Research Platform Services Blog
Month
Were you unable to make our highly successful ResBaz CAD course last month? Not a problem. Here at ResBaz we believe that, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’. We believe in empowering our research communities, and to help our members better design and fabricate their ideas for the good of all. That is why we are releasing our highly successful ResBaz CAD course notes to all that are interested.
The Autodesk Inventor course notes have been released under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Under this license, users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. In return, users will have complete flexibility to modify our course notes to their requirements.
We’ve been amazed at the rate our CAD and 3D Printing communities have grown and are looking forward to taking these communities to the next level. If you are interested in learning more about our 3D Printing course notes, you can access them here!
It’s been over a month since ResBaz so it’s time to look back and get nostalgic. New skills were learned, collaborations kickstarted, and friendships made.
A big part of ResBaz was training attendees in digital tools to help them be more productive with their research. I hosted the R Stream.
Attendees at the R Stream were given training in the fundamentals of the shell, version control, and R for research computing. If you’re interested in a recap, or want to take a look at the teaching materials, they’re all open access and can be found here (although we didn’t get through all the lessons!).
So much wonderful feedback from the attendees of #ResBaz #Rstream @ResBaz @swcarpentry
Many of the lessons were delivered by the newly instructed Software Carpentry trainers, who had attended our train the trainer program the week prior. In the R Stream we were lucky to have Areej Alsheik, Andrew Lonsdale, Dr. Phillipa (Pip) Griffin, Dr. Noel Faux, and Tom Kelly, who each brought something unique to the table and did a fantastic job at teaching.
.@areejalsheikh is a great teacher! #ResBaz R stream @ResBaz
Special thanks also to Michael Sumner, an ecologist from Hobart who, along with the aforementioned instructors, helped out during the training by offering their expertise to the attendees in the room when they got stuck.
Further thanks goes to Tom Kelly, for being a diligent flag-bearer for the R stream, making sure that no-one got lost and that everyone knew where the workshop room was.
Finally, here’s a photo gallery of the new instructors teaching (Apologies to Noel Faux, whose photo was washed out):
- Areej Alsheik, a Microbial Genomics Ph.D. student from the University of Queensland, teaches us how to create and remove things using the shell.
- Andrew Lonsdale, a plant cell bioinformatics Ph.D. student from the University of Melbourne and president of the COMBINE, a national student group for life sciences researchers, teaches us how to chain programs together to create pipelines in the shell.
- Dr. Pip Griffin, an evolutionary biologist Early Career Researcher at the University of Melbourne, teaches us the fundamentals of data structures and their manipulation in R (one of the biggest frustration for novices!).
- Dr. Noel Faux, a bioinformatics Early Career Researcher core at the Florey Institute, teaches us how to make fantastic visualisations using the ggplot2 package in R,
- Tom Kelly, a cancer genetics bioinformatics PhD student from Otago University in New Zealand, teaches us about control flow and functions in R.
ResBaz has been over for a month now so it’s time to look back and get nostalgic. New skills were learned, collaborations kickstarted, and friendships made.
A big part of ResBaz was training attendees in digital tools to help them be more productive with their research. The stream I hosted was the Matlab stream.
If you’re interested to see or recap what we’ve learned during the course, head over here. You can find teaching material and all the files you need. But did you know you could draw a little heart in Matlab?
This of course wouldn’t have been possible without my two co-instructors Scott (@Scott_Kolbe) and Bill (@billdoesphysics), who didn’t just do an amazing job teaching, but were also helping attendees during and after the workshops.message = [‘I ’, char(9825), ’ Matlab’] #resbaz
— Greg Bass (@gregtbass)
February 15, 2015
Another big thank you goes to two very engaged helpers in the room, Kerry (@kerry_halupka) and Greg (@gregtbass). You managed to make everyone feel like they belonged!
Looking forward to the next workshop. ['I ’, char(9825), ’ you all!’]
By Damien Irving.
A number of attendees from the Research Bazaar conference noted that they learned at least as much from the social activities at the conference as they did in the formal classes. This kind of informal learning plays a big part in staying up-to-date with the latest digital research skills, so we are keen to keep the conversations going. There are already great online forums for posting specific questions (e.g. Stack Overflow), but what’s missing is a place for casual “water cooler” chats that are a little more in depth than the ultra-brief back and forth that happens on Twitter. In an attempt to fill this void, we’ve launched a resbaz room on Gitter. It’s a public room, so to join the conversation all you need to do is sign up for a (free) GitHub account.* See you there!
