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You're talking about a very simple widget. Autodesk is used by a huge number of companies for simple 2D drawings and complex systems. You can't give your clien

You're talking about a very simple widget. Autodesk is used by a huge number of companies for simple 2D drawings and complex systems. You can't give your client a back of the napkin, hand sketched drawing in every case. You won't get your GCode without being able to see a drawing of what you're trying to manufacture. CAD beats out hand drawn sketches in almost every situation when it comes to manufacturing.

brudgers 11y ago
When a computer can generate instructions to automatically fabricate the artifact, there is no client. There's simply a user. Autodesk's business is selling to people whose business requires the expert-client relationship. That step is as necessary as an 80 column punch card entry team.
- rwmurrayVT 11y ago
  I don't see that day coming in my lifetime. There are simply too many design variables. You can't engineer a totally new product with AI. It's one thing to make improvements to an existing design.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Most products aren't totally new. Some things that are currently designed, such as buildings, are relatively simple and largely built the same way they were decades and centuries ago. Same is true for furniture, hand tools, cookware, cutlery, etc. The thing is, the idea that there are many design variables is contrary to recent AI development. Instead of creating a bunch of rules and putting them in a specification, the machine just looks at what does and doesn't work and decides what might work.
    - ddingus 11y ago
      BTW, existing, rule based CAD nails those cases. Hell, I was showing people how to make parametric buildings in the mid 90s... Those standard cases have been ripe for the picking, and it's been done for a long time now, usually with a combination CAD and rule system, and verify ways for humans to input various things. There will continue to be nice gains and a simplification of CAD as well as the factoring it out on those. We have never needed CAD to do that stuff. CAD just helped do it better, more efficiently. For the growing body of stuff we do need CAD to do, these approaches are nowhere near the maturity needed. Novel things do require people, and they must iterate, collaborate, analyse, etc... CAD is the best we've got. When we get a real AI, that has real analytic and creative skill, maybe. Will be exciting too. Long way off though.
      - brudgers 11y ago
        It's a question of who gets to "input various things". CAD systems whether or not they incorporate heuristics or parametrics are based on: human owner -> human designer -> production [possibly human] -> artifact However, the important high level abstraction is: human owner -> artifact where the "->" simply accounts for the time gap that we call "production". Getting closer to the high level abstraction is why people pay for design. For many projects having humans in the "->" is seen as a cost not a benefit...they're forced to pay a designer for time spent rounding corners and gradienting drop shadows because those things are more fun and easier than iterating. It's also more fun than writing up vast arrays of heuristics and parametric constraints. Computers are really really good at iterating. With machine learning, they don't require long lists of heuristics and parametric constraints. Just a lot of examples and an unimaginably large number in human terms of CPU cycles. That's not a place AutoDesk as a publicly traded company can pivot. So in the 1990's when you were developing computational approaches, they pivoted toward a product line architecture that allows Autodesk to roll out features at regular intervals. If it had wanted to go computational, it would have doubled down on AutoLisp with macros and promoted developers. There's a business reason that full blown AutoCad developer tools require approval and that there's no AutoCad app store.
- ddingus 11y ago
  We are a very long way from this. You are correct in that rule based design works, but we don't really have AI yet. We have AI like systems, but they currently do not perform at the level needed to be a serious replacement. Someday, maybe. It's going to be an awful long time. For now, say the next 20 years, it's going to be about making CAD accessible to more people and integrating it with other systems. Right now, today, when that is done, the payoffs are huge, but so are the investments.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    I'm advocating precedent based design, not rule based. The Acropolis masons didn't have rules, they had examples. BTW, I have found it really hard to get out of the habit of thinking about the production of artifacts in terms of contemporary practice...to think of design as a place where middlemen lurk. But in reality, a homeowner's first choice is, to a first approximation, building sans plans or permits.
    - ddingus 11y ago
      First, there are things like buildings and infrastructure, and there are mechanical parts, devices, etc... By example could work for some things today. Often, template or start parts are the basis for those. And that's been going on, like you say, for some time. We don't actually need CAD to do that, though we do have a high communications burden without it. We could invest in those comms, dumbing down a lot of stuff too. But, there is no way in hell that sweet spot can replace design and engineering. The liabilities alone keep it off the table, and the problem space is absolutely huge too. As another person here said, "not in my lifetime." You know, I worked with some people who build yachts. Lots of old world skill in that building. They can, if desired, just build a nice boat with nothing more than the tools and materials in the shop. They bought CAD from me that day, and the owner expressed what you are here too. Turns out, good design and engineering makes better boats in both the subjective sense and objective performance, physics sense. And communication allows for faster, less error prone boats too. You are describing a distant, potential future. We have no where near the level of tech, not development as people needed to actualize that. CAD is part of that journey. With it, advanced products, structures, etc... are all possible, but the work involved is still insane. I've seen and been a part of the development of systems that do this, and even on trivial parts there is a whole lot to be accounted for. The bars we have in place, that differentiate engineering from design, permits to build, geological studies and other various impact studies all regulate the building of things that people depend on and that they must trust. We have those in place for really good reasons, and one of those is the fact that we just don't have mastery as a species. Not yet. All I here is, "dang, it costs money to do it right", and "why can't I just copy my neighbor?" The answer lies in the complexity of the world and the dynamics of the people here in it. Nice vision, but good luck with that. For now, I suspect the more productive answer is to continue making CAD smarter and more accessible to ordinary people. We don't yet live in a Lego brick world, and I suspect human creativity will drive that being the case for the forseeable future.

