[HN Gopher] Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)
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Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)
Author : nsoonhui
Score : 205 points
Date : 2022-08-13 04:30 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (extranetevolution.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (extranetevolution.com)
| iamgopal wrote:
| I think Adobe and Autodesk should buy each other.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Oracle should buy both and ruin them.
| superchroma wrote:
| I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or
| something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry
| letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the
| market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the
| metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know
| people will pay because they set the standards across many
| industries.
|
| In architecture, anyway, the problem seems to be that generally
| BIM programs just suck. Nobody I know likes Revit, although they
| admit it's powerful, and a lot of firms think Archicad isn't
| industry ready.
|
| I've used Archicad myself, at least, and it's very painful. The
| workflow flows poorly, and there's not much consideration for
| what people are going to be doing a lot of, so you're constantly
| wrestling with it to get the function you want. It's got a lot of
| good and interesting ideas in it, but sadly they're just hampered
| by feeling bolted on and not well integrated.
| civeng wrote:
| Try Vectorworks. They had BIM years before Revit was a twinkle
| in AutoCAD's eye. Perhaps they fell behind for a few years but
| now but now more than viable and so much more stable code.
| dkarl wrote:
| When was the quality turning point for Vectorworks? My wife
| uses it and still experiences regular crashes, though to be
| fair she avoids upgrading because she doesn't want to learn a
| new set of bugs to work around.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Vectorworks is still in the thousands. It would be nice if
| some of the people willing to pay that cost decided to
| support the BIM developments in Blender instead. Blender have
| recently shown that they can adapt and change faster than any
| of their commercial competitors in the 3D modelling space.
| I'm pretty sure they can leap-frog Autodesk and Vectorworks
| in a couple of years if they had the funding.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Firms like NVidia, AMD, Facebook, Amazon, Unity, Epic Mega
| Grants, Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple chucking money at
| Blender is a hell of a lot better for users and society and
| education and industry than the featureless monolith that is
| Autodesk chucking plaster at Ton Roosendaal. ;)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
|
| >... of public interest, we have to act in that sense. I can't
| simply say, "Oh, I'm going to support Autodesk from now on".
| And then, you can't. You can bring me to court and I will most
| certainly lose this. Plus, what people don't know maybe, but
| the Blender code is not owned by the Blender Foundation. [CRASH
| RUMBLE THUD] What??! That was Autodesk!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
|
| >"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal interview.
| Interview with Ton Roosendaal, the man behind the open source
| 3D software Blender!
|
| 46:52: [Q: What do you think of Autodesk?]
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&t=46m53s
|
| >A: They're my best friends! Yah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
|
| >[...52:46] Nobody reads those licenses. Nobody. [And this one
| is quite bad, isn't it?] It's horrible. [Yeah.] They can visit
| you at home if you use Autodesk, and check your computer,
| what's on it. [That's a good quote.]
|
| >Some people ask me, hey Ton, if I use Blender, the art I make,
| is that my property, can I do whatever I like with it? Of
| course! That's open, the Free Software Foundation philosophy,
| right? We are making free software. Do whatever you do with the
| content.
|
| >Autodesk, on the other hand, they also have their educational
| versions. In the license it says that everything you make with
| educational software is NOT your property. You can NOT do
| whatever you like with it. It is RESTRICTED. You can only do a
| little bit with it, you can not do other things with it. So
| basically Autodesk controls the content for that. [Ooooh...]
|
| >Especially for commercial use, or use inside of companies, or
| if you want to sell something. You can only use it to learn the
| software, but not to do anything with the content.
|
| >And they complain about Blender having an evil license. But
| I've got -- everybody... [Wait, who says that?] Aaaah, like
| I've got that kind of emails. It's got less, but even today, a
| business meeting with a studio, and they say, "Yeah, yeah, we
| are thinking about Blender, but the license, you know?" and
| then "If we start using Blender, then we might get sued, or a
| patent problem. And is the content ours? If we use Blender, is
| it really ours? Because we get free software? Because the
| content is then yours."
