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Autodesk criticised by architects

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271–280 of 387 posts

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#271

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> 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 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…

Why not keep using CS2 (or up to CS5), if you are not using newer features?

Because I can't open files from clients who use a newer version than I do - with the 2020 illy update particularly schisming matters.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#272
post #236

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Perhaps i'm being idealistic but if the cycle is that aggressive this screams for architects to start caring about buying FOSS. When you buy software it's an investment - you invest your time in integrating it into your workflow and your employees learning to use it... your investment is tied to the future of that software. If it's FOSS (funded), no amount of money autodesk throw at it can bury it's source code, buyi…

> Perhaps i'm being idealistic but if the cycle is that aggressive this screams for architects to start caring about buying FOSS. Look at the city government of Munich. They tried to adopt Linux and FOSS but failed after years of internal issues. Proper support and industry adoption are important properties not easy to emulate for FOSS.

They "failed" because the social party mayor didn't get re-elected and a conservative mayor got elected. The new mayor then blamed LiMux for problems that mainly rooted in the ongoing migration of all departments to LiMux and then ordered the migration back to Windows for a price that would have had LiMux running for decades.

By total coincidence, shortly after announcing the move back to Windows, Microsoft announced to relocate their German headquarters from Hamburg to Munich.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#273
post #40

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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.

Blender has had actually a revamp of the UX exactly because of this sentiment... Might be worth trying again..?

Rhino is primarily command line based, it is a perfect mix of CLI and GUI.

Also it is 4-up by default and designed around that paradigm. I don't understand how people stand using modeling programs that only have 1 viewport, but they are common enough that I presume everyone gets by.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#274
post #217
post #194

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how i archive.is illegal but Way Back machine not? Seems odd that you isolate a single archive service as illegal instead of saying "Internet Archiving is an illegal operation"

Archive.is bypasses paywalls and does not honor takedown requests. Copyright infringement is what it's designed for. As you said, bona fide archiving happens on archive.org

I disagree that the purpose of archive.is is "Copyright infringement", I have argued the archive.org should not honor take down requests and should challenge them in court, as it ceased to be a true archive if at anytime anyone can just remove things they do not like from the archive. DMCA abuse on archive.org is a real problem for controversial issues today

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#275
post #210

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> Many people are robotic [...] going through the same steps day after day, file after file, and any change to the workflow is cause of extreme frustration, Work in semi-related process automation, and this . So much! Software engineers can't begin to understand what happens when you change a hotkey, when someone has been doing something 100 times a day for 10 years.

Using a hot key 100 times a day for 10 years sounds like exactly the kind of thing software engineers SHOULD understand. I heard a lot of anger from Vim users when Apple messed with the escape key.

My Experience is software engineers understand how users SHOULD use the software, which rarely matches how users DO use the software

Most of the time I experience a scenario of the engineer or support person saying "Show me what you are doing" only for the user to show some weird and non-logical (to the engineer) way of doing some task, and the engineer or support person replying "Well you should be doing it this other completely different way"

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#276
post #39

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I believe Fusion 360 is full AutoCAD engine with locked down GUI?

Fusion 360 was spun off inventor not Autocad, it also shares the same core with inventor - Autodesk ShapeManager.

AutoCAD also seems to use ShapeManager

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#277
post #243

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With Adobe I'm extremely worried about their acquisition of Algorithmic, the makes of Substance Painter and Substance Designer. I use these tools in 3D animation/texturing, they are truly fantastic tools. Before Adobe bought them, they offered a purchase option, now it's just subscriptions of course.

I have such a love/hate relationship with Adobe. Their software is so useful. I want to love it. But they basically infiltrate my entire computer in order to install/run it and I’ve been burned by their shady billing practices so many times I now have a prepaid Visa from CVS that’s exclusively for my Adobe subscription. I fundamentally do not understand how a company can simultaneously be so awesome and so awful.

When I was younger, I used to pirate expensive software that I couldn't afford. It's what got me into 3D graphics and graphic design at a young age. Now I'm older and using some of this software professionally, and usually, I'm more than happy to pay for it. But I'll never buy into Adobe's shady subscription model, or any other company that does this. When I pay for a software license, that version of the software should become mine, the same as when I buy any other product. If a company refuses me that option, I steal the software with zero remorse. The idea of renting software is ridiculous, especially when I have zero need for support services.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#278
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a hot key 100 times a day for 10 years sounds like exactly the kind of thing software engineers SHOULD understand. I heard a lot of anger from Vim users when Apple messed with the escape key.

In my experience (~10 years of doing this sort of work) software engineers typically understand how their users use the software in the abstract, but not in the actual experience. E.g. It is well understood that users rely on a hotkey "a lot." It is not understood that users are so familiar with a hotkey that, if you relocated it on the keyboard, productivity would decrease 40% for 3 months. That distinction is fairl…

UX design is done by designers and product managers. Developer just implemented ability to assign hot key X to function Y. How this ability used was not his/her concern.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#279
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps i'm being idealistic but if the cycle is that aggressive this screams for architects to start caring about buying FOSS. When you buy software it's an investment - you invest your time in integrating it into your workflow and your employees learning to use it... your investment is tied to the future of that software. If it's FOSS (funded), no amount of money autodesk throw at it can bury it's source code, buyi…

I think it's definitely possible. Look at Blender and GRASS GIS, some of the most successful open source projects among non-programmers of all time. