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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 atte

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 They do it, among other things, via tight control of the data file format, and an ever-changing unpublished specification for those.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.
    - rurban 6y ago
      DXF is a too stupid and irregular format, JSON is much more regular and easier to read and write. There are several open source alternative formats, but I never warmed up to them. They look very overarchitectured, like XML. But maybe I'll have to do some IFC converters later. With all the constraints, dynamic blocks, mesh and solid formats it's very diverse, and Acad's new constraints system is extremely baroque and undocumented. A big C++ mess. Dynblocks and meshes also. ACIS is extremely nice though. I recently reverse engineered their new ShapeManager format, which is just binary ACIS (SAB) plus history (ACSH).
gtsteve 6y ago
The one thing I found interesting was that there's no attempt to control distribution of extensions by signing or having an app store style review process... but surely that's not far away.

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.
  - rurban 6y ago
    DXF is a too stupid and irregular format, JSON is much more regular and easier to read and write. There are several open source alternative formats, but I never warmed up to them. They look very overarchitectured, like XML. But maybe I'll have to do some IFC converters later. With all the constraints, dynamic blocks, mesh and solid formats it's very diverse, and Acad's new constraints system is extremely baroque and undocumented. A big C++ mess. Dynblocks and meshes also. ACIS is extremely nice though. I recently reverse engineered their new ShapeManager format, which is just binary ACIS (SAB) plus history (ACSH).

gtsteve 6y ago

The one thing I found interesting was that there's no attempt to control distribution of extensions by signing or having an app store style review process... but surely that's not far away.