|
| >I said "NO!!!". [Ha ha ha ha!] I do hear rumors that Autodesk
| is spreading that story. [What??!] Yeah! [Ooooh!] Autodesk
| tells people... [That's conspiracy talk!] ...they go to
| companies and say "Ah, don't use Blender, but you see now, Open
| Source, the content you make has to be open too, so you have to
| share it, or everything." They spread those rumors. [Gasp!] So
| shame on you, Autodesk. [Ha ha ha ha ha! Allegedly. Or not even
| allegedly. Rumored.] I heard. But I heard it from people who
| heard it from Autodesk. [Ok!] So, show me [?] and in between,
| right, and it's with an [?] as a witness, right? It's like, you
| could tell me, and then it's too hard to believe you, right?
| [Yes, yes.]
|
| >Especially studios in Europe, and also Australia, and
| Indonesia. They get visitors from Autodesk. And if they say,
| "Ah, we are using Blender", then ESPECIALLY they get visitors
| from Autodesk. "Knock knock. Hey, I am your Autodesk sales
| representative. I see you're using Blender. I have something
| much better. Let's talk. Maybe we can give you nice discounts,
| or things to make sure you are kicking Blender out."
|
| >[Woah, this sounds very...] This really happens. [Really?]
| Yeah! [It sounds very nineteen-eighty...] It's normal business.
| Why's that nasty? They made money with it. It's what they have
| to do. I don't make money with it, so I don't care. If they
| want to use Maya, then they should use Maya [Yeah.] right?
|
| >[So you believe the product should speak for itself, right?
| Like if it's better, you use the better one.] Yeah, everybody
| should decide that for themselves.
|
| https://www.blenderbasecamp.com/where-does-blender-get-all-t...
|
| >Where Does Blender Get All Their Money From?
|
| >Which Companies Are Sponsors Of The Blender Foundation?
|
| >Why Do Some Of These Companies Invest In Blender?
|
| >What Are The Different Tier Systems That Blender Uses For
| Donations?
|
| >What Are The Different Ways In Which I Can Donate To Blender?
|
| >Can Anyone Donate To The Blender Foundation To Support The
| Software?
| devwastaken wrote:
| You can't, Autodesk owns the software patents and massive
| amounts of IP. You impliment their features, you're sued to non
| existence. Remove software patents, we will have competition
| again.
| Jenk wrote:
| Remove software patents and we'll have megacorps absorbing
| smaller businesses for free through theft of IP instead of
| acquisitions, and all the antitrust protection (as limited as
| it may be) instantly evaporates.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| It is extremely naive to think that ServiceNow would be
| able to steal a feature from e.g. the PM part of GitLab.
| The reason why their products are even more obnoxious than
| paper bureaucracy is definitely not that noone ever told
| them what they are doing wrong. Same applies for MSFT,
| Oracle and as of recently Google and Facebook too.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It is copyright law, not patent law, which prevents the
| scenario you describe.
|
| Patents are useless to small businesses unless you are in
| the business of patent-trolling. Try to sue a big
| corporation and they will just countersue.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Autodesk have jumped the shark with their recent cloud pricing
| options. New users will be priced out of the software, and will
| use anything else other than the Autodesk family of products.
| This may take a generation, but Autodesk have made a conscious
| decision to be less and less relevant over the next decade or
| so.
|
| Adobe are on the same path, but not quite so aggressively. They
| may still see the writing on the wall and back out before they
| become history.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Yeah, I don't understand how these firms (especially Adobe)
| are so completely oblivious to what actually made them
| successful.
|
| One of the main reasons Photoshop and Illustrator became
| widely used, is that every eleven-year-old with an interest
| in design or photo editing would torrent these products and
| learn the workflows inside out.
|
| Autodesk seems to have somewhat figured this out, with
| Fusion360 having a free hobbyist license for instance.
| alexashka wrote:
| They're not oblivious, at all.
|
| The switch to subscriptions has been a giant success for
| Adobe.
|
| Their stock went from hovering around 30$ for a _decade_
| from 2000 to 2011-2012, to skyrocketing every year since
| they introduced the subscription model (in 2011-2012), now
| being at roughly 450$.
|
| Anyone who doesn't think that's a giant success is living
| in an alternate reality.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Microsoft did the same, but they totally stopped caring
| about the product since Windows 8. When the M1 Macbook
| Pro came out, I bought it instantly, and I couldn't go
| back to Windows' inconsistency, even though I miss the
| consistency of Windows keybindings from older Windows
| versions a lot.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| As usual, it's success at the cost of increased user
| hostility. The company doesn't care, because increasing
| the stock price is the only thing that matters to them,
| their board, and their shareholders. But it does make the
| lives of users worse. Companies get locked into licensing
| fees, students are put under ever increasing financial
| pressure.
