27 ms·

Autodesk criticised by architects

304 points by nsoonhui 6y ago

aut0away 6y ago
It is a bit of a monopoly. I always respected people who used Rhino, while secretly thinking of them as needlessly contrarian. Now I just respect them. Besides the free Fusion 360 moat, Autodesk owns 3DS Max and Maya. Enough said.
- bschne 6y ago
  Is rhino actually used for serious CAD work? From what I‘ve read/heard I thought it was mostly something used in student projects or design explorations because of grasshopper‘s visual programming functionality
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Yes it is. I've seen it used professionally at more than one company.
    - saeranv 6y ago
      Depends on the firm, but it's definitely used. Specifically Rhino/Grasshopper get used a lot for concept, schematic design, and then Revit gets used for design development and onward, especially at companies that work a lot with complex geometry (Zaha, SHoP).
      - bschne 6y ago
        That makes sense, I have no clue about how architects actually work but I imagine Revit et al. have a ton of features that you would probably miss in Rhino when it gets to working out the nitty-gritty details of floorplans, generating section drawings, or working with BIM features?
        CositaS 6y ago
        https://www.visualarq.com/ https://www.visualarq.com/ adds BIM tools to Rhino (and the total price of perpetual licenses for Rhino+VisualARQ is still significantly less than a year's Revit subscription)
        saeranv 6y ago
        Sounds perfect, but I've yet to hear of any company using this plug-in! Personally I also have hope for the interesting hybrids that are continually coming out that are trying to create a seamless pipeline between Revit and Rhino: Google's Flux (which failed), Speckle, RhinoInside. I also hacked up my own crude solution, which was to continually run a flask server in the background, and then pass json strings between Rhino, Revit, and Jupyter. I do a lot of analysis work (building energy and environmental simulation/optimization), so wanted a solution that gave me access to the scientific python ecosystem.
        saeranv 6y ago
        Yeah exactly. You can easily generate any orthographic views, cut sections, use templates for common building elements and more in Revit. On the other hand, everyone loves the flexibility, and UX of Rhino/Grasshopper.And (for now?) Rhino has the market cornered on structural, energy, and environmental simulation and optimization plug-ins, just because data-management is so much easier in Grasshopper then Revit's equivalent visual scripting language (Dynamo).
  - runxel 6y ago
    Depends on the industry. For automotive and even ship design a lot of studios are using it (even not openly, but in a "secret" manner). In AEC many students nowadays use it during university. Some offices use it as well, and if only for Grasshopper. GH is a really great piece of software and you can e.g. even use it with Archicad nowadays.
  - polygotdomain 6y ago
    To add to what the other user has said, it is used at a number of firms, but primarily in early stages of design. It's actually very solid for actual drafting (Rhino originated out of an AutoCAD plugin), and does freeform surface modeling very well. It's the middle piece, bringing the design into a set of drawings, that is the sticking point, and something that Revit automates very well. It's not that Rhino can't do it, it's that it's a very manual process that requires a lot more steps and structured process than most firms are willing to invest. Also, the kind of work you'd use Rhino for doesn't flow well to other downstream CAD or BIM software that architects typically use. Yes, you can easily export linework, but at that point, you might as well keep it in Rhino. Somewhat unrelated, but Rhino's SDK is really solid and gives a ton of access to the software. It's amazing some of the things that can be done with it, and Rhino as a whole, but at the same time it's producing construction documents that's where the rubber meets the road as far as Architecture is concerned. Source: Former architecture student and Rhino plugin developer
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ginko 6y ago
  At least in the 3DS Max/Maya space Blender is seeming to make more and more headway these days.
- com2kid 6y ago
  Rhino is genuinely fun to use. Best UX of by far of any program I've ever had the pleasure of using. Blender is frustrating as heck to use in comparison.
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    Blender has had actually a revamp of the UX exactly because of this sentiment... Might be worth trying again..?
    - ur-whale 6y ago
      Blender is great, but setting UX considerations aside, I don't think their NURBS engine is on par with that of Rhino (features like trimmed NURBS, NURBS fillets, etc ...)
    - com2kid 6y ago
      Rhino is primarily command line based, it is a perfect mix of CLI and GUI. Also it is 4-up by default and designed around that paradigm. I don't understand how people stand using modeling programs that only have 1 viewport, but they are common enough that I presume everyone gets by.
- Keyframe 6y ago
  And Sofitmage, which they promptly shut down after they acquired them. Basically, they bought all of the standard tools out there (yes, even max) and became a dominant player. There's an old interview floating around with one of the autodesk founders - he explains their strategy (was?) is to straight-up buy into both market share and competition.
- runxel 6y ago
  Fun fact: Everybody who says "We are not using Rhino" lies. All the big studios might be using Autodesk products in the front, but I know of some who have a senior engineer who has a secret PC in some attic with Rhino installed. If you need more complex tasks to be done the engineer goes to "smoke a cig". ;)
- adfm 6y ago
  cough t-splines cough
bfuclusion 6y ago
I can 100% believe that Autodesk isn't great at responding to customer requests, but presumably these firms would have enough budget to pay for devs to write a solution that works for them. Including making an open file format, EU specific data centers, etc. It would probably even take less time and money than trying to lobby the EU to legislate what they want.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  If you think it will take less time and money for a firm of architects to build an equivalent to the most powerful architecture CAD system in the world, even for their specific use case, and that they wouldn't run afoul of Autodesk patents when doing so, then you have probably not played around with CAD software to much.
  - bfuclusion 6y ago
    Let me clarify. I absolutely, completely, think doing this would be painful and take years. But if it's line of business critical and someone has you by the throat, then you have to make the long term investments to survive. Even better, when you're done nobody can take it away from you. I just think by the time you get to the EU lobbying, regulator rulings, Autodesk dragging their feet, the appeals process, the fines that Autodesk will just build into the cost of the next version, etc, in the end it would be shorter and easier to write the software. Bonus if you make it open source so nobody has to go through this garbage again.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      > shorter and easier to write the software There is nothing short or easy about writing Revit/BIM software and it couldn't be done with the 5 million dollars that these firms had been spending on ADSK products.
- fsloth 6y ago
  It's quite hard to develop software by just throwing money at it. And even harder when the domain is a bit niche and a bit esoteric so your hiring will be even harder. The optimal person would be a game dev with a penchant for math and a MSc in an engineering field. And you would like to have a team of these, please. Completely doable, but very much non-standard so if you have no inhouse experience to start with you'll have to spend a few years just building the initial team unless you find a really good headhunter. In CAD you have to combine at least two non-trivial[0] discipline, computer graphics and and computational geometry. And they are completely unlike 'normal' software fields where you can just plug in various third party components and call it a day. You have to write your stuff to a great extent. And you have to design it - there are not that many public examples of how to put such a thing together. It's not magic, it's not intrinsically very deep, but it's complex in the sense that the systems that have to interact are far and wide. It needs a lot of work. And there are lots of things that are not in books, you just have to understand how they go together and which ways to do things are better than others. [0] Non-trivial as in "I'll just figure it out" vs. "I'll have to pour through a few decades of academia and industry research and technical publications plus scour obscure websites" to get a clue on what the state of the art is and where it could go on from here
CaliforniaKarl 6y ago
Here's the Google cache of the page, as I think the site is dealing with the traffic spike right now: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2OQV-Q6kE_gJ:extranetevolution.com/2020/07/autodesk-criticism-extends/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2OQV-Q6... I tried grabbing the site using archive.is, but the site is using something called Imunify360, which threw up a Captcha, which was promptly archived instead of the site. Although the Internet Archive has a cache entry (https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetevolution.com/2020/07/autodesk-criticism-extends/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetev...), it's returning a 503 (I don't know if the 503 is what it got from the site, or if it's the Internet Archive returning the 503).
- neonate 6y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetevolution.com/2020/07/autodesk-criticism-extends/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetev... works for me now.
imgabe 6y ago
There's easily a multi-billion dollar opportunity for anyone who can unseat Autodesk from the building design industry. Revit is the standard, and while it's improved a lot over the years it's still so ridiculously far from where it could be. I don't think people in software realize how incredibly far behind software tooling is in other industries. Take an idea like "version control for X" or "package manager for X" to almost anything outside software and you'd be hailed as a revolutionary genius. For Revit specifically, version control for construction drawings or a package manager for Revit families would both be huge.
- 303bookworm 6y ago
  Some of those exist, a friend of mine has a startup that's essentially "Git for building plans" (https://shapedo.com/ https://shapedo.com/)
  - somewhereoutth 6y ago