So many great conversations happening in the new @ResBaz @gitchat room! https://t.co/9dMAAaAHuz pic.twitter.com/qVuJtQkf1g
— Damien Irving (@DrClimate)
March 16, 2015
*Of course, you can also come to one of our Software Carpentry workshops to learn how to use GitHub to manage your code!
by Paul Mignone
In the near future, when University of Melbourne researchers look up in the sky, they’ll have more to look forward to than just birds and planes. They could very well find their favourite piece of design software, easily accessible from any computer, anywhere in the world. This is the goal that myself and the team at ResBaz are aiming to achieve, and it’s called ‘CAD in the cloud’.
Over the past 12 months we successfully collaborated with Autodesk, Citrix, Dell, Nvidia and VMware to test the viability of CAD in the cloud for research applications. The machine used was a Dell PowerEdge R720, which contained two NVIDIA GRID K2 GPUs, designed to deliver a high quality graphics experience to users running virtual applications. Autodesk Inventor was the CAD software chosen for the test, and it was streamed using XenApp 7.6 (installed on a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine).
I need to give a massive shout-out to Brenton Wyett from Autodesk, Michael Wang and Jared Cowart from NVIDIA and Bernard Meade from Unimelb for helping set-up the test server. This test wouldn’t have been possible without your help!
From our early pre-alpha testing, we came to realise the versatility and ease-of-use of XenApp. I was personally surprised by the performance of Autodesk Inventor on a google chromebook, which was both functional and responsive.
.@Resplat .@unimelb Ladies and gentlemen. The #CAD is in the #Cloud. @dfflanders @mikepcw #Resbaz #digismith #nvidia pic.twitter.com/SWxJjqpK5y
— Paul Mignone (@paulmignone)
February 6, 2015
This could potentially mean that researchers and students would no longer be required to pay for higher-specification devices, allowing them greater flexibility when using their own device for their research and learning.
For the alpha-test, I issued two instances of Autodesk Inventor to be used by the CAD students at the recent ResBaz conference. Besides the occasional network delay on the first day, the alpha test was incredibly successful. The video below shows an example of how it went during the three-day training course.
#autodesk inventor freeform modelling using #unimelb #cad in the #cloud #resbaz
A video posted by @senatvs_pavlvs on Feb 17, 2015 at 3:06pm PST
Ms Andrea Rassell, a Media & Communications PhD at RMIT University said the following about her CAD in the Cloud experience:
“Overall I was very impressed with how it worked and have strained to find anything critical to say. The speed was great…and I only had a couple of instances where the program seized. Once was in response to me inadvertently asking for a massive scale shift, and the other time was after returning from lunch. I hadn’t closed down the program and it seemed to have seized at some point while we were away. I was impressed that even though Autodesk was running through the cloud and the PC I was using didn’t quite have the minimum specs required by Autodesk Inventor, I didn’t notice any lag…Also, I found the interface of the cloud app simple and easy to use.”
Dr. Joab Hwang, a post-doc researcher in biology at Monash University was impressed by the performance of the alpha-test. What he found particularly useful was that CAD in the cloud worked seamlessly on Mac OS/X, an operating system used by many reserachers, yet engineering software rarely supports. His interview is in the YouTube link below.
So what’s the moral of the story? CAD in the cloud is definitely possible. While the alpha-test at ResBaz identified some rough edges to iron out, researchers clearly saw the value of CAD in the cloud, and want more of it. Our next challenge will be to test Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max with Dr. Mike Kuiper and his newly established Bio-visualisation group. Stay tuned for details!
By Aliza Wajih
ResBaz was a great success in bringing researchers of diverse academic backgrounds together and giving them the opportunity to learn about the next generation digital tools to improve their research.
We saw a range of different academic come into our CADstream to create and design their ideas as well as see digital models of theirwork. We designed the course to cater for the needs of academics from diverse backgrounds as our class included researchers and PhD candidates from biomedical, social, and computer sciences as well as arts and a few more!
Look at us all ready to kick-start the 3 day training!
The CAD stream basically introduced the participants to the digital tool called AutoDesk Inventor. Inventor is used to design 3d models and is largely used in the engineering, entertainment and architectural industries. Autodesk inventor offers a 3 year free license for academics!
source (http://www.autodesk.com.au/products/inventor/overview)
As this software is a little difficult to get started with for new users we organized the rooms to encourage collaboration and teamwork! The participants brought their different sets of expertise to the table and shared their knowledge with each other. It was lovely to see how genuinely interested everyone was to learn and engage in the course and how quickly everyone picked up a very challenging software!
The best part about our class was the open line of communication between the demonstrators and the participants. Getting verbal feedback as well as live feedback from comments section in Google docs allowed us to stress, review and reteach areas of study that everyone found more challenging.
We got some great feedback from everyone, here are a few!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the participants for their lovely feedback, I would also like to thank Paul(@paulmignone) and our amazing team of volunteers (Vincent, Bobby, Karlo, Tony, and Serina) without whom this course could not have been the success that it was!
