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Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

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Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#51

Post by bsbechtel »

krschultz wrote: post #47
coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are a huge player with many expensive software suits. But they are not very innovative. Compared to what? "Disruptive" social sites and Uber for X? There is orders of magnitude more computer science innovation in Autodesk than in the average "unicorn".

IMO, Solidworks was more innovative than AutoCAD in the 90s and early 2000s. AutoCAD followed their lead by making Inventor. Today OnShape is innovating and AutoCAD is following with Fusion 360.

Actually, I believe Fusion 360 was around first. Having said that, trying to learn Fusion 360 was one of the worst experiences I've ever had learning software, while learning OnShape actually made me enjoy using CAD. Once OnShape gets to the level of maturity that Fusion 360 has, I am hoping they will be better at all levels.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#52

Post by Silhouette »

pixl97 wrote: post #3
yoklov wrote: post #2

Looks like this is to focus on their subscription model or something along those lines. Haven't tried Autodesk's subscription, but I will say that I (unlike many I know...) am extremely happy with Photoshop CC. $10/mo is trivial for something like Photoshop, and it still works without an internet connection, so I'm not sure what all the hate is about. General mistrust of the business model?

>General mistrust of the business model? When your company requires the software to do its daily business, any misstep by the software company is a serious liability. When you 'buy' a copy of the software it is yours to run, and if the parent goes out of business you may not be able to reactivate it, at least it still runs. With the rental model, you are in much the same boat as a person who rents a house, when the l…

With the rental model, you are in much the same boat as a person who rents a house, when the landlord wants to charge more you pay it or get evicted.

Except that in the case of software, if either your data is locked up in some proprietary way or there is no competing software with a similar feature set anyway, you get evicted and there's no other landlord offering you an alternative place to live.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#53

Post by Animats »

fsloth wrote: post #26

Just in case people are not familiar - Autodesk owns a considerable share of cad market (which is far more encompassing than just Autocad) and they've palmed few of the biggest 3D modeling suites - Maya, 3DMax and (sigh ) XSI. Their DWG format (Autocad's native databaseformat) is a binary blob that still has a huge impact in construction industry and is a major PITA unless one is using Autocad tools. They are a huge…

XSI was originally from Softimage. Softimage sold out to Microsoft, which had no idea what to do with a high-end product other than to make it run on Windows NT. That ended SGI's reign in Hollywood; between 1998 and 2001, studios moved off SGI onto PCs with lots of memory and graphics cards that rapidly got cheaper.

Microsoft sold Softimage to Avid. Avid wanted Softimage because they also had a good non-linear editor, Softimage|DS, which was a threat to Avid's business. Avid used to sell furniture; they built computers with lots of accessories for handling video into wooden desks. These were called "editing suites", and cost upwards of $100K. Softimage could do that on commodity hardware.

Avid had no idea what to do with the 3D product line. It was a product Avid was stuck with, and it had its own team in Montreal. In 2008, Avid sold that to Autodesk.

Autodesk had developed its own 3D system, 3D Studio Max, which is still around. They bought Alias/Wavefront Maya from SGI when SGI tanked in 2004. That's how Autodesk ended up owning the 3D animation business.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#54

Post by Animats »

isaiahg wrote: post #39
Silhouette wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the trouble is that the FBX format in parts of these industries is like the DOC(X) and XLS(X) formats in office productivity software: everyone uses it, so if you want to use a tool that doesn't reliably convert to/from it losslessly you are at risk of severe friction when working with others. And like DOC(X) and XLS(X), it's a proprietary format, which creates various complications for anyone who wants to cr…

> notably a lack of UI refinement That's a common misconception. Blender's UI is extremely simple and innovative.

Here is the Blender hotkey chart.[1] All 9 pages. With the different hotkeys for each of 12 modes. Any questions?

[1] http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderHotkeyRefer...

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#55

Post by imgabe »

fsloth wrote: post #38
coldtea wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are a huge player with many expensive software suits. But they are not very innovative. Compared to what? "Disruptive" social sites and Uber for X? There is orders of magnitude more computer science innovation in Autodesk than in the average "unicorn".

"There is orders of magnitude more computer science innovation in Autodesk than in the average "unicorn" I was under the impression that they've bought most of their marketable innovations. I realize this was not a fair comment to current employees there - yes, the software suites are impressive and Autocad reseachers have produces very nice things. I would still categorize them as a huge corporation with vested inte…

As someone who works with AutoCAD nearly every day, I would love it if they opened up the DWG format. There are quite a lot of tools that AutoCAD produces to customize AutoCAD though.