    If the intention is well realized then this can be a great product. Horrendous name though (for English first language speakers anyway), 'do' is the fallback - most primitive - verb for any kind of action implying a lack of precision or importance: "I'm doing the dishes" vs "I'm polishing the cutlery". There is also an unfortunate embedded word in there too.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  So sideproject should be find the leading software in a dozen industries and map out what is / not working (maybe do sales safari style discovery?)
- jamescham 6y ago
  This is exactly right—we now live in a world in which most jobs are knowledge work, and we should look to those who are the most productive (and lazy) knowledge workers: software developers.
CaliforniaKarl 6y ago
I'm surprised nobody in the Eurozone has raised similar issues about Adobe.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Currently in the Eurozone you need to submit autodesk formats to get your building permissions and certifications approved. Architecture is a protected profession in the EU and you’ll be surprised just how many architects from construction firms do nothing more than to trace plans they got from interior design and other architecture firms in a PDF format in autocad. There are a few gems on the autodesk forums where people asking for line trace capability then getting replies that basically saying well if it did that well be out of a job.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    Having recently interacted with Architects that are strictly stuck on using Autocad (that's all they know, from University and through their whole career), I can testify to the accuracy of that statement. Also, trying to communicate with them with anything outside of a PDF is damn near impossible. The very idea of them sending a 3D file to their customers scares them shitless.
    - roel_v 6y ago
      I put in my contracts with architects that I want the source files to any drawings they make. Not a single one has ever refused to work with me for that reason. Surveyors, too.
- sfvisser 6y ago
  Europe should build their own software. Instead of complaining about US monopolies the EU should stimulate innovative startups right here. Create an environment where talent doesn’t flee to the US. And if it’s not about creating multi-billion dollar/euro companies, but civil liberties and data protection: just invest some spare pennies in open source alternatives. The only reason US (and Chinese) tech companies form a threat to European citizens is because for some reasons we have zero local alternatives.
muska3 6y ago
The thing is, with Fusion 360, they created a product so good no one can match them at this point. It's pretty remarkable how fun and easy it is to use compared to Pro/E and Solidworks. With regards to Revit, I've never used this software, but I wonder if it's a similar situation.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Fusion 360 isn’t a Solidworks competitor, not even close that would be Autodesk Inventor. Yes Fusion 360 is very easy to use but it is because it’s basically sketchup with basic CAM, simulation and parametric modeling baked in.
  - muska3 6y ago
    It's actually nothing like sketchup, it's a full fledged parametric modeler, which sketchup never was.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Now yes it began its life as a freeform and direct edit modeling, which it’s still it’s main focus.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    I believe Fusion 360 is full AutoCAD engine with locked down GUI?
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Fusion 360 was spun off inventor not Autocad, it also shares the same core with inventor - Autodesk ShapeManager.
      - numpad0 6y ago
        AutoCAD also seems to use ShapeManager
senectus1 6y ago
Anything Autodesk is a lic to print money. Same goes for Bentley systems. sob's will bend you over a barrel without hesitation.
cosmotic 6y ago
You could swap Adobe in for Autodesk and almost the entire letter holds true. High cost, few improvements, few alternatives. There's a little more competition these days with Adobe at least.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  I agree, Adobe lost me to their competition. Affinity Designer, Publisher and Photo replaced the Adobe Suite for me and while I miss some functionality, I don't miss the monthly payments. Maybe if I was a fulltime designer I would not have a problem with Adobe.
  - omnimus 6y ago
    I dont know full time designer who doesnt have problem with adobe. They take monthly fee and updates to software are so minor especially on classic tools like indesign and photoshop. They dont tackle the important hard problems like performance and stability instead they add some new gimmicky features 5% of users ever use and make new software that again anyone rarely uses (except XD i guess). Adobe classic software has been on life support before the subscriptions even started. Nobody was upgrading CS3 even ran much faster than CS5 and had most of the features. Its probably the reason why they made the subscriptions.
- bitxbit 6y ago
  I actually wouldn’t mind the subscription model if they priced you for daily use. $0.99/day to use Adobe suite would be perfect.
buovjaga 6y ago
Would be great, if architects invested in free & open source software: https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre https://blenderbim.org/ https://blenderbim.org/ https://community.osarch.org/ https://community.osarch.org/
- wappa 6y ago
  They are so bad, it's not worth learning those tools, or even using them for hobby/home projects.
  - buovjaga 6y ago
    Are you arguing that the fundamental design choices in the code architectures are so bad that it is not worth investing in development? If so, what are you basing your claim on?
wappa 6y ago
The moat autodesk has is surreal. In AEC atleast, students learn with Autodesk softwares in university and colleges. The softwares (autocad, revit, maya, etc., many others) itself is complex, require domain know-how to build competing product. I don't see how anyone can compete with them anymore. They have the industry by the balls, and they know it. Competing against Autodesk is like competing against Google in search.
geokon 6y ago
Does anyone know how caches and the internet archive are legal? I mean like some dude wrote this article (to I guess drive traffic to his website or freelancing work or for whatever reason) and then people are just straight up copying it over to their servers and redistributing his work. I'm just wondering what the legal mechanism is
- pyb 6y ago
  Not everybody likes to hear it, but archive.is is an illegal operation. In some countries, posting archive.is links may even be illegal as well (it might be interpreted by a court as "Aiding and Abetting Criminal Copyright Infringement")
  - slim 6y ago
    is it still illegal if it's the exact same page including ads (revenues go to the source) ?
    - rjmunro 6y ago
      It may or may not be illegal, but including the ads is unlikely to make any difference. It's generally not thought to be illegal, see for example: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Search-Engines-Indexing-and-Copyright-Law https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Search-Engines-Indexing-a...
      - geokon 6y ago
        hmm, indexing and linking seem intrinsically different from hosting a direct copy of a website. You request a webpage, the server gives it to you. It seems reasonable that you can then look at it, inspect it, quote it etc. (like a newspaper or a book at the bookstore). But re-hosting the content whole-sale seems quite different? Or maybe I'm not seeing some subtly as to why they're equivalent
  - syshum 6y ago
    how i archive.is illegal but Way Back machine not? Seems odd that you isolate a single archive service as illegal instead of saying "Internet Archiving is an illegal operation"
gorgoiler 6y ago
I don’t really understand SaaS for such mature products. My work (woodworking) is about making pieces of furniture. Using software is only a part of the process. It is not the actual goal. I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original price of the software.
- rini17 6y ago
  You have chosen the tool which is not actually owned by you and does not have good substitution from another vendor. No wonder you have exposed yourself to rent-seeking and other things you don't want. It's not a situation that can be solved by individual, I know. But a profession as a collective should group around open tools.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    These 50 architectural firms should pool their money and create an Open Source Design Lab that can do for architecture and building construction what https://www.khronos.org/ https://www.khronos.org/ has done for 3d. I had the idea to create a company that helps organizations create these niche open source governance structures. While I love the result (more open source), I have no business or non-profit skills, and it sounds like a hard boring job. I do recommend someone explore this space, who knows it might not be that difficult.
- numpad0 6y ago
  They want to establish a steady income for a stable and feature complete tool. They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy, or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway, as reasons why subscriptions cost the price they charge.
  - asiachick 6y ago
    > They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off. Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software.
jacquesm 6y ago
Interesting that the criticism is levelled at Autodesk 'the company' rather than that it admits what people don't want to say: Autocad is pretty good, and it will take a large and well funded entity to take it on. Using anti-trust tools may be the right tool here but the industry as a whole was quick to adapt to Autocad long before it became a dominant player. Autocad - not Autodesk - has many 100's of years of development done to it. It was essentially game over by the mid 1990's and since then they have only further consolidated their position. BIM hookups and the very large amount of software that somehow interacts with Autocad or has been written in AutoLisp are the kind of lock-in that newly minted start-ups can only dream of. Improving on Autocad is going to be very hard, it will take a long time and even then you will probably lose the game. Acquisition is probably your best bet, unseating a dominant player that doesn't make any major mistakes is super hard. I'm not sure what can be done about it, other than forcing the opening up of all file formats and interoperability information. And lots of that is already open.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  I can't read the article (server does not respond) but I believe it is not only about Autocad. I hear people complain about Revit and 3dsMax as well. What I mostly hear is: very expensive, lots of bugs, lags with new features and improvements. The software gets the job done and is in the industry standards but people are starting to look somewhere else.
  - esperent 6y ago
