWG format (according to the press release anyway) and Autodesk has finally started to push out the Showcase product it launched under the radar last year. My colleague in attendance tells me that everything is about the "Digital Prototype." Strange that many software vendors love to talk up the digital prototype removing the need for a physical one - while at the same time, RP system sales are going up and up with each passing year.

Lastly -- I noticed a funny post of Roopinder Tara's blog this morning. He talked about Autodesk showing off "a hand held screen on an articulated arm (Boomcam) that when moved, will position the image around a virtual model" - and I'm sure there are a raft of Alias users out there that saw this stuff developed by the Alias Applied Sciences division back in the late nineties under the guidance of Bill Buxton (who is now at Microsoft) - have Autodesk finally got around to clearing out the cupboards?