|
| It's just another example of "only stock price matters,
| we don't care if users like us." It's a wild success if
| you own Adobe stock, and feels exploitative if you don't.
| alexashka wrote:
| You realize the stock price is a reflection of people...
| _paying_ for Adobe 's services?
|
| It's a free market - go and use competing products that
| 'care'. Or if none of them 'care', maybe the problem is
| human nature, at which point, feel free to shake your
| fist at the sky and converse with whatever God figures
| you think are in charge :)
| rjh29 wrote:
| The subscription model for Adobe actually makes photoshop
| more affordable for students than before, though. (Even if
| they pay more in the end)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| 1. Students didn't upgrade every version. So the cost was
| amortized over many years.
|
| 2. The above point is moot because I, and every student I
| knew, used a school copy on a lab computer or... obtained
| a copy without paying
| doublesocket wrote:
| FWIW I've enjoyed using Rhino with VisualARQ for architectural
| work.
| Rackedup wrote:
| Blender is really nice but it isn't super easy to always get
| non-destructive/permanent modifications (but there might always
| be a way).
| superchroma wrote:
| They're starting to lean into it now. Add-ons like HardOps
| have shown it's definitely possible, and I think there's a
| lot of interest in that space so they can rope in the
| parametric modelling guys.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| A parametric sketch add-on (CAD Sketcher) is being
| developed. It won't replace Fusion or anything (and it's
| not intended to) but it convinced me to relearn polygon
| modeling after being away for 15 years.
| riedel wrote:
| Supporting FreeCAD [1] would be IMHO the way to go as they
| already provide both interfaces to BIM [2] and Blender [3].
|
| Would be great if there were more architects or structural
| engineering companies that invest in open source. Maybe then
| universities would follow instead on building on education
| licenses that after graduation become very expensive.
|
| [1] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Donate
|
| [2] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/BIM_Workbench
|
| [3] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Tutorial_Render_with_Blender
| [deleted]
| superchroma wrote:
| Yeah, definitely. Blender is a shining example of what's
| possible, and people are starting to take notice,
| particularly in the cinema space.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| I wonder whether that has its downsides though - with
| Google, Apple etc. being involved in development I wonder
| whether that hollows out the core of participating
| developers and functionally makes the project dependent on
| paid employees.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Blender has been dependent on paid employees for quite a
| while. Not 100% but the majority of the grunt work (stuff
| that isn't all that much fun) is through devs funded by
| the Blender Institute/Foundation.
| dry_soup wrote:
| Corporations which contribute code to Blender have mostly
| contributed patches for supporting their hardware. AMD
| and Apple are the ones I know for sure have done that,
| Intel and NVidia may have done it as well.
|
| Ton Roosendaal also knows what he is doing. As he
| explained at the 2019 Blender conference keynote, the
| message to corporations is not "how can Blender help you"
| but "join us in Blender's mission". [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Jcl3--cbULk?t=397
| therouwboat wrote:
| I dont think its downside that devs get paid, thats how
| it should be and I think Ton is handling blender
| foundation very well.
| ramblerman wrote:
| Why would you conflate the benefits of open source with a
| requirement for the devs to not make money?
|
| My vision is completely the opposite, the more money we
| pump into open source the better. We have to get out of
| this idea that open source is only good (and pure) when
| it's some dev slaving away after hours.
| kiba wrote:
| Open source was never about being against commercial
| activity anyway.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _Why would you conflate the benefits of open source
| with a requirement for the devs to not make money?_
|
| I don't think s/he meant that open source developers
| shouldn't make money. Just that sometime projects can be
| hijacked by those who pay the money. One genuine concern
| I can think of is if BigTech slowly pivots and slowly
| convert such projects into web applications that they can
| then rent as a service. Sure, one could fork it. But
| without the core developers to provide insights into the
| codebase, it would be a tough job.
|
| That is why AGPL license is very important for some of
| us.
| mxkopy wrote:
| > That is why AGPL license is very important for some of
| us.
|
| +1 on this (and maybe also forced-anonymous donations?).