    Yes, exactly. I use 3ds Max occasionally and there's no other piece of software I've ever used that crashes so often. Every time I perform an action that I haven't tried before, I fully expect the program to crash and then I'll have to spend a few hours searching for workarounds. Working with large models or scenes takes so long to reload that every crash represents around 10 minutes of lost time, and I've easily had twenty - thirty crashes on a bad day.
    - BossingAround 6y ago
      You talk about large models or scenes; I'm under the impression that in the film industry, they'd have workstations with hundreds GBs of RAM and double graphics. I'm just wondering, could the issue lie in 3ds Max being optimized for a different beast of a machine..?
duncanawoods 6y ago
Something mildly related which I found interesting from a recent talk by Ryan Singer is that Christopher Alexander of "Pattern Language" fame create some unusual architectural design software called GateKeeper that guides sketching based on prompts from a pattern language: Gatekeeper demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o Ryan Singer's talk "Christopher Alexander: A Primer" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsTZXT0FlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsTZXT0FlM
poseva 6y ago
As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death. It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody listened. We stopped using ASD and moved to Graitec Advance Steel and Advance Concrete, for a couple of years everything was great, quick support, remote sessions in case you struggled with something, new features, bugs fixed... and then... Autodesk bought it. I still remember the morning when I read the news... I was horrified. I remember talking with some guys at Graitec and they were shocked also. After this... was Autodesk Structural Detailing story all over again. Just a product rename... and that was it. No more bug fixing.. no more new features.. they killed Advance Concrete in favor of Revit (which is one of the dumbest thing ever... because Revit was years behind Advance Concrete as a concrete detailing sw). For concrete detailing we switched to Allplan. I think Allplan and Graphisoft's Arhicad have a bright future together.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  > Have a bright future together Until they get bought by AutoDesk
  - mihaaly 6y ago
    I believe it has the chance like Google buys Apple or vice versa, the Nemetschek consortium and Autodesk's AEC line are direct competitors.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  To be fair this is not new. Autodesk has had this MO for decades. I remember in 1999, I was interning for a company that was getting into CAD, choice was to get 3D Solidworks that no one had heard of, or get the software that literally everybody used - 2D AutoCAD. That company still uses Solidworks today and has never touched a single Autodesk product. I can guarantee the opposite would not be true if the other decision was made. We knew in 1999 that Autodesk was never going to innovate, or allow us to.
ur-whale 6y ago
There's so many bad things to say about AutoDesk beyond the unhelpful/broken "move to the cloud" ... But if I had to pick one, it's AutoDesk's systematic attempt to build a closed ecosystem à la FaceBook / Apple. They do it, among other things, via tight control of the data file format, and an ever-changing unpublished specification for those. There was a time when there was decent exporters in AutoDesk products, so you could move the data out to other (better) tools. That era is long gone, they have been removing exporter modules to all but their own formats. Getting a DXF or DWF into any other app in 2020 is a freaking nightmare. One thing that I find really frustrating about this is the bitrot that ensues. Better not hope to load work you did 10-15 years ago to get something useful out of it. That use case is not part of the AutoDesk plan.
- fsloth 6y ago
  "Getting a DXF or DWF into any other app in 2020 is a freaking nightmare." At least you can do it on a non-Autodesk affiliated software stack that more-or-less works https://www.opendesign.com/ https://www.opendesign.com/
  - rurban 6y ago
    Nowadays you don't have to pay ODA anymore when can use GPL-3 LibreDWG. In the end opensource CAD will win, but it's still a long march.
    - fsloth 6y ago
      If the options are to hook up to GPL-3 or pay ODA quite few software products probably go the ODA way still. ODA has quite a large development org to support their stack. I presume if maximum feature parity with DXF was a requirement then ODA would still win. Open source is really great for innovation. I don't see much innovation or excitement in reverse engineering a stone-age proprietary black-box format. It would be much better if those efforts were spent in an open source data interchange format.
      - 6y ago
yholio 6y ago
You see this pattern for all professional tools, which have a very narrow expert audience. After a period of open competition, that for most fields ended in the 80s and 90s, a closed source competitor emerges which becomes the industry standard. Massive moats, file formats, plugin investment, teaching of the tools in schools etc. prevent real competition, and the company becomes a fantastic cash cow. In the last decade most transitioned to the software as a service model, to better extract the rent they think they are "due" from the professional community. This is the type of setting where open source simply cannot subsist: the professional users are usually not programmers, the number of people using the features is limited (but for them, they are essential) and the expertise to develop them is very specialized. Furthermore, clients rarely need customized development done. Therefore, no developer community can form around an open-source competitor, comprised of either enthusiasts or professional providers of open source solutions. Photoshop vs. Gimp is a good example of all these pathologies. I think the solution to such problems would be marrying the open source philosophy with the commercial solution that allows developers to charge for licensing. We give up the „free to use” liberty for a limited time, allowing the "open" source developer to charge for the software like a commercial software vendor. Source is provided, and all contributors can operate on similar terms, charging for their patch for a limited time. After 3-5 years, the license reverts to a GPL compatible, that allows anyone the full four liberties, or, at their discretion, fork a commercial-open-source competitor for another 5 years period. This way, a flagship commercial product could be developed by a company that attracts the most users and has the best features, and that company has a number of years to recoup it's investment by making it's userbase pay for those features in licensing fees. Once it's exclusivity period ends, in order to maintain it's commercial dominance the company must innovate and improve the product, otherwise people would use an older version for free, or a competitor can emerge that can disrupt its rent seeking by forking the old version as a new „commercial open source” project with it's own 5 year exclusivity period.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  You mean something a bit like - what's the word? - a patent? That won't solve the problem, because this is not a software problem. It's an economic problem. To maximise profit you need to dominate a market by 1) locking out competitors 2) forcing customers to give you money 3) spending as little as possible on continued development. This happens because that's how capitalism works. It's an inevitable consequence. Effectively it becomes a form of rent-seeking, where corporations charge their "tenants" money for access to a resource. And as long as the product sort of works some of the time corporations can claim customers are getting something of value. But really these corporations are like bad landlords, charging users a huge monthly rent and never fixing the leaky roof. The answer would be more along the lines of a user's association - effectively a "union" for users which was prepared to fight aggressive and expensive class actions to challenge ridiculous licensing terms and make corporations accountable for consequential damage and lost time caused by bugs. This may sound extreme, but when there's no competition - because competing products have been bought and shut down or left to rot - it's a de facto antitrust situation. Governments are unlikely to enforce this, so class actions to challenge unreasonable contract terms and assert that in fact there are obligations towards users may be the only way to fix this.
dirtyid 6y ago
Most buildings today can still be effective designed and constructed from pen+paper drafting technology that adhere pre computer-revolution standards. They're not F35s. My understanding from architects/professors 20 years ago is the education pipelines has dramatically shifted away from practical training (i.e just solid drafting skills) while remaining some of the longer professional/masters programs. Most graduate simply aren't very technical in the first place and nature of work allows you to get away with it. Trades + associated industries involved in actual building aren't much better. Many in the industry, most are not what you consider "developer" types eager to adopt new technical features and workflows. There's just too much conservative regulations and stubborn old hands at the top of the industry. Compared to other design fields where technical tools are everything for actually making the thing, there's a lot more excitement and experimentation in software progression in those industries, many of which are _tiny_ compared to the behemoth that is global building/construction industry. That said, Arch software aren't bad, they're serviceable but extremely unexciting. Adobes SaaS is pretty shit but they occasionally introduce "thank god" features that makes tasks 10 years ago 10X easier, can't really say the same for Revit and associated arch software with exception of ArchViz software since that just cannibalizes from rendering industry.
- Dork1234 6y ago
  Depends on the firm. Zaha Hadid software requirements would make your head spin. You are clearly not producing any of her (and her teams) buildings with only Pen and Paper.
  - dirtyid 6y ago
    Starchitects who can get parametric designs built for $$$ are outliers, and considering how these buildings have failed to perform in real life, computation is a enabling a lot of bad designs. I know ppl that that interned at Hadid 15 years ago, they mostly just used Rhino / Maya and dodgy exports to cad for construction drawings. The real software dependency is all the structural analysis behind the scene to optimize design for costs, the former can be negated via expensive overengineering, so the latter is ultimately what makes these designs buildable in market economies.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
