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By Alexandra Kitze, Marin Country Day School

What do you think of when you think of the word future? Shiny, new, flying, mechanical, or electric? This is exactly what I thought when I went to the AutoDesk Gallery in San Francisco. Everything there was the new and improved models of things we have in our society today. There were electric bikes, 3D printers, biodegradable cars, and even electric wheel chairs. People using AutoDesk software have helped make these futuristic inventions as well as even helped create the design for the SF Bay Bridge. AutoDesk is helping our world have access to the future and to new and wonderful inventions.

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By Anya Sywulak, Mill Valley Middle School

The Autodesk Gallery, inside an old brick building in San Francisco, was an open room full of futuristic inventions yet to be released to the general public. White walls doubled as screens, showing images of the city. Panoramic windows let in the most natural light possible. Autodesk is a cutting-edge software company and their clients use Autodesk technology to dream up the impossible. Those impossibilities become real, physical prototypes that end up in the gallery, and eventually in a store near you.

A towering Lego dinosaur, for instance, sits in defiance of gravity at the front of the gallery. A structural core of iron and wood hold up 62,500 different colored Lego pieces. It was designed at Lego headquarters in Billund, Denmark using digital prototypes to create the realistic look of the creature, and fabricated it in the Czech Republic. It was then shipped away to the Autodesk Gallery in crates containing whole parts of the dinosaur. It now stands tall to welcome the visitors of the gallery. 

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Autodesk is a software company that lets people design products on a screen before they are made into real prototypes. They have a gallery of prototypes and products. It is full of cool things, like a humungous Lego dinosaur that contains about 620,500 pieces. They have 3D printers, electric bikes, futuristic and concept cars, and even 3D televisions with no glasses needed. But my favorite thing of all was the driving simulator. This was pretty much a virtual driving test with awesome sound effects, and other cool features to make it as realistic as possible. It was amazing! I hope I can go to the Autodesk Gallery again to see more new and cool invention concepts. 

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We walk into a room with a clean, crisp feel. Display screens which doubled as dividers. All the docents were wearing all black dresses, nice tights, and pretty black flats. Futuristic technology is scattered across displays spread out in the large room. 

My personal favorite was a life-like computer-driving simulator. In the game you’re driving a car through the streets of San Francisco. You can even drive on the new Bay Bridge segment that goes from Treasure Island to Oakland, which hasn’t been completed yet. 

The simulator isn’t just any ordinary game system. It has a special driving chair, and gas, brake, and clutch pedals. There are three computers for three separate screens that wrap around the driver’s seat, so it’s almost like 3-D. 

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On our tour of the Autodesk Gallery we saw lots of cool things, but my favorite object was the 3D printer. You could design an image on the computer and the printer prints it out as a 3D object. There were springs and chains, round things and square things, things that moved and things that were static. It was amazing to see that they could pretty much make any 3D object. 

Then we saw the frame for a biodegradable Mercedes Benz. It was a concept car. It was so cool to know that this car would just become part of the soil, rather than rusting away at a dump. The thing that shocked me was that they might have this in the future.

We also saw a “picycle,” which is an electric bicycle that is powered first by pedaling. When you get tired of pedaling, you just pull a lever and it becomes electric, so you don’t have to pedal anymore. 

Last we saw a driving simulator where you could go up to 110 miles per hour. It was cool because you are pretty much taking a driving lesson.    

It was such an interesting tour to see these cool creations of the future.  

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FastForward reporters went to the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco, across from the ferry building. Autodesk is a software company and their software is used to make cool inventions. We didn’t know what to think when we walked through the big glass doors. There was a plane engine and a robotic drill, and a model of a tall blue building from China, which was the second tallest building in the world. 

There was a huge, blue and green Lego duckbilled dinosaur, easily eight feet tall and ten or more feet in length. We saw an electric wheel chair that makes it easy to go up hills and difficult terrain.

The “picycle” was a red curvy electric bicycle that looked like a rainbow. It was on a rack, so you peddle (but went nowhere) to charge the battery. Then you can take it off the rack press a button and the wheels move for you and for as long as you peddled you go that far. 

Next, we saw the biodegradable car. It was a Mercedes Benz, and it was a curvy white skeleton looking structure. It looked fragile, yet aggressive, sleek and low to the ground. It was a Styrofoam-looking frame that in 100 years will have biodegraded, so when the car dies it doesn’t just stay on the ground.

Next we went to the 3-D printer. It was big and black. It was just like a regular paper printer but printed out plastic objects in 3-D! The gallery had the largest 3-D printed object in the world, a full size motorcycle! The motorcycle was red and yellow.

They also had the driving simulator, which looked like you were actually driving, but you weren’t because it was on the screen and it is the future of video games. It was big and had a huge with three big screens surrounding you.

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Autodesk creates software that allows people to turn their dreams into reality. The Autodesk Gallery is full of inventions that have been made using Autodesk technology, including a dinosaur made from 62,500 Lego pieces, a virtual car ride on the new Bay Bridge, which won’t be finished till 2014, or a radical motorcycle made from a 3D printer.

You will not find a motorcycle made from 300 printed pieces of plastic in a Harley-Davidson shop! Bit by bit, all those pieces were printed then glued together, then employees strung up the motorcycle, lifted it up with cords, and put it in the building. It’s unbelievable what a 3D printer can do.

It is just truly amazing what Autodesk is doing to change the world, and the people on it. Our world is changing so much that I wonder what the future will bring. 

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