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Autodesk criticised by architects

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Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#151

Post by sprafa »

asiachick wrote: post #55
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 feel like this is one of those places where open source probably doesn't work. Maybe it would require a change in culture. 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…

As far as modelling goes you can now model in almost anything you want (Blender/Maya/whatever).

Maya is the default for animation pipelines, since it has the more robust animation tools.

Houdini is for FX and sims, and Houdini is STUNNING in its development speed at the moment. Each of their software updates has 100+ features a year, and these are complex overhauls or entire new toolkits. I don’t know anyone in 3D who isn’t salivating at what’s going on with SideFX and Houdini.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#152

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

jasode wrote: post #145
Hokusai wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's easily a multi-billion dollar opportunity If I was able to build such a software that has potential on stealing Autodesk software. And Autodesk showed at my door with $50,000,000 in cash. I would sell it so fast that I would be flying in a hired private jet to some island free of the pandemic by next morning. The rational is simple. I will make up some numbers: If I have 1 chance in 1,000 to get 10 billion,…

>If I was able to build such a software that has potential on stealing Autodesk software. And Autodesk showed at my door with $50,000,000 in cash. I would sell it so fast [...] The rational is simple. I will make up some numbers: [...] The part missing from your hypothetical scenario is that founders have egos and many would rather keep ownership of their company and don't want to work for someone else . (I made prev…

I wouldn’t trust Autodesk though, they’ll probably just blow up your house and disappear your family if they feel threatened.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#153

Post by krautsourced »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #139
krautsourced wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are always talking about switching to Blender (me included) - but they don't. Because as sad as it is, once you start to actually work with it in serious projects, you noticed all the things that hobbyists who hail Blender as the second coming never care about. I wanted to give Blender another got at replacing Cinema 4D for us (since their new licensing). I got used to the UI, though it's not nearlly as intuit…

Which license change? Last year? Blender technical and financial situation has changed very much since then. Last year was the transition period to the new UI, new renderer and everything else. 2.80 was not polished at all. Since then they got access to way more funds from major FAANGs (NVIDIA, AMD, Microsoft, Intel...) and announced and release the first LTS which are the ones intended to be used by commercial studi…

The Cinema 4D licensing changed to subscription which caused many people to look for alternatives.

I'm not arguing against Blender being an alternative eventually, it has great features. It's just not there yet as a complete replacement. For me at least.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#154

Post by skinpop »

krautsourced wrote: post #101
thdrdt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People are always talking about switching to Blender (me included) - but they don't. Because as sad as it is, once you start to actually work with it in serious projects, you noticed all the things that hobbyists who hail Blender as the second coming never care about. I wanted to give Blender another got at replacing Cinema 4D for us (since their new licensing). I got used to the UI, though it's not nearlly as intuit…

I switched after 20 years of 3DSMax. Blender is definitely becoming more acceptable in professional settings.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#155

Post by krautsourced »

prox wrote: post #141
krautsourced wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are always talking about switching to Blender (me included) - but they don't. Because as sad as it is, once you start to actually work with it in serious projects, you noticed all the things that hobbyists who hail Blender as the second coming never care about. I wanted to give Blender another got at replacing Cinema 4D for us (since their new licensing). I got used to the UI, though it's not nearlly as intuit…

Out of interest : did you try 2.7x or 2.8x , the latter is a major step up. That said, C4D has always been pretty performant when I still used it, more than Maya or Max.

2.8x

Yes, C4D is fast and more importantly, extremely stable. It's crazy how often I got Maya or even Houdini to crash, compared to Cinema (which basically only crashed due to Octane...)

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#156

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

alkonaut wrote: post #150

If people didn’t use Autodesk’s software I wouldn’t have to pay a surreal amount of money to use their binary API so my cad program can write DWG. But the fact is DWG is the de facto standard in so many engineering disciplines, and that probably won’t change. The format is also so convoluted and complex that I doubt even Autodesk could ever write a new implementation of it. If someone succeeds, they will still keep c…

What CAD program is this?

I’ve switched some users at my work away from Autocad for 2D stuff to DraftSight and have had no problems opening dwg.

An annual DraftSight license is $180 or something similarly trifling.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#157

Post by krautsourced »

sprafa wrote: post #146
keith___talent wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C4D is beautiful software - Blender is making strides, maybe 3 years it would take, but Blender is in feature acquisition mode, not improving the codebase/current functionality.

C4D is really good and Maxon has been decent in making updates for it imo. They are listening to their users and updating stuff, even if more slowly than people would like. They’ve also done of the best lateral moves of all time by buying Redshift, which is slowly becoming a serious production renderer second only to Arnold imo. I have no idea why people have such strong reactions against the subscription model - fir…

I don't really have anything against it per se. It just had that Autodesk / Adobe feel to it that immediately provokes a kicking and screaming reaction in many :)

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#158

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

prox wrote: post #138
clusterfish wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that breaking into this industry, that is, defeating network effects that work to Autodesk's favor, would actually be harder than building the superior product itself. Anyone on the inside, am I wrong? Would your company readily switch to a superior product, retrain its employees for it, deal with business partners who haven't heard of that new product, etc.?

I only know 2 parallels, one is Blender, which is really gaining traction. Lots of huge sponsorships, increasing adoption. Thats the open source road. In Adobeland, slowly Affinity Photo and Designer are gaining foothold. I don’t think at this point it is any danger to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. But a Affinity version 2 might be pushing the monopoly back.

Look in the Affinity support forum and you’ll find myself and about three thousand of my closest friends crying out for Affinity Designer DXF export.

Inkscape has it and it’s free.

I’m stuck not using Affinity Designer because I can’t export to DXF.

I paid for Affinity Designer, just assuming it’s would have DXF export because why wouldn’t it.

So sad ),;

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#159

Post by thinkloop »

jasode wrote: post #145
Hokusai wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's easily a multi-billion dollar opportunity If I was able to build such a software that has potential on stealing Autodesk software. And Autodesk showed at my door with $50,000,000 in cash. I would sell it so fast that I would be flying in a hired private jet to some island free of the pandemic by next morning. The rational is simple. I will make up some numbers: If I have 1 chance in 1,000 to get 10 billion,…

>If I was able to build such a software that has potential on stealing Autodesk software. And Autodesk showed at my door with $50,000,000 in cash. I would sell it so fast [...] The rational is simple. I will make up some numbers: [...] The part missing from your hypothetical scenario is that founders have egos and many would rather keep ownership of their company and don't want to work for someone else . (I made prev…

> Yahoo made offers to buy Google

I think you have that backwards, Google kept asking Yahoo to buy them [1]

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/remember-yahoo-turned-down-1-...

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#160

Post by floatboth »

imtringued wrote: post #104
Animats wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autodesk has gone "software as a service". For a long time they sold boxed software. But that market is over. So they went to "software as a service". That can get very expensive for users. That's apparently the real customer complaint. I don't really know about the architectural tools. I've used Inventor, Fusion 360, and Maya. Autodesk became a leader in 3D animation software because the animation software companies…

As a FreeCAD user I don't understand why FreeCAD absolutely despises chamfers and fillets. The dedicated chamfer and fillet tools are just bad. I can do the fillet by hand without any problems. Just create a sketch and revolve the cut or sweep the cut along the chamfered edge. Works perfectly fine but it takes much longer than it should.

PartDesign chamfer/fillet are so much better in git master now. No longer limited to 45 degrees, and they can be duplicated with linear/polar patterns!
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