Admittedly, I don't know very much about the requirements for CAD software, but I will say given building CAD software is extremely laborious and expensive, a key step is settling on a standard format for data exchange. When and during the time Google owned SketchUp, they made Collada/.dae export part of the community product, and eg Blender has really great support for Collada import (worked out of the box for a non-trivial project of mine - thx Blender and SketchUp/Google!). Of course, meanwhile SketchUp has been discontinued as a free desktop product (being offered only as online hobby software for 3D printing models, like Tinkercad, instead), and Autodesk has introduced FBX as oh-so-much better alternative. I'm just saying that if you want competition and innovation, as a customer you must demand open standards and use workflows based on open file formats to get anywhere.
- rjsw 6y ago
  There is a standard format for data exchange [1], what became BIM didn't have to be different to it but at least they kept the geometry definitions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303
- fsloth 6y ago
  There are many standards. Unfortunately the most used ones are called DXF (Autocad file) and RVT (Revit file). There is an open standard called IFC that has a foothold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Foundation_Classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Foundation_Classes Unfortunately, it's still second place in most cases.
  - rjsw 6y ago
    The exchange file formats for IFC use the same syntax as those for STEP. The models could have been the same too but the people behind IFC wanted to do their own thing.
    - fsloth 6y ago
      The exchange format is irrelevant, it's the schema that matters, though. IFC does have XML serialization as well.
stadt 6y ago
An interesting counterpoint comes from Autodesk Life Sciences which outlines the need for Bio/Nano software development: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2009-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2009-5 Abstract: "There is a digital revolution taking place and biotechnology companies are slow to adapt. Many pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and industrial bio-production companies believe that software must be developed and maintained in-house and that data are more secure on internal servers than on the cloud. In fact, most companies in this space continue to employ large IT and software teams and acquire computational infrastructure in the form of in-house servers. This is due to a fear of the cloud not sufficiently protecting in-house resources and the belief that their software is valuable IP. Over the next decade, the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, with agile software teams, will quickly become a compelling competitive advantage. Biotechnology companies that do not adopt the new regime may lose on key business metrics such as return on invested capital, revenue, profitability, and eventually market share."
alkonaut 6y ago
If people didn’t use Autodesk’s software I wouldn’t have to pay a surreal amount of money to use their binary API so my cad program can write DWG. But the fact is DWG is the de facto standard in so many engineering disciplines, and that probably won’t change. The format is also so convoluted and complex that I doubt even Autodesk could ever write a new implementation of it. If someone succeeds, they will still keep changing it slightly every year, so a third party implementation would always be slightly behind. This type of moat is exactly the type of moat every business dreams of and tries to create, and the only reason it’s bad when Autodesk does it is because they are so big it actually hurts competition on a large scale. I can’t see a good “open” replacement for DWGs (DXF, IFC, ...) on the horizon, sadly.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  What CAD program is this? I’ve switched some users at my work away from Autocad for 2D stuff to DraftSight and have had no problems opening dwg. An annual DraftSight license is $180 or something similarly trifling.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    A “narrow” cad+fem package for building components. It’s not a general cad program even though it can be used as such. If DraftSight opens the latest dwgs correctly I’d expect it to contain Autodesks dwg dlls.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      Ah right, thanks for clearing that up.
- rurban 6y ago
  LibreDWG comes to rescue, and for better formats JSON is widely used.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    There are multiple open reverse-engineer efforts, but Autodesk changes the format every single year, and customers expect to be able to read drawings immediately in the latest format. This is deliberate by Autodesk I think. LibreDWG is also GPL I believe with no option for commercial?
KaiserPro 6y ago
I used to work for The foundry (now foundry.com) Who i believe are the last people to "beat" autodesk at their own game(well discreet). Autodesk sold Flint/Flame/Inferno, which are high end compositor systems (Think photoshop but for movies) They were expensive bis of kit. Foundry's nuke is a program that runs on normal workstations and doesn't require any special hardware to run (it also means that it can't run in real time like the Flames could) What was the secret to Nuke's success? It was cheaper than flame, it was equally as capable, and apple killed Shake. We worked closely with the artists to put in features that wanted. Offered discounts for volume (standard) offered brilliant support[1], and was generally far more responsive than autodesk (who basically only shipped a patch if you were ILM) Foundry is the incumbent now, and is being eaten by fusion (ironically, considering we pretty much drove them out of buisness) [1] including fixing a script that made a "magic wand" for a sexy version of harry potter. It might have changed, but when I was there the support was top notch.
milansuk 6y ago
Here is the actual Open Letter to Autodesk: https://letters-to-autodesk.com/ https://letters-to-autodesk.com/ I never saw website, where homepage is pdf.
- chrstphrknwtn 6y ago
  It's not a website. It's a webdoc? I think this is amazing. Who says the root of a domain has to return an index.html?
DonHopkins 6y ago
I certainly hope all the people who signed that letter are safe and sound. Autodesk can come down pretty hard on their critics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk https://www.blendernation.com/2014/10/28/blender-conference-ton-talks-about-autodesk-ceiling-crashes/ https://www.blendernation.com/2014/10/28/blender-conference-... >Blender Conference: Ton talks about Autodesk, ceiling crashes >While Ton was talking about Autodesk during the Blender Conference, part of the ceiling of the Balie came crashing down, hitting him on the head. So remember folks: Autodesk is watching! ;-) >Here's a picture of Ton after the event: https://media.blendernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Ton-after-ceiling-crash.jpeg https://media.blendernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/T...
Natalie1Quinn 6y ago
They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off. Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/made-money-for-blogging-blogger-zune.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/made-money-for-blogging-... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/requirements-for-google-adsense-blogger.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/requirements-for-google-... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/important-content-marketing-tips.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/important-content-market...
Dork1234 6y ago
I do not feel bad about these Architects, they knew exactly what Autodesk was going to do with Revit when they acquired the company. Autodesk did the same thing with AutoCAD. Reduce innovation, and increased subscription cost. These architecture firms need to diversify the their software toolset, have more in house developers, push for more open standards, and fund open source tools. Instead they take the easy route and standardize on a close tool, until the point where Autodesk has a monopoly.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Even though a logistics company uses trucks it does not mean they could build and operate a fleet of trucks. You presume architecture firms would have any sort of capability to operate in software development. You might as well say they should create their own ink and papers. Software engineering companies are savvy in software. Other companies aren't, and it is not expected that they would have any competence beyond their core offering.
  - FormFollowsFunc 6y ago
    Larger architectural firms like Zaha Hadid and Foster and Partners have developers in-house who work on internal tools for designers. Though I don’t know how many firms there are like this. Though I think architects in general have been lazy when it comes to tooling. The CGI industry has been far more involved in tools and open standards.
- runxel 6y ago
  Was reyling on Autodesk a bad idea? Sure it was! Do you have any idea of the AEC industry? Does not seem so. Funny enough, those big offices signing the open letter are so big they actually have in-house devs. But this is only feasible for the top 0.1% of offices. Architecture is badly paid and most offices are in the size range of 15–30 people working there. Also CAD programs belong to the most complex software imaginable with really big code bases grown over many years. It's not like you "just write a new one and make it FOSS". You HAVE to rely on others. Also most architects (and even engineers for that matter) are scared by code. They want someone to call and yell at, not looking for workarounds or making a bugfix.
Mc_Big_G 6y ago
$22 million over 5 years = $4.4 million /year $4.4 million/year / 25 companies = $176,000 / year / company So, these companies are complaining about spending $176k/year on the most critical software they use to run their business? I'd wager they spend more on company parties than they do on Revit. I'd also wager what they're REALLY pissed about is being forced to move to SaaS and the crackdown by Autodesk on pirating their software. Autodesk is arguably the most pirated business software of all time. They estimate something like 70%+ of their installs are pirated. If Revit is really as terrible as they say it is, Autodesk should write an open letter agreeing with them and quadrupling the price to improve it. These firms make hundreds of millions of dollars every year and they're complaining about < $200k for business critical software. It's absurd.
contingencies 6y ago
Check out http://www.osarch.org/ http://www.osarch.org/ which is a quite vibrant community of open source architecture software and users. Architects can use Blender. It has better BIM support than all the commercial offerings, better rendering, is free, stable, cross-platform, etc. Not brilliant on drawing output, but that is under active development and is already OK. You can also export to FreeCAD and then do drawings from there.

