51–60 of 387 posts
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.
Rhino is genuinely fun to use. Best UX of by far of any program I've ever had the pleasure of using. Blender is frustrating as heck to use in comparison.
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.
And then you add the other 95%. By that time it will be just as slow as the incumbent, even more buggy and the interface will look like crap and will be hard to learn.
As the author of a CAD/CAM package I remember clearly that the only way to stay out of that trap was to make it a niche thing. Of which there are 1000's none of them interoperable with the rest.
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.
That's what $$$ upgrades are for. No need for a subscription if I'm happy without the new features and happy using it on an old OS. I'm happy to pay for new features I might actually use. I'm happy to pay for upgrades for a new OS. As an example though, I used to get by upgrading Adobe Photoshop at most about once every 4 years at a cost of about $200 or $50 a year. Now they extract out of me $480 ($120 a year) for features I don't actually use. In fact I'm pretty sure I use zero features past CS2 (2003) and like I said was fine paying them $200 every 4 years for the OS upgrades but now I just feel taken advantage off.
Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software.
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.
Most people in the industry see it as the equivalent of the Microsoft tax: it's a license to do business.
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 don't know CAD but in 3D software for movies/games most studios use expensive software (Maya, 3DSMax, Houdini, etc). The market for that software is relatively small and the effort to create and maintain it larger than many many other projects. So, the price is high. But, if they didn't make it hard to copy most companies would arguably not pay because they see it as a large expense. Especially for smaller companies if it was easy to copy and they could they would (and often do).
My point is getting that same money out of them instead for an open source solution (because the open source solution will require just as much income to maintain) is unlikely.
Blender is eeking by so maybe the tide is turning.
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 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…
While it’s easy to blame the developers of a product for real or perceived flaws, even if operated entirely offline software products interact with their environment.
Hence, a bug you’re having might be due to an operating system update, another third-party application, or even a specific hardware configuration.
I’d want the software company in question to be motivated to investigate and - if possible - fix the issue nonetheless, even if the underlying cause of the issue isn’t their fault.
You could swap Adobe in for Autodesk and almost the entire letter holds true. High cost, few improvements, few alternatives. There's a little more competition these days with Adobe at least.
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.
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.