Last but not least, I hope this course was useful and that everyone goes on to design great things with it! My twitter handle is @awajih08 and would love to see some of your work! Good Luck!
By Aliza Wajih
At Research Platforms we know that one of the most essential elements of running a successful course is making sure that the content beingdelivered is relevant, informative and interesting to the students. However we also know that it is equally as essential to supplement the course with engaging and effective content delivery techniques.
Introducing the ResBaz CAD Team!
The Resbaz CAD team was heavily involved in the 3-day Train-the-Trainer invent that was held prior to the Research Bazar 2015 where trainers were taught how to teach. In the lead up to Resbaz we focused on finding the most effective ways of organizing, designing, and delivering lecture content. Knowing that the participants in our class came from diverse academic background, one of our major challenges was to design a course that would intrigue everyone.
For me personally, Train-the-Trainer was an invaluable learning experience. I got to learn from some very smart, talented and driven people namely, my peers and my mentor Paul Mignone (@paulmignone). This course was a success as a direct result of the team effort that we put together. Here is a picture of us doing just that on Day 1!
During Train-the-Trainer we collaborated and supported each other to perform our best. We practiced delivering lectures and shared our views on how to make them more engaging and interesting. As our main focus was to design a student-centred course we constantly brainstormed and encouraged new ideas to teach more effectively rather than use ineffective traditional teaching methods.
As a result of innovative approach to making this course we came up with some great ideas, one of which was including exercises that would keep the course fun and interesting (i.e Lego man) and another was to allow the student to give live feedback on course notes in Google Docs.
Check out this musical warrior!
Train-the-Trainer gave us the opportunity to critically look at our work, step back, redefine problems and work on developing better techniques. It gave us the time to perfect the art of teaching, see potential pitfalls, plan for future improvements and make the process of iteravively designing courses much easier and productive.
This trying to figure out how to put a lid on the USB! ( Hint: Its easier in real life!)
Overall, working in a team of intelligent and determined people at Train-the-Trainer and learning how to teach was great professional and personal experience. What made this experience even better was the excellent feedback we received at ResBaz! We hope to continue improving our work and making it better, see you all next year and well done CAD team!
By Aliza Wajih
AutoCAD Civil3D is here at the University of Melbourne! Inour new AutoCAD Civil3D training course we took a handful of undergraduate andpostgraduate students, and gave them to opportunity to collaborate with industry experts to learn new technology that would benefit them in their research and coursework.
As always, our main motivation behind running this training was to promote and support integrated cross-disciplinary studies. The class had students from both spatial engineering and civil engineering backgrounds who were trained by AutoCAD Civil3D demonstrators, Jason and Cameron, from Civil Survey Solutions. Both the Demonstrators had a wealth of knowledge and experience in the field, and were thorough in their explanations and guided the student through the course at a steady pace.
The coursework for AutoCAD Civil3D was designed by collaboration between Kenny Tan, from the University of Melbourne, and Civil Survey Solutions. It was tailored to support existing knowledge of students and gradually build on it through course notes, demonstrations and example questions. As the course was specifically aimed to support the students it was a huge success that was highly appreciated by the students.
Students were actively engaged in the training and were continuously challenged with exercises. They particularly enjoyed “learning about AutoCAD Civil3D from professionals and learning all the tricks and tips”. They found the practical aspects of 3D imaging, mapping, surveying to be very useful and demonstrated high levels of creativity and sophistication with their designs.
One of the most common comments from the students was that learning AutoCAD Civil3D on their own was possible but not nearly as effective as learning it in a collaborative environment where peers and experts could assist each other in real time. By the end of the training, students felt that their newly acquired knowledge would help them make their work more professional, time-efficient and accurate. Our students plan on sharing their knowledge by building an AutoCAD Civil3D community at the University and teaching this course to their peers in events facilitated by Research Platforms!
Overall, the training was a great success, as both experts and students were quite pleased with their performance and progress! I would like to thank Jason and Cameron for sharing their time with us and providing us with excellent quality training services. I would also like to thank Kenny who did great job in helping design the coursework design and last but not least I would like to thank the students who participated in this event for making it a fun learning experience.
Research Platforms hopes to continue providing researchers and students training across all disciplines on the latest next generation digital research tools with events like these and bring together like-minded people who go on to do brilliant things!
by Aliza Wajih
3Dprinting is a new evolutionary technology that has recently made its way intothe fields of science, engineering, and medicine. It is being used to do thingsthat can only be described as great successes in modern science and technology.In only the past year, 3D printing was used by NASA to print a spanner in space; it was also used by medical experts to print ekso suits, low-cost prosthetics, robotic arms, and many other similar scientific wonders.