304 points by nsoonhui 6y ago

It is a bit of a monopoly. I always respected people who used Rhino, while secretly thinking of them as needlessly contrarian. Now I just respect them. Besides the free Fusion 360 moat, Autodesk owns 3DS Max and Maya. Enough said.

bschne 6y ago
Is rhino actually used for serious CAD work? From what I‘ve read/heard I thought it was mostly something used in student projects or design explorations because of grasshopper‘s visual programming functionality
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Yes it is. I've seen it used professionally at more than one company.
  - saeranv 6y ago
    Depends on the firm, but it's definitely used. Specifically Rhino/Grasshopper get used a lot for concept, schematic design, and then Revit gets used for design development and onward, especially at companies that work a lot with complex geometry (Zaha, SHoP).
    - bschne 6y ago
      That makes sense, I have no clue about how architects actually work but I imagine Revit et al. have a ton of features that you would probably miss in Rhino when it gets to working out the nitty-gritty details of floorplans, generating section drawings, or working with BIM features?
      - CositaS 6y ago
        https://www.visualarq.com/ https://www.visualarq.com/ adds BIM tools to Rhino (and the total price of perpetual licenses for Rhino+VisualARQ is still significantly less than a year's Revit subscription)
        saeranv 6y ago
        Sounds perfect, but I've yet to hear of any company using this plug-in! Personally I also have hope for the interesting hybrids that are continually coming out that are trying to create a seamless pipeline between Revit and Rhino: Google's Flux (which failed), Speckle, RhinoInside. I also hacked up my own crude solution, which was to continually run a flask server in the background, and then pass json strings between Rhino, Revit, and Jupyter. I do a lot of analysis work (building energy and environmental simulation/optimization), so wanted a solution that gave me access to the scientific python ecosystem.
      - saeranv 6y ago
        Yeah exactly. You can easily generate any orthographic views, cut sections, use templates for common building elements and more in Revit. On the other hand, everyone loves the flexibility, and UX of Rhino/Grasshopper.And (for now?) Rhino has the market cornered on structural, energy, and environmental simulation and optimization plug-ins, just because data-management is so much easier in Grasshopper then Revit's equivalent visual scripting language (Dynamo).
- runxel 6y ago
  Depends on the industry. For automotive and even ship design a lot of studios are using it (even not openly, but in a "secret" manner). In AEC many students nowadays use it during university. Some offices use it as well, and if only for Grasshopper. GH is a really great piece of software and you can e.g. even use it with Archicad nowadays.
- polygotdomain 6y ago
  To add to what the other user has said, it is used at a number of firms, but primarily in early stages of design. It's actually very solid for actual drafting (Rhino originated out of an AutoCAD plugin), and does freeform surface modeling very well. It's the middle piece, bringing the design into a set of drawings, that is the sticking point, and something that Revit automates very well. It's not that Rhino can't do it, it's that it's a very manual process that requires a lot more steps and structured process than most firms are willing to invest. Also, the kind of work you'd use Rhino for doesn't flow well to other downstream CAD or BIM software that architects typically use. Yes, you can easily export linework, but at that point, you might as well keep it in Rhino. Somewhat unrelated, but Rhino's SDK is really solid and gives a ton of access to the software. It's amazing some of the things that can be done with it, and Rhino as a whole, but at the same time it's producing construction documents that's where the rubber meets the road as far as Architecture is concerned. Source: Former architecture student and Rhino plugin developer
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ginko 6y ago
At least in the 3DS Max/Maya space Blender is seeming to make more and more headway these days.
com2kid 6y ago
Rhino is genuinely fun to use. Best UX of by far of any program I've ever had the pleasure of using. Blender is frustrating as heck to use in comparison.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  Blender has had actually a revamp of the UX exactly because of this sentiment... Might be worth trying again..?
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    Blender is great, but setting UX considerations aside, I don't think their NURBS engine is on par with that of Rhino (features like trimmed NURBS, NURBS fillets, etc ...)
  - com2kid 6y ago
    Rhino is primarily command line based, it is a perfect mix of CLI and GUI. Also it is 4-up by default and designed around that paradigm. I don't understand how people stand using modeling programs that only have 1 viewport, but they are common enough that I presume everyone gets by.
Keyframe 6y ago
And Sofitmage, which they promptly shut down after they acquired them. Basically, they bought all of the standard tools out there (yes, even max) and became a dominant player. There's an old interview floating around with one of the autodesk founders - he explains their strategy (was?) is to straight-up buy into both market share and competition.
runxel 6y ago
Fun fact: Everybody who says "We are not using Rhino" lies. All the big studios might be using Autodesk products in the front, but I know of some who have a senior engineer who has a secret PC in some attic with Rhino installed. If you need more complex tasks to be done the engineer goes to "smoke a cig". ;)
adfm 6y ago
cough t-splines cough

bfuclusion 6y ago

I can 100% believe that Autodesk isn't great at responding to customer requests, but presumably these firms would have enough budget to pay for devs to write a solution that works for them. Including making an open file format, EU specific data centers, etc. It would probably even take less time and money than trying to lobby the EU to legislate what they want.

tsimionescu 6y ago
If you think it will take less time and money for a firm of architects to build an equivalent to the most powerful architecture CAD system in the world, even for their specific use case, and that they wouldn't run afoul of Autodesk patents when doing so, then you have probably not played around with CAD software to much.
- bfuclusion 6y ago
  Let me clarify. I absolutely, completely, think doing this would be painful and take years. But if it's line of business critical and someone has you by the throat, then you have to make the long term investments to survive. Even better, when you're done nobody can take it away from you. I just think by the time you get to the EU lobbying, regulator rulings, Autodesk dragging their feet, the appeals process, the fines that Autodesk will just build into the cost of the next version, etc, in the end it would be shorter and easier to write the software. Bonus if you make it open source so nobody has to go through this garbage again.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    > shorter and easier to write the software There is nothing short or easy about writing Revit/BIM software and it couldn't be done with the 5 million dollars that these firms had been spending on ADSK products.
fsloth 6y ago
It's quite hard to develop software by just throwing money at it. And even harder when the domain is a bit niche and a bit esoteric so your hiring will be even harder. The optimal person would be a game dev with a penchant for math and a MSc in an engineering field. And you would like to have a team of these, please. Completely doable, but very much non-standard so if you have no inhouse experience to start with you'll have to spend a few years just building the initial team unless you find a really good headhunter. In CAD you have to combine at least two non-trivial[0] discipline, computer graphics and and computational geometry. And they are completely unlike 'normal' software fields where you can just plug in various third party components and call it a day. You have to write your stuff to a great extent. And you have to design it - there are not that many public examples of how to put such a thing together. It's not magic, it's not intrinsically very deep, but it's complex in the sense that the systems that have to interact are far and wide. It needs a lot of work. And there are lots of things that are not in books, you just have to understand how they go together and which ways to do things are better than others. [0] Non-trivial as in "I'll just figure it out" vs. "I'll have to pour through a few decades of academia and industry research and technical publications plus scour obscure websites" to get a clue on what the state of the art is and where it could go on from here

CaliforniaKarl 6y ago

Here's the Google cache of the page, as I think the site is dealing with the traffic spike right now: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2OQV-Q6kE_gJ:extranetevolution.com/2020/07/autodesk-criticism-extends/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2OQV-Q6... I tried grabbing the site using archive.is, but the site is using something called Imunify360, which threw up a Captcha, which was promptly archived instead of the site. Although the Internet Archive has a cache entry (https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetevolution.com/2020/07/autodesk-criticism-extends/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetev...), it's returning a 503 (I don't know if the 503 is what it got from the site, or if it's the Internet Archive returning the 503).

neonate 6y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetevolution.com/2020/07/autodesk-criticism-extends/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200802064000/http://extranetev... works for me now.

imgabe 6y ago

There's easily a multi-billion dollar opportunity for anyone who can unseat Autodesk from the building design industry. Revit is the standard, and while it's improved a lot over the years it's still so ridiculously far from where it could be. I don't think people in software realize how incredibly far behind software tooling is in other industries. Take an idea like "version control for X" or "package manager for X" to almost anything outside software and you'd be hailed as a revolutionary genius. For Revit specifically, version control for construction drawings or a package manager for Revit families would both be huge.