brudgers 11y ago

When a computer can generate instructions to automatically fabricate the artifact, there is no client. There's simply a user. Autodesk's business is selling to people whose business requires the expert-client relationship. That step is as necessary as an 80 column punch card entry team.

rwmurrayVT 11y ago
I don't see that day coming in my lifetime. There are simply too many design variables. You can't engineer a totally new product with AI. It's one thing to make improvements to an existing design.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Most products aren't totally new. Some things that are currently designed, such as buildings, are relatively simple and largely built the same way they were decades and centuries ago. Same is true for furniture, hand tools, cookware, cutlery, etc. The thing is, the idea that there are many design variables is contrary to recent AI development. Instead of creating a bunch of rules and putting them in a specification, the machine just looks at what does and doesn't work and decides what might work.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    BTW, existing, rule based CAD nails those cases. Hell, I was showing people how to make parametric buildings in the mid 90s... Those standard cases have been ripe for the picking, and it's been done for a long time now, usually with a combination CAD and rule system, and verify ways for humans to input various things. There will continue to be nice gains and a simplification of CAD as well as the factoring it out on those. We have never needed CAD to do that stuff. CAD just helped do it better, more efficiently. For the growing body of stuff we do need CAD to do, these approaches are nowhere near the maturity needed. Novel things do require people, and they must iterate, collaborate, analyse, etc... CAD is the best we've got. When we get a real AI, that has real analytic and creative skill, maybe. Will be exciting too. Long way off though.
    - brudgers 11y ago
      It's a question of who gets to "input various things". CAD systems whether or not they incorporate heuristics or parametrics are based on: human owner -> human designer -> production [possibly human] -> artifact However, the important high level abstraction is: human owner -> artifact where the "->" simply accounts for the time gap that we call "production". Getting closer to the high level abstraction is why people pay for design. For many projects having humans in the "->" is seen as a cost not a benefit...they're forced to pay a designer for time spent rounding corners and gradienting drop shadows because those things are more fun and easier than iterating. It's also more fun than writing up vast arrays of heuristics and parametric constraints. Computers are really really good at iterating. With machine learning, they don't require long lists of heuristics and parametric constraints. Just a lot of examples and an unimaginably large number in human terms of CPU cycles. That's not a place AutoDesk as a publicly traded company can pivot. So in the 1990's when you were developing computational approaches, they pivoted toward a product line architecture that allows Autodesk to roll out features at regular intervals. If it had wanted to go computational, it would have doubled down on AutoLisp with macros and promoted developers. There's a business reason that full blown AutoCad developer tools require approval and that there's no AutoCad app store.
ddingus 11y ago
We are a very long way from this. You are correct in that rule based design works, but we don't really have AI yet. We have AI like systems, but they currently do not perform at the level needed to be a serious replacement. Someday, maybe. It's going to be an awful long time. For now, say the next 20 years, it's going to be about making CAD accessible to more people and integrating it with other systems. Right now, today, when that is done, the payoffs are huge, but so are the investments.
- brudgers 11y ago
  I'm advocating precedent based design, not rule based. The Acropolis masons didn't have rules, they had examples. BTW, I have found it really hard to get out of the habit of thinking about the production of artifacts in terms of contemporary practice...to think of design as a place where middlemen lurk. But in reality, a homeowner's first choice is, to a first approximation, building sans plans or permits.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    First, there are things like buildings and infrastructure, and there are mechanical parts, devices, etc... By example could work for some things today. Often, template or start parts are the basis for those. And that's been going on, like you say, for some time. We don't actually need CAD to do that, though we do have a high communications burden without it. We could invest in those comms, dumbing down a lot of stuff too. But, there is no way in hell that sweet spot can replace design and engineering. The liabilities alone keep it off the table, and the problem space is absolutely huge too. As another person here said, "not in my lifetime." You know, I worked with some people who build yachts. Lots of old world skill in that building. They can, if desired, just build a nice boat with nothing more than the tools and materials in the shop. They bought CAD from me that day, and the owner expressed what you are here too. Turns out, good design and engineering makes better boats in both the subjective sense and objective performance, physics sense. And communication allows for faster, less error prone boats too. You are describing a distant, potential future. We have no where near the level of tech, not development as people needed to actualize that. CAD is part of that journey. With it, advanced products, structures, etc... are all possible, but the work involved is still insane. I've seen and been a part of the development of systems that do this, and even on trivial parts there is a whole lot to be accounted for. The bars we have in place, that differentiate engineering from design, permits to build, geological studies and other various impact studies all regulate the building of things that people depend on and that they must trust. We have those in place for really good reasons, and one of those is the fact that we just don't have mastery as a species. Not yet. All I here is, "dang, it costs money to do it right", and "why can't I just copy my neighbor?" The answer lies in the complexity of the world and the dynamics of the people here in it. Nice vision, but good luck with that. For now, I suspect the more productive answer is to continue making CAD smarter and more accessible to ordinary people. We don't yet live in a Lego brick world, and I suspect human creativity will drive that being the case for the forseeable future.