**FIRST EMAIL**/FIRST Announces 2010 Autodesk

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings Teams:


Autodesk is proud to continue its distinctive 18+ years of sponsorship for FIRST, and this season we are putting more software products and resources than ever into your hands so that you can make excellence in design your competitive advantage.


NEW this year we have created a special section of our award-winning Autodesk Education Community web site that will be devoted to FRC teams. Beginning in October you’ll have free* access to over 25 great design, modeling, visualization, and project management products. Every member of your team can download all the software they need!


At Kickoff in January you will be able to download your digital kits of parts modeled in Autodesk Inventor 2010 to drive your design ideas and test your concepts before you begin to bend metal. Throughout the season, you’ll want to keep visiting the Community for easy-to-follow tutorials specific to FRC, blogs with robotics rock stars Ted & Phil, and great tech support. Watch the Community over the next couple of months to learn about the 2010 Autodesk Award for Excellence in Design, which is our way to acknowledge and celebrate the great work students do with some of the most sophisticated design tools in the world.


We’re putting the final touches on the new website, but you can get started today. Just go to www.autodesk.com/first and dive in. You can download 2010 software & take online tutorials to get you going.

We’re expecting a great season, and want to support teams, mentors & students as best we can. Let us know how we can help.


Thank you!
- Autodesk


Go Teams!

[Jim Zondag]

I just tried this and I am confused.
If I follow the Link above, I get to AutodeskFIRSTBase. There is an Icon there which then takes you to the Autodesk Education Community Registration page. In order to create an account here, you need a valid Email address from an educational institition. Being a mentor, I do not have this since I no longer go to college, thus I cannot register. The post above says these downloads are for mentors to get started.
Am I missing something here?

[Mark McLeod]

I used my company email address ( & used "faculty") and it accepted it and sent me a confirmation email.

[dtengineering]

Oh, if only I had time to play with this cornucopia of bytely goodness.

It's great to have this kind of access to software... and especially nice that we can share it with everyone on the team who wants to learn it.

Thanks Autodesk!

Jason

[Karibou]

Am I reading this correctly? We get unlimited downloads?

Also, I can't find anywhere to download the new software. Is this just a mentors-only thing for now, or am I just missing the link?

[Akash Rastogi]

I'm a pretty big Solidworks fan...but this is pretty awesome.

Kudos Autodesk.

[sanddrag]

They've had this for college students for years. I was waiting for when they'd do it for FRC. Seems the day has finally come. Jood job Autodesk.

[blaxbb]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

They've had this for college students for years. I was waiting for when they'd do it for FRC. Seems the day has finally come. Jood job Autodesk.

I'm fairly sure it was also available for high school students, as long as their teacher registered first.

I'm not 100% sure about what Autodesk is doing now, but the copy of Inventor 2010 I downloaded from Autodesk was only a student edition that was painfully stripped down.

[waialua359]

Agreed with the earlier posts.
Confusing at first. Finally got to download it as a mentor, then invite others (students) by sending the coded link via email.

I cant believe what they are giving to us for free. Much much better than any previous year, for sure.

[Chexposito]

this has all been on the firstbase autodesk website for a while now. just the email has come out now.

the educational version for 2010 is available now for mentors and teachers. they have to do a lot to be able to release all those downloads for students. it's one of each software for each student.

[Anne_droid]

The website was very confusing, especially given that a different set of registration fields would come up depending on what links you clicked on in the site.

I'm an engineering mentor and the team's main contact, and the CAD mentor is also an engineer. I tried to register for the site by saying I was "Faculty" as the previous post recommended (though feeling somewhat dishonest), but it said that my email address was not a validly recognized school address.

This means that we have to bug a teacher to go through the registration and manage all the downloads for our students? This is a significant inconvenience, both to the teacher and to our team. I understand their concern for making sure the use is educational, but when it comes to serving FIRST teams, many of which are mentor-run, this is not the optimal way of handling the software distribution.

In past years, wasn't there a special invitation to the email address of the known main contact? I seem to remember that being the case.

[Raul]

Originally Posted by blaxbb

I'm fairly sure it was also available for high school students, as long as their teacher registered first.

I'm not 100% sure about what Autodesk is doing now, but the copy of Inventor 2010 I downloaded from Autodesk was only a student edition that was painfully stripped down.

Can you elaborate on what they stripped out? I want to know if it is worth it to get this now or just contact Autodesk to find out if they will offer the more complete version later.

[Chris Fultz]

I also tried to register as the team main contact and faculty, with my work email address. it would not let me register.

I sent back an email asking how to proceed, but no response yet.

[ebarker]

It looks like the changes they did are very inconvenient for FIRST and FIRST mentors. That might sound a little harsh but that is what it looks like.

If you are just any school teacher you can suppossedly authorize student to download which is good.

Mentor management of the system doesn't seem to be supported which is bad.

It just became another issue for mentors to transfer to the teachers that already have enough to do.

EDIT: I just checked the Autodesk FAQ, item #4 - It states you have to be a faculty or a student in order to participate. That means mentors are excluded and that makes me exceptionally unhappy because it is the mentors that spend the bulk of the time working with students and need access to help them. I hope this is just an oversight and not an intentional move.

.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by ebarker

It just became another issue for mentors to transfer to the teachers that already have enough to do.

.

And more of an issue for teams like mine that are not affiliated with any school.


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