| I'd like to think in the 21st century we have solutions
| to the "whoever holds the purse strings" paradigm. And
| maybe corporate strategy will begin to recognize the
| benefits in following them. Open tools for everyone means
| open (cheap) tools for businesses after all
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Have you actually used free cad for professional work?
| riedel wrote:
| Not me. However, my wife tried 2 years ago but failed to
| sync the BIM layers with dlubal RFEM. However, it seems
| some progress was made. So I think it it might not be there
| yet.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > a lot of firms think Archicad isn't industry ready
|
| It's similar in many other industries. Take InDesign, the
| current market leader in DTP. Say you are working on a book
| that has multiple indexes: index of places, index of people and
| so on. Well InDesign doesn't support that! This is not some
| fancy feature - you will find multiple indexes in many non-
| trivial books. But for some reason the most popular and
| supposedly advanced DTP solution on the planet doesn't support
| that and people need to use workarounds.
| dkarl wrote:
| When you're the market leader, you get to define what's
| reasonable. If you're the industry-leading solution and your
| users struggle to do a simple, common task, then it becomes
| conventional wisdom that the task is "difficult." If you are
| the second-place solution and users struggle to do a simple,
| common task, then your software is not ready for serious
| work. If you are in second place and have elegant solutions
| for cases that the industry leader struggles with, then
| overall that is an advantage, but you'd be surprised how many
| people write off your innovations as not being really useful
| precisely because so many people using the industry leader
| get work done without them.
|
| See: Jira versus every single one of their competitors.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| InDesign is for layout, it's not for books. FrameMaker is for
| books.https://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker.html
| auggierose wrote:
| It's because once a company is a market leader, it isn't
| anymore about "What feature is useful", but about "What will
| increase our revenue by x%?". Will adding a multiple index
| feature add anything to revenue? I doubt it.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Yep, Quark Express was the king of DTP until they suddenly
| weren't. It doesn't take long for the landscape to change.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's more about PMs thinking "Which feature will make it
| look like I'm doing something useful?"
|
| Photoshop has been quietly getting worse for years now.
| Certain annoyances haven't been touched for decades, but
| new features - like the one that forces you to save a copy
| for certain formats even when you don't want to - are so
| unwelcome and pointless they've have to add a switch in the
| preferences which allows you to turn them off.
|
| When a product matures _and_ has monopoly lock-in it 's
| essentially frozen. The core workflow will stop improving
| and updates will usually add unwelcome friction-inducing
| cruft around the edges.
| adammarples wrote:
| Tried codebook?
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| aothms wrote:
| There's a Blender addon under development for BIM called
| https://blenderbim.org/ they're looking for funding
|
| Blender's user interface is fully scriptable in Python, which
| means you can really adapt to your personal workflows or that
| of the company
|
| BlenderBIM accomplished a lot in about a year, but I guess
| we're all aware of what kind of monumental undertaking this is.
|
| (I work on a related library)
| Aeolun wrote:
| For those others that wonder and want to save a Google query:
|
| BIM = Building Information Management
| chris_wot wrote:
| I can't read this article, but I tried to get one of our students
| onto Fusion 360. For 9 months they futzed about, blaming our
| network, blaming the student, blaming the third party company who
| verified student age...
|
| After month 9, I managed to find the email of the EA to the CEO
| and politely asked if she could help with a 9 month support
| issue.
|
| Fixed in 48 hours.
|
| Autodesk is slack.
| taspeotis wrote:
| It's serving me source code... public function
| build_time_query( $column, $compare, $hour = null, $minute =
| null, $second = null ) { global $wpdb;
| // Have to have at least one. if ( ! isset( $hour )
| && ! isset( $minute ) && ! isset( $second ) ) {
| return false; }
|
| What sort of failure mode causes a website to just dump the
| backend source? Oh it's PHP...
| ebiester wrote:
| And as always, archive today (or an alternative) saves the day:
| https://archive.ph/hHiCJ
| seydor wrote:
| Actually it's ~~apache~~ Litespeed
| sgjohnson wrote:
| It has got nothing to do with PHP whatsoever...
| yashap wrote:
| Huh? This particular bug has everything to do with PHP. PHP
| is reasonably unique in the model of "treat everything like a
| standard webserver serving up files from the filesystem,
| except they're PHP scripts/templates that get evaluated to
| produce content, vs a true static file." But misconfigure
| your web server, and it'll just serve up the source code
| instead. This wouldn't happen in almost any other language.