At the University of Melbourne Research Platforms has worked tirelessly to provide and explore this emerging technology for students, researchers and experts. To name some of our involvement with 3D printing thus far, we have worked with the Royal Children’s hospital to print delicate parts of the respiratory system such as bronchea and tracea models for student surgeons and nurses so that they can gain a wealth of experience by practicing surgeries on medical mannequin with body parts of varying sizes.
something about this article (source)
We have also worked closely with the graduate students involved in the Melbourne Accelerator Programme and helped them bring conceptual ideas to life. Using our printing facilities, these students created a prototype of their SwatchMate product casing, called “the cube”, which went on to becoming the winner of its category, Product Design – Concept or Prototype!
Last
but not least, last year we successfully printed a titanium heel for a man whose
heel was eaten away by bone cancer. The team that made this happen was led by
Prof Peter Choong at St. Vincent Hospital. Although our printing facilities
were not used to print the heel our “Digital Blacksmith” community was
heavily involved in developing the CAD skills necessary to make this possible.
Due to our success from the stories above, we have established two researcher working groups around the use of 3D printing. The first working group overseas our “mini research grants innovation funding” called “Researcher Product Realisation Working Group”. It overseas 8 mini-grants in a variety of cross-University research topics. The second working group is a medical group that aims to push forward clinical-medical efforts for 3D printing, including pre-opps surgery models for training, new bone implants and bio printing of skin cells and other “growable” materials, like organs.
Throughout the past year Research Platform has hosted numerous events and training sessions which have facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration. It is worth noting that all three of our achievement mentioned above are linked with the massively popular 3D printing showcase which attended by over 1500 people, including the Vice Chancellor who is a big supporter of our community.
Our successful 3D printing drop in sessions on Monday evenings will start from the 9th of March 2015 and will continue to support students and staff from all disciplines wanting to learn more about 3D printing. So much so, that the engineering workshop will become a campus wide facility!
Research Platforms department will also continue providing its software training to upskill next generation digital research. Training will be provided for Autodesk Inventor for mechanical and anatomical modelling, Autodesk 3DCiv and Infra for Architecture and Infrastructure modelling, and 3D Slicer for transforming DICOM models from PETCT and MRI instruments into 3D models for printing.
By Damien Irving.
If you’ve ever run a workshop or short-course on a particular digital research skill, you’ll be familiar with this post-workshop conundrum: how can I provide useful, relevant and ongoing assistance to my attendees? Even if workshop participants are keen to continue learning, it can be very difficult to (a) get them to come forward and ask questions, and (b) have the discipline specific expertise on hand to actually answer those questions. Like many other prominant thinkers in educational psychology, our apporach to this problem was to come up with a silly pun (“Hacky Hour”) and then base our answer around that. In the wake of ResBaz 2015 a number of people have asked about tips and advice for starting a Hacky Hour at their home institution, so here’s our best attempt at wisdom and sage advice…
#hackyhour, combining nature with technology this Thursday afternoon at @tsububar. Don’t suffer in silence, come chat pic.twitter.com/PdRVygU0Sc
— Research Platforms (@ResPlat)
March 6, 2014
The first thing to say is that Hacky Hour is more than just a weekly help desk located at a bar on campus (3-4pm every Thursday, Tsubu Bar). Some weeks we get enough genuine questions to fill an hour, but you’d have to be part of a pretty extraordinary community to have enough questions to keep you going all year. To fill the void, we’ve worked hard to make sure Hacky Hour is the focal point of our networking activities. If I’m meeting up with the President of the Ecology Student Society to chat about running a Software Carpentry workshop, for instance, I’ll schedule that meeting for Hacky Hour. Other people in our local ResBaz community start to do the same, and all of a sudden Hacky Hour becomes a hive of people with lots of different digital research skills and interests. It can be a little chaotic (lots of meetings going on all over the place), but the diversity of attendees is fantastic for answering the wide variety of questions we get from previous workshop attendees.
.@billdoesphysics takes #HackyHour international! http://t.co/lWSFypvF8j @MozillaScience @ResPlat
— Damien Irving (@DrClimate)
February 8, 2015
Beyond just being a place to have your specific programming questions answered, Hacky Hour has become the open science and digital technology meetup on campus. Most of our “regulars” like to keep up-to-date with the latest tools and research best practices, and have found that Hacky Hour is a place to be part of that conversation. As a consequence, people come down who have something to share in front of such an audience. We’ve had a Masters student pitch his idea for a cloud-based hosting service for computer models, a cloud computing educator tested his new lesson materials on our regulars and next week an IT guru is going to come down and disassemble an old server in front of us all.
In short, if you want to your Hacky Hour to thrive, think of it as a community, not just a help desk.