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Autodesk criticised by architects

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Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#41

Post by wappa »

bfuclusion wrote: post #3

I can 100% believe that Autodesk isn't great at responding to customer requests, but presumably these firms would have enough budget to pay for devs to write a solution that works for them. Including making an open file format, EU specific data centers, etc. It would probably even take less time and money than trying to lobby the EU to legislate what they want.

Architect's margins are typically in 5-10%. Avg salary for architect is ~75-80k. They don't have the budget to even pay for small pilot or mvp, even if all 20+ firms pool their money together.

The domain knowledge + software engineer skills + computer graphics skills needed are extremely rare.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#42

Post by duncanawoods »

Something mildly related which I found interesting from a recent talk by Ryan Singer is that Christopher Alexander of "Pattern Language" fame create some unusual architectural design software called GateKeeper that guides sketching based on prompts from a pattern language:

Gatekeeper demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o

Ryan Singer's talk "Christopher Alexander: A Primer"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsTZXT0FlM

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#43

Post by saeranv »

jacquesm wrote: post #27

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 devel…

From the letter that I saw (link's not working for me now) the criticism was specifically about Revit their BIM platform.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#44

Post by numpad0 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #26

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…

They want to establish a steady income for a stable and feature complete tool. They want to fund a bunch of developers to maintain the features customers enjoy, or catch up with breaking Windows changes they should be paid to fix anyway, as reasons why subscriptions cost the price they charge.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#45

Post by esperent »

thdrdt wrote: post #37
jacquesm wrote: post #27

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 devel…

I can't read the article (server does not respond) but I believe it is not only about Autocad. I hear people complain about Revit and 3dsMax as well. What I mostly hear is: very expensive, lots of bugs, lags with new features and improvements. The software gets the job done and is in the industry standards but people are starting to look somewhere else.

Yes, exactly. I use 3ds Max occasionally and there's no other piece of software I've ever used that crashes so often. Every time I perform an action that I haven't tried before, I fully expect the program to crash and then I'll have to spend a few hours searching for workarounds. Working with large models or scenes takes so long to reload that every crash represents around 10 minutes of lost time, and I've easily had twenty - thirty crashes on a bad day.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#46

Post by saeranv »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
bschne wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the firm, but it's definitely used. Specifically Rhino/Grasshopper get used a lot for concept, schematic design, and then Revit gets used for design development and onward, especially at companies that work a lot with complex geometry (Zaha, SHoP).

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#47

Post by thdrdt »

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"…

I can't speak for Revit but people are looking to switch to Blender from 3dsMax.

The problem is not that Blender can't do what 3ds can but it lacks industry standard tooling compatibility.

But still a lot of people in the industry are starting the switch to Blender. So change is coming.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#48

Post by BossingAround »

esperent wrote: post #45
thdrdt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't read the article (server does not respond) but I believe it is not only about Autocad. I hear people complain about Revit and 3dsMax as well. What I mostly hear is: very expensive, lots of bugs, lags with new features and improvements. The software gets the job done and is in the industry standards but people are starting to look somewhere else.

Yes, exactly. I use 3ds Max occasionally and there's no other piece of software I've ever used that crashes so often. Every time I perform an action that I haven't tried before, I fully expect the program to crash and then I'll have to spend a few hours searching for workarounds. Working with large models or scenes takes so long to reload that every crash represents around 10 minutes of lost time, and I've easily had…

You talk about large models or scenes; I'm under the impression that in the film industry, they'd have workstations with hundreds GBs of RAM and double graphics.

I'm just wondering, could the issue lie in 3ds Max being optimized for a different beast of a machine..?

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#49

Post by saeranv »

wappa wrote: post #41
bfuclusion wrote: post #3

I can 100% believe that Autodesk isn't great at responding to customer requests, but presumably these firms would have enough budget to pay for devs to write a solution that works for them. Including making an open file format, EU specific data centers, etc. It would probably even take less time and money than trying to lobby the EU to legislate what they want.

Architect's margins are typically in 5-10%. Avg salary for architect is ~75-80k. They don't have the budget to even pay for small pilot or mvp, even if all 20+ firms pool their money together. The domain knowledge + software engineer skills + computer graphics skills needed are extremely rare.

Exactly, this is the main reason you don't see a lot of successful start-ups tackling problems for architects. Most end up pivoting to real-estate development.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#50

Post by poseva »

As an structural engineer and former Autodesk user, I completely agree with the letter. I always saw Autodesk as a company where software goes to die a slowly painful death.

It started with Autodesk Structural Detaling. They bought the software from a small company, renamed the product... and that was it. It had the same bugs release after release... we as customers tried our best to report the bugs, but nobody listened.

We stopped using ASD and moved to Graitec Advance Steel and Advance Concrete, for a couple of years everything was great, quick support, remote sessions in case you struggled with something, new features, bugs fixed... and then... Autodesk bought it. I still remember the morning when I read the news... I was horrified. I remember talking with some guys at Graitec and they were shocked also.

After this... was Autodesk Structural Detailing story all over again. Just a product rename... and that was it. No more bug fixing.. no more new features.. they killed Advance Concrete in favor of Revit (which is one of the dumbest thing ever... because Revit was years behind Advance Concrete as a concrete detailing sw).

For concrete detailing we switched to Allplan. I think Allplan and Graphisoft's Arhicad have a bright future together.

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