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Autodesk criticised by architects

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Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#21

Post by klft »

imgabe wrote: post #5

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"…

> Take an idea like "version control for X" or "package manager for X"

Product lifecycle management (PLM) software provide such features.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#23

Post by donquichotte »

muska3 wrote: post #9

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.

It's also remarkable that while in many areas with "theory-heavy" software development (e.g. compilers), the open-source solutions are arguably better than the proprietary ones, this is not at all the case for mechanical CAD software. I wonder whether the overlap of people who can program, people who know enough math to develop a mechanical CAD software and the people who care about mechanical CAD is just too small for a successful open source effort.

Yes, there is FreeCAD and OpenSCAD, but every time I try to use them, I give up in the end and whip up something in Fusion360.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#24

Post by wappa »

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.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#25

Post by geokon »

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

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#26

Post by gorgoiler »

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.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#27

Post by jacquesm »

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.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#28

Post by jacquesm »

bschne wrote: post #14
aut0away wrote: post #2

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.

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

Yes it is. I've seen it used professionally at more than one company.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#29

Post by ginko »

aut0away wrote: post #2

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.

At least in the 3DS Max/Maya space Blender is seeming to make more and more headway these days.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#30

Post by jacquesm »

sfvisser wrote: post #20
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #6

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

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…

Europe does build its own software. And anything even remotely successful then gets acquired by some US entity.
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