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A step in the right direction, I suppose. But as a hacker and an architecture grad student, no industry infuriates me more than the architectural software indus

A step in the right direction, I suppose. But as a hacker and an architecture grad student, no industry infuriates me more than the architectural software industry. If you're looking for a new startup idea and you can build a cross-platform 3D modeler that: * is compatible with existing file formats * can cut real-time 2D plans and sections * provides a well documented API in multiple modern languages (please no more BASIC) I will hand you $1,000 right now. And that's coming from someone who has $3,000 in the bank thanks only to his latest loan check. Seriously, I think there is real money to be made here.

ciupicri 16y ago
Speaking of Basic, didn't AutoCAD use Lisp for "macros"?
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  It still does. As a younger programmer, it was my first taste of Lisp. Still, it would be nice to have more language choices.
- olefoo 16y ago
  Up until the mid 1990's yes. Then they switched to Visual Basic and C++ which were considered easier to integrate with the Windows environment or something.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    I'm still using AutoLisp and I don't think our version of AutoCAD is that old?
    - olefoo 16y ago
      ISTR that it was R14 that was all c++/VBA but it's been years since I touched autocad.
      - rodh257 16y ago
        autolisp is still around, with VBA going the way of the dodo in favour of .NET
someone_here 16y ago
I'm not familiar with 3D modelers, so could you explain what you mean by "cut real-time 2D plans and sections"?
- tedkimble 16y ago
  Most 3D modelers are solid modelers (i.e. I construct a solid cube or sphere). When I aggregate many of these solids together (and possibly do some boolean operations to them), I have a design. Now I would like my 2D cuts. By this, I mean I would like to look at a 2D cross-sectional drawing of my design. This may be at the XY plane, YZ plane, or some other arbitrary plane. Most 3D modelers can do this, but when you make the 2D cut, you're often exporting the cut to a new file. If you change anything in the design, the cut does not update, and you must "re-cut". This is what I mean by real-time. Good 3D modelers don't do this well, and poor 3D modelers can do this exceptionally (I'm looking at you Revit). Some can do both, but they're incredibly complicated and cost tens of thousands (Digital Project)
  - roel_v 16y ago
    But for architectural design, you want to work at a higher level than solids. You want to draw a 'wall' and then parameterize it - 8cm of outside brick, 2 cm of air, 5 cm of insulation, 14 cm of brick, 2 cm of plaster. Plus this needs to have the right hatch in 2d views etc. Have you tried Chief Architect? It works rather well in this respect, it's really made for ease of use. I don't know how well it would scale for large projects though, I've only toyed with it for small residential design. Plus the estimating and electrical/HVAC tools are poor to non-existent.
    - tedkimble 16y ago
      I'm taking the view of an avant-garde designer in a firm that has a separate team of drafters to implement designs and construction documents. My focus is on the conceptual design phase, so I simply have different needs.
      - 16y ago
roel_v 16y ago
Incidentally I've been working on a toy BIM software package for the last few months, just for fun. The amount of work to make anything that even remotely resembles production quality is staggering. The problem with this software is that it's hard to build incrementally. You need all the functionality to design 90% of all houses or people won't buy it. It needs 3d for the design + renderings and 2d for the cutouts / details. And you're asking for an API - that would be at the bottom of an implementor's list after all the basic functionality! Plus the cross-platform thing, which doesn't make software companies any money either (are you talking just Mac or also Linux?) But yes there is real money to be made, and Autodesk is reaping it in. There are contenders for the small time market like Chief Architect but they're not bleeding money it seems. This is a winner takes all market and Autodesk has a 30 year advantage.
- olefoo 16y ago
  What if you inverted the product idea and started with an online object repository that was presented as an API for search, retrieval and instantiation. You would include the basic design methods for parametric designs in your API, but you wouldn't be directly challenging AutoCAD's desktop business. It seems like the missing piece these days is not the design tools, but the marketplace and the process of taking a design and validating and manufacturing it. If you could network a number of machine shops of varied capabilities and material specialties into a single point of contact for rapid assembly of completed designs with a marketplace for designers to sell their work, that could be a powerful combination. There are already a few companies dabbling in this space http://www.shapeways.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/ being the one I'm most familiar with. The most interesting approach would be if you could find a market niche that had idle capacity and a need for creative custom solutions that was currently going unmet.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    I'm not sure how that would work, but anyway I was talking about architecture and CAD for that only. How would you design something in your proposal? By writing code to glue together a bunch of objects? You need WYSIWYG editing, otherwise people could just write povray scripts and do everything locally. Maybe I'm just not understanding what you're proposing?
jseliger 16y ago
If I were a betting person, I'd guess that the 80/20 rule/myth applies here: http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html . Everyone uses 80% of the features, and then another couple of pet features they CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT.
pingswept 16y ago
Hell yes. The same is true for the mechanical CAD market. Autodesk (the makers of AutoCAD) and Dassault (the makers of Solidworks) are intensely irritating to deal with. Their pricing is obscured, their marketing is heavy-handed, and for the price, their software is not that good. If I were starting a new software company now, these are the clowns I'd love to compete against. There are literally decades of pissed-off customers who want something better, but are stuck with these dinosaurs. (Yes, Blender, Sketchup, and so forth. Not tailored for the industry well enough.)
- pyre 16y ago
  I remember hearing that if you called up Autodesk and asked them if they were working on a Mac/Linux client, they would literally laugh at you.
hegemonicon 16y ago
$1000 would barely cover 25% of the price of a current seat of AutoCAD.
rodh257 16y ago
Sounds like you are describing Revit, apart from the cross platform thing. - can link in/import a number of existing file formats - can cut sections as you described - API is well documented and in .NET which lets you program in C#, F#, VB, C++ and any other language which runs on the CLR. Great product, which improves dramatically in each release (so if you only looked at it a few versions ago, try again). It will cost you more than $1000 though!