| lionkor wrote:
| Its PHP
| seydor wrote:
| It's everything BUT php. The mysql server on the site is
| too slow and crashed, the HTTP server somehow broke and
| served source code. PHP is the only thing that works there,
| and it tells you that mysql connection is not available.
| zarzavat wrote:
| The HTTP server is serving source code because of the
| braindead system of HTTP routing that PHP encouraged
| (because it's "easy") whereby scripts are stored in the
| root path amongst resources, and the file system is used
| for routing. In other languages the HTTP server doesn't
| even know where the source code _is_.
| seydor wrote:
| First, thank you for hating PHP, i'd hate to see it
| ending up like javascript, especially when ppl
| misunderstand basic things like this. This 'braindead'
| system is how the web has been designed from the start.
| And that issue can easily be mitigated by having using an
| index.php that simply does require('../app/app.php').
| Serving files as text really has nothing to do with PHP
| since PHP interpreter isnt even invoked at all.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > scripts are stored in the root path amongst resources
|
| that has been a known and documented bad practice for _at
| least_ 10 years.
| lucumo wrote:
| This is only tangentially related, but former Autodesk CEO Carl
| Bass did an interview on Guy Raz' podcast Wisdom from the Top.
| The monopoly issue doesn't come up, but it could still be
| interesting to get a sense of the guy.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/08/08/1116377413/autodesk-carl-bass
| narrator wrote:
| Adobe should come up with a competitor. QuarkXpress abused its
| customers badly with high license fees and hardware dongles and
| all sorts of stuff like that. When Adobe came out with InDesign,
| everyone switched and Quark lost its dominant position. Same
| thing happened to Microsoft in Mobile. People were so sick of
| their monopolistic behavior that they lost totally to Apple and
| Google when they came out with a competitive product.
| egypturnash wrote:
| This is a wish just waiting to be granted by a creepy mummified
| monkey's paw if I ever heard one.
| sprkwd wrote:
| There's always Affinity Publisher.
|
| https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/publisher/
| jkestner wrote:
| I'd love it if Serif got in the CAD game, but they've got
| their hands full finishing that last 20% on their design
| apps. I use only Designer and Photo now, but there's always a
| couple of features I miss, like gradient mesh or duotone.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Pagemaker had been a fairly popular alternative before it
| became indesign
| oliwarner wrote:
| Summoning Adobe to fix a monopoly feels... Perverse.
|
| At a technical level, they _might_ have the chops to build
| something from scratch, but they 've more than abused their
| market position over the last two decades. We don't need
| another standard without interop.
|
| Put the engineering into open source or open standards. We
| can't continue with software society relies on being locked in
| like this.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| We're grading on a curve here.
| userbinator wrote:
| "An enemy of an enemy is a friend."
| oliwarner wrote:
| I prefer _The Scorpion and the Frog_.
|
| When like likes of Adobe and Autodesk sting their users,
| everyone is angry but nobody is surprised. It's just their
| nature.
| hawski wrote:
| It reminds me about a story by Philip K. Dick - Autofab. It's
| a story about postapocaliptic world with automated factories
| that do not stop to work after the work causing trouble for
| people. People decide to make the factories fight with each
| other. Let's just say it doesn't end in a good way.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Great point, and great story, with a terrible ending that
| illustrates the point about Adobe and Autodesk.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac
|
| Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Episode 8 (Autofac)
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902176/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCLlXrn840M
| [deleted]
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| The main thing also is that the interface of Indesign was year
| ahead of Quark for a small price. There wasn't everything (at
| first typesetting a big book was hard), and it was lacking a
| lot of feature regarding copy editor cooperation. And no Git
| was not and his still not a solution for revision :) incopy is
| using text though, so...
|
| But to be completely honest regarding indesign it took year to
| be enough for lot of shops.
| killSp4m wrote:
| I for one would love it if industry that produces real things
| collaborated to produce their own best of breed tooling rather
| than let SV aimlessly generate endless supply of half assed crap
| to capture worker agency as part of its game to control the
| economy.
|
| Industrial designs from buildings to cars, heavy equipment, and
| manufacturing equipment, could chip in enough to effectively end
| Autodesk.
|
| Movie studios could ruin Adobe.
|
| My friends in chip business are giving me hope; more and more
| logic is being embedded in chips, requiring less and less
| software to cover up usability and bugs in hardware.