303bookworm 6y ago
Some of those exist, a friend of mine has a startup that's essentially "Git for building plans" (https://shapedo.com/ https://shapedo.com/)
- somewhereoutth 6y ago
  If the intention is well realized then this can be a great product. Horrendous name though (for English first language speakers anyway), 'do' is the fallback - most primitive - verb for any kind of action implying a lack of precision or importance: "I'm doing the dishes" vs "I'm polishing the cutlery". There is also an unfortunate embedded word in there too.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
So sideproject should be find the leading software in a dozen industries and map out what is / not working (maybe do sales safari style discovery?)
jamescham 6y ago
This is exactly right—we now live in a world in which most jobs are knowledge work, and we should look to those who are the most productive (and lazy) knowledge workers: software developers.

CaliforniaKarl 6y ago

I'm surprised nobody in the Eurozone has raised similar issues about Adobe.

dogma1138 6y ago
Currently in the Eurozone you need to submit autodesk formats to get your building permissions and certifications approved. Architecture is a protected profession in the EU and you’ll be surprised just how many architects from construction firms do nothing more than to trace plans they got from interior design and other architecture firms in a PDF format in autocad. There are a few gems on the autodesk forums where people asking for line trace capability then getting replies that basically saying well if it did that well be out of a job.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  Having recently interacted with Architects that are strictly stuck on using Autocad (that's all they know, from University and through their whole career), I can testify to the accuracy of that statement. Also, trying to communicate with them with anything outside of a PDF is damn near impossible. The very idea of them sending a 3D file to their customers scares them shitless.
  - roel_v 6y ago
    I put in my contracts with architects that I want the source files to any drawings they make. Not a single one has ever refused to work with me for that reason. Surveyors, too.
sfvisser 6y ago
Europe should build their own software. Instead of complaining about US monopolies the EU should stimulate innovative startups right here. Create an environment where talent doesn’t flee to the US. And if it’s not about creating multi-billion dollar/euro companies, but civil liberties and data protection: just invest some spare pennies in open source alternatives. The only reason US (and Chinese) tech companies form a threat to European citizens is because for some reasons we have zero local alternatives.

muska3 6y ago

The thing is, with Fusion 360, they created a product so good no one can match them at this point. It's pretty remarkable how fun and easy it is to use compared to Pro/E and Solidworks. With regards to Revit, I've never used this software, but I wonder if it's a similar situation.

dogma1138 6y ago
Fusion 360 isn’t a Solidworks competitor, not even close that would be Autodesk Inventor. Yes Fusion 360 is very easy to use but it is because it’s basically sketchup with basic CAM, simulation and parametric modeling baked in.
- muska3 6y ago
  It's actually nothing like sketchup, it's a full fledged parametric modeler, which sketchup never was.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Now yes it began its life as a freeform and direct edit modeling, which it’s still it’s main focus.
- numpad0 6y ago
  I believe Fusion 360 is full AutoCAD engine with locked down GUI?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Fusion 360 was spun off inventor not Autocad, it also shares the same core with inventor - Autodesk ShapeManager.
    - numpad0 6y ago
      AutoCAD also seems to use ShapeManager

senectus1 6y ago

Anything Autodesk is a lic to print money. Same goes for Bentley systems. sob's will bend you over a barrel without hesitation.

cosmotic 6y ago

You could swap Adobe in for Autodesk and almost the entire letter holds true. High cost, few improvements, few alternatives. There's a little more competition these days with Adobe at least.

spiderfarmer 6y ago
I agree, Adobe lost me to their competition. Affinity Designer, Publisher and Photo replaced the Adobe Suite for me and while I miss some functionality, I don't miss the monthly payments. Maybe if I was a fulltime designer I would not have a problem with Adobe.
- omnimus 6y ago
  I dont know full time designer who doesnt have problem with adobe. They take monthly fee and updates to software are so minor especially on classic tools like indesign and photoshop. They dont tackle the important hard problems like performance and stability instead they add some new gimmicky features 5% of users ever use and make new software that again anyone rarely uses (except XD i guess). Adobe classic software has been on life support before the subscriptions even started. Nobody was upgrading CS3 even ran much faster than CS5 and had most of the features. Its probably the reason why they made the subscriptions.
bitxbit 6y ago
I actually wouldn’t mind the subscription model if they priced you for daily use. $0.99/day to use Adobe suite would be perfect.

buovjaga 6y ago

Would be great, if architects invested in free & open source software: https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre https://blenderbim.org/ https://blenderbim.org/ https://community.osarch.org/ https://community.osarch.org/

wappa 6y ago
They are so bad, it's not worth learning those tools, or even using them for hobby/home projects.
- buovjaga 6y ago
  Are you arguing that the fundamental design choices in the code architectures are so bad that it is not worth investing in development? If so, what are you basing your claim on?

wappa 6y ago

The moat autodesk has is surreal. In AEC atleast, students learn with Autodesk softwares in university and colleges. The softwares (autocad, revit, maya, etc., many others) itself is complex, require domain know-how to build competing product. I don't see how anyone can compete with them anymore. They have the industry by the balls, and they know it. Competing against Autodesk is like competing against Google in search.

geokon 6y ago

Does anyone know how caches and the internet archive are legal? I mean like some dude wrote this article (to I guess drive traffic to his website or freelancing work or for whatever reason) and then people are just straight up copying it over to their servers and redistributing his work. I'm just wondering what the legal mechanism is

pyb 6y ago
Not everybody likes to hear it, but archive.is is an illegal operation. In some countries, posting archive.is links may even be illegal as well (it might be interpreted by a court as "Aiding and Abetting Criminal Copyright Infringement")
- slim 6y ago
  is it still illegal if it's the exact same page including ads (revenues go to the source) ?
  - rjmunro 6y ago
    It may or may not be illegal, but including the ads is unlikely to make any difference. It's generally not thought to be illegal, see for example: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Search-Engines-Indexing-and-Copyright-Law https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Search-Engines-Indexing-a...
    - geokon 6y ago
      hmm, indexing and linking seem intrinsically different from hosting a direct copy of a website. You request a webpage, the server gives it to you. It seems reasonable that you can then look at it, inspect it, quote it etc. (like a newspaper or a book at the bookstore). But re-hosting the content whole-sale seems quite different? Or maybe I'm not seeing some subtly as to why they're equivalent
- syshum 6y ago
  how i archive.is illegal but Way Back machine not? Seems odd that you isolate a single archive service as illegal instead of saying "Internet Archiving is an illegal operation"

gorgoiler 6y ago

I don’t really understand SaaS for such mature products. My work (woodworking) is about making pieces of furniture. Using software is only a part of the process. It is not the actual goal. I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original price of the software.

rini17 6y ago
You have chosen the tool which is not actually owned by you and does not have good substitution from another vendor. No wonder you have exposed yourself to rent-seeking and other things you don't want. It's not a situation that can be solved by individual, I know. But a profession as a collective should group around open tools.
- sitkack 6y ago
  These 50 architectural firms should pool their money and create an Open Source Design Lab that can do for architecture and building construction what https://www.khronos.org/ https://www.khronos.org/ has done for 3d. I had the idea to create a company that helps organizations create these niche open source governance structures. While I love the result (more open source), I have no business or non-profit skills, and it sounds like a hard boring job. I do recommend someone explore this space, who knows it might not be that difficult.
numpad0 6y ago
They want to establish a steady income for a stable and feature complete tool. They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy, or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway, as reasons why subscriptions cost the price they charge.
- asiachick 6y ago
  > They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off. Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software.

jacquesm 6y ago

Interesting that the criticism is levelled at Autodesk 'the company' rather than that it admits what people don't want to say: Autocad is pretty good, and it will take a large and well funded entity to take it on. Using anti-trust tools may be the right tool here but the industry as a whole was quick to adapt to Autocad long before it became a dominant player. Autocad - not Autodesk - has many 100's of years of development done to it. It was essentially game over by the mid 1990's and since then they have only further consolidated their position. BIM hookups and the very large amount of software that somehow interacts with Autocad or has been written in AutoLisp are the kind of lock-in that newly minted start-ups can only dream of. Improving on Autocad is going to be very hard, it will take a long time and even then you will probably lose the game. Acquisition is probably your best bet, unseating a dominant player that doesn't make any major mistakes is super hard. I'm not sure what can be done about it, other than forcing the opening up of all file formats and interoperability information. And lots of that is already open.

