Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

venturebeat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 153 posts

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#131

Post by greggman »

JeremyHerrman wrote: post #101
isaiahg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Back in 2011 if you googled "blender is ", you get these autocompleted options: blender is slow blender is too hard blender is hard to use I know this because I was so frustrated as a newcomer and took a screenshot that I still have today. Now if you google "blender is " today, you get these: blender is hard blender is damaged blender is confusing blender is free blender is slow In 2013 Andrew Price led an effort to…

Blender definitely has a non-standard UI. There are settings that make it more "standard". You can set it to "Maya" mode for example.

But, pretty much all 3D software is hard to use and takes several weeks to understand. I spent at least 3 weeks on both Maya and 3DSMax just going through the manual a chapter at a time and working through the tutorials back in the day. There's just too much to do in current 3D software and there's no escaping that all of them are huge huge apps.

Maybe VR or AR will finally fix this?

Note: I'm not apologising for Blender's strange UI. It put me off Blender for years and I'm sure it still puts people off. That said, a few months ago I tried it again and found the "Maya" option which at least meant I could click on objects to select them and have the camera controls match. The rest is still overwhelming but that's true with all top end 3d packages.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#132

Post by greggman »

moron4hire wrote: post #125
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…

Blender is no more UI-awful and no more poorly documented than any other 3D modeling package. The problem is that the entire market of 3D modeling packages are either A) massive clusterfucks of kitchen-sink UI, or B) woefully inadequate in feature selection. Learning Maya or 3D Studio Max is just as much of an undertaking as learning Blender. There is nothing about them that make them inherently easier. But they do c…

Blender's choice to use completely non-standard UI features makes it harder to approach. 99.9999% of all software is "click on object to select it" then pick things to manipulate that selection. Blender's default UI doesn't do that so where as most noobs can at least run other 3d software and fiddle with it before spending the requisite weeks learning how to use it, for Blender they can't even fiddle. The must read the manual immediately because the UI doesn't conform to any other app period.

I know at one time even the menus were non standard as in users expect a menu bar with options they can browse but Blender didn't used to have that (it does now)

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#133

Post by yyin »

One of the better websites on the internet, from the founder of Autodesk: http://www.fourmilab.ch/nav/topics.html

Suggested starting point: http://www.fourmilab.ch/atlast/atlast.html

He recounts lots of Autodesk history. An early software company success story, from the days before the www.

Highly recommended.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#134

Post by odonnellryan »

Cheyana wrote: post #82
gruez wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how that turned out. Did they solve the issue?

They did. I believe they had to uninstall the previous version and delete a lot of leftover registry keys and files. Amazing how uninstalls never really uninstall the thing. Never understood the logic in that. I've seen companies (like HP and Kofax) have to make cleanup tools for their own software because the uninstalls don't actually remove everything. I wonder if they contract their installation components out to…

Check this out: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/program_install_and...

I believe that's the right tool. It's a somewhat 'magic' uninstaller.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#136

Post by frik »

DiThi wrote: post #108
frik wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI of Blender could be a lot better. 3D Max, Maya, CINEMA 4D, CATIA, SketchUp ... every 3D software has a sane UI that can be used without reading a manual at all. Except Blender with its non standard UI concepts. Hopefully someone sponsors a UI clean up. It reminds me of Gimp, which had a similar weird UI where every window had its own unique menus and what not. To give them credit, they fixed the UI for the bet…

The current UI of Blender is fairly good. It is difficult because 3D is difficult. You can remap the keys to resemble other 3D packages and UI concepts. If you try to make it any easier than that, you're removing useful features. Also, you haven't used ZBrush, do you? At least in Blender the names of things always made sense (object, mesh, scene...). The equivalents in ZBrush are the weirdest things.

> It is difficult because 3D is difficult

That's an urban myth. The other 3D packages (most of them more featurefull) adhere to common UI conventions and guidelines. Like what happens with a left mouse click, what with a right mouse button - all mimics Win95 UI guideline. The other 3D package mentioned are therefore easy to use without reading a manual or tutorial. Everyone who used one of those programs can easily switch to another one.

Blender UI with it's non standard might be productive for certain professionals who invested considerable amount of time. But other packages have customisable shortcuts too, but offer a lot better default settings.

Blender definitely needs a UI refresh to gain more widespread adoption. Too much clutter in the tool bars and menus, navigation works like pre 1995 3D applications.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#137

Post by interfixus »

yyin wrote: post #133

One of the better websites on the internet, from the founder of Autodesk: http://www.fourmilab.ch/nav/topics.html Suggested starting point: http://www.fourmilab.ch/atlast/atlast.html He recounts lots of Autodesk history. An early software company success story, from the days before the www. Highly recommended.

You beat me to it. Fourmilab is the backbone of my www. Been visting for twenty years - the site is still recognizably itself, and though at a somewhat slower page nowadays, still regularly manages to come up with interesting new stuff. It's a treasure trove. Everyting public domain'ed.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#138

Post by sbuk »

theoh wrote: post #118
fsloth wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Niche markets are fine and good since they are not encroaching on the biggest mainstream user markets. "the best thing we can do is help people connect the dots between our software and their other vendors." Yes. And the worst thing Autodesk has done is try to inflict costs to this "connecting the dots" - namely, denying realDWG support for those they consider a strategic threat. Since there is Teigha this is not fin…

BIM software like Revit is pretty clever and would be difficult to build from scratch. AutoCAD is horrible but a lot of the horribleness is difficult to get rid of while providing the same functionality. So, I'm not sure I agree with your take.

They bought Revit and have somehow managed to regress it. Before owning Revit, and therefore only owning a small percentage of the nascent BIM tool marketplace, they drove the creation of IFC classes to ensure interoperability between BIM platforms. Now they practically own BIM, support for this has gone.

Auto desk are a vile company. A serial monopolist that make any of the othe offenders look tame. I'd love to see them go out of business. That said, I hope those that have lost their jobs find new ones soon.

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#139

Post by justinclift »

lutorm wrote: post #84
krschultz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was astonished by poor quality of Fusion 360. On paper it makes great sense, in practice I found it practically unusable.

I've been using it on and off for the past six months, and I agree it has issues. However, it's tons better now than it was even when I started, so it seems they're quite aggressively work on it.

They definitely seem like an organisation who's dedicated to checkbox/feature-list improvements, and gaining everyone's complete data set (thus the lack of local file support). Platform stability... less of a priority. :(

Re: Autodesk announces 925 layoffs

#140

Post by epalmer »

bsbechtel wrote: post #51
krschultz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found learning Fusion 360 was painful. I'm dyslexic and need the big picture to understand how to put the individual pieces together. Fusion 360 uses terminology that is not defined anywhere. I worked with some of the support staff and they agreed that they lack this sort of documentation. It seems that some of the people I know that use Fusion 360 just hack around with it till they get it right. I don't have the time for that. Too many projects going at one time. I will ahve to look at OhShape. Thanks.
Post reply on HN