ciupicri 16y ago

Speaking of Basic, didn't AutoCAD use Lisp for "macros"?

jokermatt999 16y ago
It still does. As a younger programmer, it was my first taste of Lisp. Still, it would be nice to have more language choices.
olefoo 16y ago
Up until the mid 1990's yes. Then they switched to Visual Basic and C++ which were considered easier to integrate with the Windows environment or something.
- Natsu 16y ago
  I'm still using AutoLisp and I don't think our version of AutoCAD is that old?
  - olefoo 16y ago
    ISTR that it was R14 that was all c++/VBA but it's been years since I touched autocad.
    - rodh257 16y ago
      autolisp is still around, with VBA going the way of the dodo in favour of .NET

someone_here 16y ago

I'm not familiar with 3D modelers, so could you explain what you mean by "cut real-time 2D plans and sections"?

tedkimble 16y ago
Most 3D modelers are solid modelers (i.e. I construct a solid cube or sphere). When I aggregate many of these solids together (and possibly do some boolean operations to them), I have a design. Now I would like my 2D cuts. By this, I mean I would like to look at a 2D cross-sectional drawing of my design. This may be at the XY plane, YZ plane, or some other arbitrary plane. Most 3D modelers can do this, but when you make the 2D cut, you're often exporting the cut to a new file. If you change anything in the design, the cut does not update, and you must "re-cut". This is what I mean by real-time. Good 3D modelers don't do this well, and poor 3D modelers can do this exceptionally (I'm looking at you Revit). Some can do both, but they're incredibly complicated and cost tens of thousands (Digital Project)
- roel_v 16y ago
  But for architectural design, you want to work at a higher level than solids. You want to draw a 'wall' and then parameterize it - 8cm of outside brick, 2 cm of air, 5 cm of insulation, 14 cm of brick, 2 cm of plaster. Plus this needs to have the right hatch in 2d views etc. Have you tried Chief Architect? It works rather well in this respect, it's really made for ease of use. I don't know how well it would scale for large projects though, I've only toyed with it for small residential design. Plus the estimating and electrical/HVAC tools are poor to non-existent.
  - tedkimble 16y ago
    I'm taking the view of an avant-garde designer in a firm that has a separate team of drafters to implement designs and construction documents. My focus is on the conceptual design phase, so I simply have different needs.
    - 16y ago

roel_v 16y ago

Incidentally I've been working on a toy BIM software package for the last few months, just for fun. The amount of work to make anything that even remotely resembles production quality is staggering. The problem with this software is that it's hard to build incrementally. You need all the functionality to design 90% of all houses or people won't buy it. It needs 3d for the design + renderings and 2d for the cutouts / details. And you're asking for an API - that would be at the bottom of an implementor's list after all the basic functionality! Plus the cross-platform thing, which doesn't make software companies any money either (are you talking just Mac or also Linux?) But yes there is real money to be made, and Autodesk is reaping it in. There are contenders for the small time market like Chief Architect but they're not bleeding money it seems. This is a winner takes all market and Autodesk has a 30 year advantage.

olefoo 16y ago
What if you inverted the product idea and started with an online object repository that was presented as an API for search, retrieval and instantiation. You would include the basic design methods for parametric designs in your API, but you wouldn't be directly challenging AutoCAD's desktop business. It seems like the missing piece these days is not the design tools, but the marketplace and the process of taking a design and validating and manufacturing it. If you could network a number of machine shops of varied capabilities and material specialties into a single point of contact for rapid assembly of completed designs with a marketplace for designers to sell their work, that could be a powerful combination. There are already a few companies dabbling in this space http://www.shapeways.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/ being the one I'm most familiar with. The most interesting approach would be if you could find a market niche that had idle capacity and a need for creative custom solutions that was currently going unmet.
- roel_v 16y ago
  I'm not sure how that would work, but anyway I was talking about architecture and CAD for that only. How would you design something in your proposal? By writing code to glue together a bunch of objects? You need WYSIWYG editing, otherwise people could just write povray scripts and do everything locally. Maybe I'm just not understanding what you're proposing?

jseliger 16y ago

If I were a betting person, I'd guess that the 80/20 rule/myth applies here: http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html . Everyone uses 80% of the features, and then another couple of pet features they CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT.

pingswept 16y ago

Hell yes. The same is true for the mechanical CAD market. Autodesk (the makers of AutoCAD) and Dassault (the makers of Solidworks) are intensely irritating to deal with. Their pricing is obscured, their marketing is heavy-handed, and for the price, their software is not that good. If I were starting a new software company now, these are the clowns I'd love to compete against. There are literally decades of pissed-off customers who want something better, but are stuck with these dinosaurs. (Yes, Blender, Sketchup, and so forth. Not tailored for the industry well enough.)

pyre 16y ago
I remember hearing that if you called up Autodesk and asked them if they were working on a Mac/Linux client, they would literally laugh at you.

hegemonicon 16y ago

$1000 would barely cover 25% of the price of a current seat of AutoCAD.

rodh257 16y ago

Sounds like you are describing Revit, apart from the cross platform thing. - can link in/import a number of existing file formats - can cut sections as you described - API is well documented and in .NET which lets you program in C#, F#, VB, C++ and any other language which runs on the CLR. Great product, which improves dramatically in each release (so if you only looked at it a few versions ago, try again). It will cost you more than $1000 though!