Interestingly AutoCAD was originally written in lisp and a lot of the drawing objects are represented (or can be accessed) as lisp lists in AutoCAD's own lisp dialect (AutoLISP). It's pretty confusing for anyone not familiar with lisp though and fairly limited compared to other lisps (no macros, as far as I could tell, though I'm sure someone could probably find a way to implement them)

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#56

Post by imgabe »

chefkoch wrote: post #40
fsloth wrote: post #26

Just in case people are not familiar - Autodesk owns a considerable share of cad market (which is far more encompassing than just Autocad) and they've palmed few of the biggest 3D modeling suites - Maya, 3DMax and (sigh ) XSI. Their DWG format (Autocad's native databaseformat) is a binary blob that still has a huge impact in construction industry and is a major PITA unless one is using Autocad tools. They are a huge…

>They are a huge player with many expensive software suits. But they are not very innovative. In architecture and construction they are by far the leader in Building Information Modeling, so i think it depends on what you put in the spotlight.

They are a leader because everybody uses them and if you need to collaborate (which you do, as architects, engineers, contractors are all separate companies) you need to use what everyone else is using.

Revit has come a long way and it's starting to fulfill it's promise, but it's been a slow road.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#57

Post by dogma1138 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #31
david-given wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goat Simulator is Unreal Engine 2.

Unreal Engine 3, actually. The generation (with various iterations) from Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, and Bioshock Infinite. Unreal Engine 2 would be from the period of UT 2k4 and Killing Floor.

Unreal Engine 2 is still quite heavily used especially platforms quite heavily, UT2004 was UE 2.5.

AAA console PC titles also still use it I think the most "recent" ones would be Bioshock 1 and 2. https://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/bioshock-2

Since UE 2 was ported to IOS (Don't recall if it has an Android port also) it actually became quite popular both in porting old games and in making new ones since it's a bit more optimized and is considerably easier to use than UE 3/4.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#58

Post by bsimpson »

Animats wrote: post #53
fsloth wrote: post #26

Just in case people are not familiar - Autodesk owns a considerable share of cad market (which is far more encompassing than just Autocad) and they've palmed few of the biggest 3D modeling suites - Maya, 3DMax and (sigh ) XSI. Their DWG format (Autocad's native databaseformat) is a binary blob that still has a huge impact in construction industry and is a major PITA unless one is using Autocad tools. They are a huge…

XSI was originally from Softimage. Softimage sold out to Microsoft, which had no idea what to do with a high-end product other than to make it run on Windows NT. That ended SGI's reign in Hollywood; between 1998 and 2001, studios moved off SGI onto PCs with lots of memory and graphics cards that rapidly got cheaper. Microsoft sold Softimage to Avid. Avid wanted Softimage because they also had a good non-linear editor…

Thanks for the history lesson; I had no idea Alias|Wavefront was a division of SGI.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#59

Post by jamessb »

coldtea wrote: post #30
fsloth wrote: post #26

Just in case people are not familiar - Autodesk owns a considerable share of cad market (which is far more encompassing than just Autocad) and they've palmed few of the biggest 3D modeling suites - Maya, 3DMax and (sigh ) XSI. Their DWG format (Autocad's native databaseformat) is a binary blob that still has a huge impact in construction industry and is a major PITA unless one is using Autocad tools. They are a huge…

> They are a huge player with many expensive software suits. But they are not very innovative. Compared to what? "Disruptive" social sites and Uber for X? There is orders of magnitude more computer science innovation in Autodesk than in the average "unicorn".

They also do a lot of interesting work via Autodesk Research (including on some things you might not expect, such as synthetic biology): https://autodeskresearch.com/

Publication list: https://autodeskresearch.com/publications

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#60

Post by neilgrey »

vvanders wrote: post #44
maratd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was under the impression that they've bought most of their marketable innovations. They did, but once you buy it, it's yours? The large companies buying up smaller ones are essentially funding the research and innovation.

Not when their goal is to lock-out all the competition in the space, which is something Autodesk is very interested in. That seems like the opposite of innovation to me.

That's a pretty hasty generalization. As someone who works for a product at ADSK that has frequent collaboration meetings with our biggest competitors, I can point to at least one significant example of innovation via connectedness. Our philosophy is that our customer is going to pick the tools that work best for their specific workflow; since as a larger company we can't support every niche market, the best thing we can do is help people connect the dots between our software and their other vendors.
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