thdrdt 6y ago
I can't read the article (server does not respond) but I believe it is not only about Autocad. I hear people complain about Revit and 3dsMax as well. What I mostly hear is: very expensive, lots of bugs, lags with new features and improvements. The software gets the job done and is in the industry standards but people are starting to look somewhere else.
- esperent 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. I use 3ds Max occasionally and there's no other piece of software I've ever used that crashes so often. Every time I perform an action that I haven't tried before, I fully expect the program to crash and then I'll have to spend a few hours searching for workarounds. Working with large models or scenes takes so long to reload that every crash represents around 10 minutes of lost time, and I've easily had twenty - thirty crashes on a bad day.
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    You talk about large models or scenes; I'm under the impression that in the film industry, they'd have workstations with hundreds GBs of RAM and double graphics. I'm just wondering, could the issue lie in 3ds Max being optimized for a different beast of a machine..?

duncanawoods 6y ago

Something mildly related which I found interesting from a recent talk by Ryan Singer is that Christopher Alexander of "Pattern Language" fame create some unusual architectural design software called GateKeeper that guides sketching based on prompts from a pattern language: Gatekeeper demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o Ryan Singer's talk "Christopher Alexander: A Primer" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsTZXT0FlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsTZXT0FlM

poseva 6y ago

As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death. It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody listened. We stopped using ASD and moved to Graitec Advance Steel and Advance Concrete, for a couple of years everything was great, quick support, remote sessions in case you struggled with something, new features, bugs fixed... and then... Autodesk bought it. I still remember the morning when I read the news... I was horrified. I remember talking with some guys at Graitec and they were shocked also. After this... was Autodesk Structural Detailing story all over again. Just a product rename... and that was it. No more bug fixing.. no more new features.. they killed Advance Concrete in favor of Revit (which is one of the dumbest thing ever... because Revit was years behind Advance Concrete as a concrete detailing sw). For concrete detailing we switched to Allplan. I think Allplan and Graphisoft's Arhicad have a bright future together.

ur-whale 6y ago
> Have a bright future together Until they get bought by AutoDesk
- mihaaly 6y ago
  I believe it has the chance like Google buys Apple or vice versa, the Nemetschek consortium and Autodesk's AEC line are direct competitors.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
To be fair this is not new. Autodesk has had this MO for decades. I remember in 1999, I was interning for a company that was getting into CAD, choice was to get 3D Solidworks that no one had heard of, or get the software that literally everybody used - 2D AutoCAD. That company still uses Solidworks today and has never touched a single Autodesk product. I can guarantee the opposite would not be true if the other decision was made. We knew in 1999 that Autodesk was never going to innovate, or allow us to.

ur-whale 6y ago

There's so many bad things to say about AutoDesk beyond the unhelpful/broken "move to the cloud" ... But if I had to pick one, it's AutoDesk's systematic attempt to build a closed ecosystem à la FaceBook / Apple. They do it, among other things, via tight control of the data file format, and an ever-changing unpublished specification for those. There was a time when there was decent exporters in AutoDesk products, so you could move the data out to other (better) tools. That era is long gone, they have been removing exporter modules to all but their own formats. Getting a DXF or DWF into any other app in 2020 is a freaking nightmare. One thing that I find really frustrating about this is the bitrot that ensues. Better not hope to load work you did 10-15 years ago to get something useful out of it. That use case is not part of the AutoDesk plan.

fsloth 6y ago
"Getting a DXF or DWF into any other app in 2020 is a freaking nightmare." At least you can do it on a non-Autodesk affiliated software stack that more-or-less works https://www.opendesign.com/ https://www.opendesign.com/
- rurban 6y ago
  Nowadays you don't have to pay ODA anymore when can use GPL-3 LibreDWG. In the end opensource CAD will win, but it's still a long march.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    If the options are to hook up to GPL-3 or pay ODA quite few software products probably go the ODA way still. ODA has quite a large development org to support their stack. I presume if maximum feature parity with DXF was a requirement then ODA would still win. Open source is really great for innovation. I don't see much innovation or excitement in reverse engineering a stone-age proprietary black-box format. It would be much better if those efforts were spent in an open source data interchange format.
    - 6y ago

yholio 6y ago

You see this pattern for all professional tools, which have a very narrow expert audience. After a period of open competition, that for most fields ended in the 80s and 90s, a closed source competitor emerges which becomes the industry standard. Massive moats, file formats, plugin investment, teaching of the tools in schools etc. prevent real competition, and the company becomes a fantastic cash cow. In the last decade most transitioned to the software as a service model, to better extract the rent they think they are "due" from the professional community. This is the type of setting where open source simply cannot subsist: the professional users are usually not programmers, the number of people using the features is limited (but for them, they are essential) and the expertise to develop them is very specialized. Furthermore, clients rarely need customized development done. Therefore, no developer community can form around an open-source competitor, comprised of either enthusiasts or professional providers of open source solutions. Photoshop vs. Gimp is a good example of all these pathologies. I think the solution to such problems would be marrying the open source philosophy with the commercial solution that allows developers to charge for licensing. We give up the „free to use” liberty for a limited time, allowing the "open" source developer to charge for the software like a commercial software vendor. Source is provided, and all contributors can operate on similar terms, charging for their patch for a limited time. After 3-5 years, the license reverts to a GPL compatible, that allows anyone the full four liberties, or, at their discretion, fork a commercial-open-source competitor for another 5 years period. This way, a flagship commercial product could be developed by a company that attracts the most users and has the best features, and that company has a number of years to recoup it's investment by making it's userbase pay for those features in licensing fees. Once it's exclusivity period ends, in order to maintain it's commercial dominance the company must innovate and improve the product, otherwise people would use an older version for free, or a competitor can emerge that can disrupt its rent seeking by forking the old version as a new „commercial open source” project with it's own 5 year exclusivity period.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
You mean something a bit like - what's the word? - a patent? That won't solve the problem, because this is not a software problem. It's an economic problem. To maximise profit you need to dominate a market by 1) locking out competitors 2) forcing customers to give you money 3) spending as little as possible on continued development. This happens because that's how capitalism works. It's an inevitable consequence. Effectively it becomes a form of rent-seeking, where corporations charge their "tenants" money for access to a resource. And as long as the product sort of works some of the time corporations can claim customers are getting something of value. But really these corporations are like bad landlords, charging users a huge monthly rent and never fixing the leaky roof. The answer would be more along the lines of a user's association - effectively a "union" for users which was prepared to fight aggressive and expensive class actions to challenge ridiculous licensing terms and make corporations accountable for consequential damage and lost time caused by bugs. This may sound extreme, but when there's no competition - because competing products have been bought and shut down or left to rot - it's a de facto antitrust situation. Governments are unlikely to enforce this, so class actions to challenge unreasonable contract terms and assert that in fact there are obligations towards users may be the only way to fix this.

dirtyid 6y ago

Most buildings today can still be effective designed and constructed from pen+paper drafting technology that adhere pre computer-revolution standards. They're not F35s. My understanding from architects/professors 20 years ago is the education pipelines has dramatically shifted away from practical training (i.e just solid drafting skills) while remaining some of the longer professional/masters programs. Most graduate simply aren't very technical in the first place and nature of work allows you to get away with it. Trades + associated industries involved in actual building aren't much better. Many in the industry, most are not what you consider "developer" types eager to adopt new technical features and workflows. There's just too much conservative regulations and stubborn old hands at the top of the industry. Compared to other design fields where technical tools are everything for actually making the thing, there's a lot more excitement and experimentation in software progression in those industries, many of which are _tiny_ compared to the behemoth that is global building/construction industry. That said, Arch software aren't bad, they're serviceable but extremely unexciting. Adobes SaaS is pretty shit but they occasionally introduce "thank god" features that makes tasks 10 years ago 10X easier, can't really say the same for Revit and associated arch software with exception of ArchViz software since that just cannibalizes from rendering industry.