|
| I look forward to the day pretentious cut-n-paste engineering
| (software) is relegated to an eccentric hobby.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| I can't access the article. However, AD tried to recruit me, and
| it was just embarrassing. They used to be one of those companies
| that wanted you to build an alpha of their app and then you might
| get hired. This was a requirement to get to the first interview.
| Not like any pro is going to put a week into a maybe-project.
| hit8run wrote:
| Well kids. That's why you don't want an uncached CMS. Error
| establishing database connection...
| offsky wrote:
| FreeCAD is getting nearly $500/week from Liberapay. Let's see if
| we can get this up to $1000 to support an OS alternative.
|
| https://liberapay.com/FreeCAD
|
| I'm going to contribute.
| buildbot wrote:
| Same, I just canceled my Fusion subscription for different
| reasons (they were spamming launchdarkely 2 MILLION + times
| because I had little snitch blocking it), shifting some of that
| 60USD per month seems worth it.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Architects aren't the only ones that use AutoCAD. I've been out
| of it for a few decades, R14 was the last one I used, but it's
| also used for machine diagrams and surveying plans like cable
| drops, cable terminals, etc.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| From person experience working inside Autodesk, they don't care.
| They make so much money while being so dysfunctional that it will
| take strong competition for them to do anything.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Autodesk's behavior has long been acknowledged as despicable,
| marked by such offenses as attacking instructional fan sites and
| managing to get some ignorant judge to rule in favor of their
| rip-off licensing scam. They claim that when you buy their
| software, you only buy a "perpetual license"; so if you find that
| you can't use the software, you can't sell it to someone else. If
| you tried to sell an unopened, new copy of their software on
| eBay, for example, their lawyers would threaten eBay and have
| your auction canceled. Yes, they did this for ONE copy.
|
| Can't innovate anymore? Just behave like assholes.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Really? Software sold in a box, can't resell it? Tell me more.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Not unusual. MS used to do the same thing.
|
| Not excusing either party, just pointing out it's not that
| uncommon in high-end corporate software.
|
| You're not buying a thing in a box, you're buying a license
| with associated terms. Which may include prohibiting resale.
|
| If the US had credible anti-trust laws this kind of thing
| would be taken apart in court. But it doesn't, so here we
| are.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Like if you don't even open it? Isn't the license shit only
| in the software when you start it up? Or do they ask for
| your social and link it to the box? The for sure want to.
| chris_wot wrote:
| That became an issue in Australia. There is an extensive
| article here:
|
| http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/PrecedentAULA/2009/
| 97....
| candiodari wrote:
| I wonder how this will continue. Because it's not just so simple
| for these people, right ... phase 1:
|
| 1) software eats the world (this is far from complete, even in
| CAD)
|
| which leads to phase 2:
|
| 2) a growing part of the knowledge of how industry X works (in
| this case construction, and of course fighter jet design) gets
| transferred into software (both into software companies, and
| directly into software) ... and forgotten by actual practitioners
|
| 3) software, to an extent, leaves those practitioners behind
| (first by needing much fewer of them), then it outright destroys
| them by demanding an ever greater share of the profits of
| industry X
|
| 4) autodesk ... please inform me what phase 4 is.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| I still love to design on my drawing board with pencil and
| eraser, who still does that?
| eternalban wrote:
| I never used pencils, but mechanical pen and t-square and
| friends. I remain convinced that engaging the entire body in
| the design process is superior to the experience of CAD. What
| may be interesting is updating the drafting table itself to be
| an active surface. It may be worth a business plan and getting
| funding for a startup.
| sherbondy wrote:
| One potential source of disruption here (though I'm sure many
| folks will likewise feel it is frustrating to be locked into a
| SaaS model), is we are starting to see several intriguing
| startups building browser-based CAD software that are serious
| contenders for "the Figma of Architecture/BIM" crown, with the
| likes of:
|
| Arcol (http://arcol.io), Infurnia (https://www.infurnia.com/),
| Qonic (https://www.qonic.com/), and Snaptrude
| (https://www.snaptrude.com).
|
| Here's nice little write-up about this emerging space from
| upFront: https://www.upfrontezine.com/2022/04/upf-1128-1.html
|
| It remains to be seen if they will manage to out-compete the
| Goliath that is Autodesk or simply get acquired/assimilated, but
| it is exciting to see some fervent activity in this space.
