Autodesk is likely
one of the largest multibillion-dollar companies most people have never heard
of. It makes more than 100 software products used by millions of engineers,
architects and animators. These products have been used to design and model some of
the world’s biggest bridges, buildings and roads -- along with movies, videos
games, planes and cars.
Now, under CEO Carl Bass, the company is pushing
into the consumer realm -- bringing affordable software to the masses -- with
the goal of helping makers and other do-it-yourselfers create.
Bass himself is an dedicated maker, who spends hours each week in his wood and metal workshops. Rather than looking like a buttoned-up executive, he's more likely to be found in Carhartt work pants and with a saw in hand.
In his wood shop, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass is at home. We visited the massive Berkeley workspace, where Bass showed off tool after tool -- chisels, CNC routers, sanders and saws.
Bass set up this and his metalworking
shop down the street to serve as a hobby spaces, but they also act testing
grounds for Autodesk.
A scaled prototype for one of Bass' wood projects.
Autodesk is most widely known for its flagship product AutoCAD, the design software standard used by engineers to conceive everything from airplanes and cars to buildings and hovercrafts.
Scattered around Bass' shop are dozens of prototypes and projects, like chairs built from a single piece of wood, a series of baseball bats and several types of tables.
This 1940-era drum and disk sander -- which is now part of Bass' collection of machines -- is from Industrial Light & Magic. It was originally used in the special effects studio that built models for the original Star Wars films.
Bass shares his metal shop in Berkeley, Calif., with maker Jeff Tiedeken. Here Tiedeken shows off his Gravity Bike, which has reached downhill speeds of more than 50 miles per hour.
Autodesk unveiled its workshop at Pier 9 in San Francisco last year. It's a 27,000-square-foot mad-scientist-like toy shop where no idea is off limits.
This 3D-printed object, which was made at Autodesk's Pier 9 workshop, appears to be a rigid structure, but the flexible squares can easily collapse and then return to their original shape.
The Pier 9 workshop is filled with all kinds of quirky projects like this spinning wheel for lunchtime, which makes picking a spot to eat more like playing a game show.
