We are honored to have 3 college student interns and 9 high school interns from FIRST Robotics FRC Teams this year working on software in our Autodesk Portland office. They are once again working on the Autodesk Synthesis software that is free and open for FIRST FRC Robotics teams to use to simulate their code and import their robot design before competition. It is an amazing project and fun to play based in Unity.

From left to right:

• Kira is a college intern that will serve as a project manager. She’s been part of the Synthesis team for a few years now, and is excited to continue fine tuning the product. Alumni FRC 2550 Skynet!
• Shawn is another college intern. He’s into cars; you’ll see him wearing a BMW jacket every once in a while. He’s hoping to make Synthesis more stable this summer.  Alumni FRC 2471 Team Mean Machine!
• Matt is another rising college freshman. He’s been using Autodesk products for more than 7 years now! He’s hoping to bring cross platform support to Synthesis.  Alumni FRC 4488 Shockwave!
• Amber is a returning intern that just graduated high school! She’ll be working on the engine.  Alumni FRC 1540 The Flaming Chickens!
• Andrei is a new intern that just graduated high school and took the above photo so he isn’t in it.   Alumni FRC 1540 The Flaming Chickens!
• Liam is new to the team, and is a rising high school senior. He’s excited to learn more about how physics work in Synthesis.  Alumni FRC 1540 The Flaming Chickens!
• Nick is another rising college freshman, and will be working on expanding emulation support. Alumni FRC 1425 Error Code Xero!
• Hunter is a rising high school Junior from Corvallis. He’s working on the engine this summer. Alumni FRC 997 Spartan Robotics
• Alex is a rising college freshman, and will be working on the exporter. FRC 4056 Electro Titans. FTC 7195 and 3600.
• Katie is a rising senior from the Tacoma area, and will be working on marketing Synthesis. She’s out of the office for a few days, so you won’t see her around just yet! Alumni FRC 360 The Revolution!
• Logan is a rising college sophomore, and will be working on fixing emulation for Java. Alumni FRC 1425 Error Code Xero!
• Nicolas is a rising senior that will be working on the exporter. Alumni FRC 2374 CrusadorBots!

Their objectives this summer from college intern Shawn Hice:

“Synthesis is an Autodesk Application that provides students and mentors of FIRST Robotics Competition the ability to take a 3D CAD Model from either Inventor or Fusion 360 and use it directly in a physics simulation. This inspires students to use healthy design and modeling practices in order to correctly joint assemblies for simulation. Our goal is to provide students with the desire to use Autodesk 3D Modeling and Manufacturing Design Products. And to inspire the next generation of engineers to think creatively about problem solving.

This Summer we plan to invest time into increasing the stability of Synthesis as well as getting better usage reports that may help us target specific userbases we weren’t previously aware of. The team is also working towards increasing brand association and workflow similarities between the Autodesk Manufacturing Products and Synthesis. A great amount of our inspiration comes from Autodesk Fusion 360 Simulation team as well as HSM. The well thought out and constructed workflows of both the Simulation and HSM team give Synthesis the ability to anticipate what our users expect from an Autodesk application.

User feedback is very important to our product, because of this we are always looking for input on design changes and have decidedly broken our development into two different sections in order to receive feedback on our current target goals. If anyone is interested in user testing we will be hosting testing sessions in the Autodesk Portland Oregon Office, as well as a Virtual Testing Session. For time and availability you may reach out to FRC@autodesk.com.”

I dropped in on them last week, and captured a nice photo of most of them up on our newly opened 6th floor space. I love that we bring in high school students for real world software development projects and also help the community of STEM student teams. It helps the FIRST community and also is great for students to understand how a software company works and if it is the type of career they want as they build their futures.

This is just another of those amazing programs to be grateful for and why I am proud to be an Autodesk employee. The future is bright with these interns who are doing their part to Imagine, Design, and Make a Better World.

Shaan