|
| Better yet if several of them take a "freemium" approach and
| students/hobbyists/freelancers are able to use a polished, user-
| friendly packaging of this incredible CAD technology for free (as
| in beer).
|
| I love free software, open source, and amazing projects like
| Blender (it is a true anomaly & gem in the OSS world, re:
| professional-grade end-user applications), but sometimes the
| profit motive goes a long way towards creating delightful and
| approachable user experiences that empower people.
|
| (Though I'm likewise rooting for an open source offering in this
| space to really take off!)
| jahewson wrote:
| > Better yet if several of them take a "freemium" approach and
| students/hobbyists/freelancers are able to use a polished,
| user-friendly packaging of this incredible CAD technology for
| free (as in beer).
|
| This was pretty much Fusion 360's approach. These unsustainable
| businesses models inevitably lead to a bait and switch.
|
| The software you link to is nice but BIM is not CAD/CAM.
| arcol wrote:
| Agreed, the "Figma for BIM" space is exciting. We're lucky to
| be backed by Dylan and some awesome AEC folks as we at Arcol
| try to re-think building design.
|
| Yes, there's definitely a lot to be said for open source
| software, we're big supporters of it at Arcol and hope we're
| able to contribute to some of those projects in a meaningful
| way over the next few years.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Why is "browser-based" a selling point here?
| navane wrote:
| If it's anything like onshape (the only browser based CAD I
| know of), browser based means: everyone uses the same version
| of the software, you don't have to wrestle your it department
| for installation rights, you can login and work on your
| designs from anywhere with any average laptop, there are no
| files (houseV3finalfinal), probably proper baked in version
| control with branching and merging... everything software
| developers take for granted that we poor CAD designers only
| can dream of.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| A browser based collaborative CAD tool appears to be a great
| idea. Rendering is now longer the bottleneck in computation
| and Nurbs data is actually lightweight. Computation heavy
| tasks like the geometry engine could be done locally. However
| developing a geometry engine or nurbs kernel is quite a
| challenge- harder than any game engine.
| S0und wrote:
| > Autodesk or simply get acquired/assimilated
|
| This is not even a question, there is no room to wonder.
| Autodesk WILL buy and KILL whatever software that threatens its
| own.
|
| Even in 2008, they just bought and killed one of their
| competitor in VFX, Softimage. Assuring everyone they wont kill
| it. This was a big deal. And ofc they killed it, basically
| telling their customers to go learn Max or Maya.
| Aperocky wrote:
| What happens if an open source alternative starts to exist?
| You can't buy open source.
| analog31 wrote:
| I think it's an immense hurdle. Sweating all of the tiny
| details, and encoding arcane domain knowledge, requires a
| staggering amount of labor.
|
| Also, the users don't care. I work with a lot of engineers.
| Outside of actual programmers, most people are ambivalent
| about open source, or still even think the whole idea is
| weird.
|
| They're not paying for it themselves. If their employer,
| and competing employers, are willing to pay for it, they're
| happy. Also, it creates an entry barrier that protects
| their value.
|
| Changing to a different app is a hardship -- they even hate
| it when a new version gets installed and breaks all of
| their work flows, many of which are carefully documented.
| The top feature request of all institutional software users
| is: "Please don't change anything."
| jahewson wrote:
| You can buy the core contributors.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Getting a database error
| Animats wrote:
| Database error.
|
| Archive.org copy of article.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200804005125/http://extranetev...
| [deleted]
| jl6 wrote:
| The recent change from unlimited local simulations to pay-per-use
| cloud simulations was far worse than a mere price hike. It
| transformed a known, manageable cost into a variable cost that is
| going to impact users' workflow as they learn to control it.
|
| If I were the architecture industry, I'd be rapidly forming an
| industry consortium to develop an alternative. Otherwise, this
| supplier's monopoly will continue to optimize pricing until all
| the industry's profits flow to them.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Is there any (non software)industry consortium that developed
| any usable software? I wouldn't bet on that effort, and even if
| it is done perfectly it will still take at least 5 years to
| match the complexity and feature completeness of AutoCAD.
| Instead they should force themselves to boycott AutoDesk and
| use something like FreeCAD and fund the development. Yes, there
| would be some loss in productivity, still much more probable
| that it will work out in long term.
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