Dork1234 6y ago
Depends on the firm. Zaha Hadid software requirements would make your head spin. You are clearly not producing any of her (and her teams) buildings with only Pen and Paper.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  Starchitects who can get parametric designs built for $$$ are outliers, and considering how these buildings have failed to perform in real life, computation is a enabling a lot of bad designs. I know ppl that that interned at Hadid 15 years ago, they mostly just used Rhino / Maya and dodgy exports to cad for construction drawings. The real software dependency is all the structural analysis behind the scene to optimize design for costs, the former can be negated via expensive overengineering, so the latter is ultimately what makes these designs buildable in market economies.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

Admittedly, I don't know very much about the requirements for CAD software, but I will say given building CAD software is extremely laborious and expensive, a key step is settling on a standard format for data exchange. When and during the time Google owned SketchUp, they made Collada/.dae export part of the community product, and eg Blender has really great support for Collada import (worked out of the box for a non-trivial project of mine - thx Blender and SketchUp/Google!). Of course, meanwhile SketchUp has been discontinued as a free desktop product (being offered only as online hobby software for 3D printing models, like Tinkercad, instead), and Autodesk has introduced FBX as oh-so-much better alternative. I'm just saying that if you want competition and innovation, as a customer you must demand open standards and use workflows based on open file formats to get anywhere.

rjsw 6y ago
There is a standard format for data exchange [1], what became BIM didn't have to be different to it but at least they kept the geometry definitions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303
fsloth 6y ago
There are many standards. Unfortunately the most used ones are called DXF (Autocad file) and RVT (Revit file). There is an open standard called IFC that has a foothold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Foundation_Classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Foundation_Classes Unfortunately, it's still second place in most cases.
- rjsw 6y ago
  The exchange file formats for IFC use the same syntax as those for STEP. The models could have been the same too but the people behind IFC wanted to do their own thing.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    The exchange format is irrelevant, it's the schema that matters, though. IFC does have XML serialization as well.

stadt 6y ago

An interesting counterpoint comes from Autodesk Life Sciences which outlines the need for Bio/Nano software development: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2009-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-018-2009-5 Abstract: "There is a digital revolution taking place and biotechnology companies are slow to adapt. Many pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and industrial bio-production companies believe that software must be developed and maintained in-house and that data are more secure on internal servers than on the cloud. In fact, most companies in this space continue to employ large IT and software teams and acquire computational infrastructure in the form of in-house servers. This is due to a fear of the cloud not sufficiently protecting in-house resources and the belief that their software is valuable IP. Over the next decade, the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, with agile software teams, will quickly become a compelling competitive advantage. Biotechnology companies that do not adopt the new regime may lose on key business metrics such as return on invested capital, revenue, profitability, and eventually market share."

alkonaut 6y ago

If people didn’t use Autodesk’s software I wouldn’t have to pay a surreal amount of money to use their binary API so my cad program can write DWG. But the fact is DWG is the de facto standard in so many engineering disciplines, and that probably won’t change. The format is also so convoluted and complex that I doubt even Autodesk could ever write a new implementation of it. If someone succeeds, they will still keep changing it slightly every year, so a third party implementation would always be slightly behind. This type of moat is exactly the type of moat every business dreams of and tries to create, and the only reason it’s bad when Autodesk does it is because they are so big it actually hurts competition on a large scale. I can’t see a good “open” replacement for DWGs (DXF, IFC, ...) on the horizon, sadly.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
What CAD program is this? I’ve switched some users at my work away from Autocad for 2D stuff to DraftSight and have had no problems opening dwg. An annual DraftSight license is $180 or something similarly trifling.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  A “narrow” cad+fem package for building components. It’s not a general cad program even though it can be used as such. If DraftSight opens the latest dwgs correctly I’d expect it to contain Autodesks dwg dlls.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Ah right, thanks for clearing that up.
rurban 6y ago
LibreDWG comes to rescue, and for better formats JSON is widely used.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  There are multiple open reverse-engineer efforts, but Autodesk changes the format every single year, and customers expect to be able to read drawings immediately in the latest format. This is deliberate by Autodesk I think. LibreDWG is also GPL I believe with no option for commercial?

KaiserPro 6y ago

I used to work for The foundry (now foundry.com) Who i believe are the last people to "beat" autodesk at their own game(well discreet). Autodesk sold Flint/Flame/Inferno, which are high end compositor systems (Think photoshop but for movies) They were expensive bis of kit. Foundry's nuke is a program that runs on normal workstations and doesn't require any special hardware to run (it also means that it can't run in real time like the Flames could) What was the secret to Nuke's success? It was cheaper than flame, it was equally as capable, and apple killed Shake. We worked closely with the artists to put in features that wanted. Offered discounts for volume (standard) offered brilliant support[1], and was generally far more responsive than autodesk (who basically only shipped a patch if you were ILM) Foundry is the incumbent now, and is being eaten by fusion (ironically, considering we pretty much drove them out of buisness) [1] including fixing a script that made a "magic wand" for a sexy version of harry potter. It might have changed, but when I was there the support was top notch.

milansuk 6y ago

Here is the actual Open Letter to Autodesk: https://letters-to-autodesk.com/ https://letters-to-autodesk.com/ I never saw website, where homepage is pdf.

chrstphrknwtn 6y ago
It's not a website. It's a webdoc? I think this is amazing. Who says the root of a domain has to return an index.html?

DonHopkins 6y ago

I certainly hope all the people who signed that letter are safe and sound. Autodesk can come down pretty hard on their critics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk https://www.blendernation.com/2014/10/28/blender-conference-ton-talks-about-autodesk-ceiling-crashes/ https://www.blendernation.com/2014/10/28/blender-conference-... >Blender Conference: Ton talks about Autodesk, ceiling crashes >While Ton was talking about Autodesk during the Blender Conference, part of the ceiling of the Balie came crashing down, hitting him on the head. So remember folks: Autodesk is watching! ;-) >Here's a picture of Ton after the event: https://media.blendernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Ton-after-ceiling-crash.jpeg https://media.blendernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/T...

Natalie1Quinn 6y ago

They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off. Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/made-money-for-blogging-blogger-zune.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/made-money-for-blogging-... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/requirements-for-google-adsense-blogger.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/requirements-for-google-... https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/important-content-marketing-tips.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/important-content-market...

Dork1234 6y ago

I do not feel bad about these Architects, they knew exactly what Autodesk was going to do with Revit when they acquired the company. Autodesk did the same thing with AutoCAD. Reduce innovation, and increased subscription cost. These architecture firms need to diversify the their software toolset, have more in house developers, push for more open standards, and fund open source tools. Instead they take the easy route and standardize on a close tool, until the point where Autodesk has a monopoly.

fsloth 6y ago
Even though a logistics company uses trucks it does not mean they could build and operate a fleet of trucks. You presume architecture firms would have any sort of capability to operate in software development. You might as well say they should create their own ink and papers. Software engineering companies are savvy in software. Other companies aren't, and it is not expected that they would have any competence beyond their core offering.
- FormFollowsFunc 6y ago
  Larger architectural firms like Zaha Hadid and Foster and Partners have developers in-house who work on internal tools for designers. Though I don’t know how many firms there are like this. Though I think architects in general have been lazy when it comes to tooling. The CGI industry has been far more involved in tools and open standards.
runxel 6y ago
Was reyling on Autodesk a bad idea? Sure it was! Do you have any idea of the AEC industry? Does not seem so. Funny enough, those big offices signing the open letter are so big they actually have in-house devs. But this is only feasible for the top 0.1% of offices. Architecture is badly paid and most offices are in the size range of 15–30 people working there. Also CAD programs belong to the most complex software imaginable with really big code bases grown over many years. It's not like you "just write a new one and make it FOSS". You HAVE to rely on others. Also most architects (and even engineers for that matter) are scared by code. They want someone to call and yell at, not looking for workarounds or making a bugfix.

Mc_Big_G 6y ago

$22 million over 5 years = $4.4 million /year $4.4 million/year / 25 companies = $176,000 / year / company So, these companies are complaining about spending $176k/year on the most critical software they use to run their business? I'd wager they spend more on company parties than they do on Revit. I'd also wager what they're REALLY pissed about is being forced to move to SaaS and the crackdown by Autodesk on pirating their software. Autodesk is arguably the most pirated business software of all time. They estimate something like 70%+ of their installs are pirated. If Revit is really as terrible as they say it is, Autodesk should write an open letter agreeing with them and quadrupling the price to improve it. These firms make hundreds of millions of dollars every year and they're complaining about < $200k for business critical software. It's absurd.

contingencies 6y ago

Check out http://www.osarch.org/ http://www.osarch.org/ which is a quite vibrant community of open source architecture software and users. Architects can use Blender. It has better BIM support than all the commercial offerings, better rendering, is free, stable, cross-platform, etc. Not brilliant on drawing output, but that is under active development and is already OK. You can also export to FreeCAD and then do drawings from there.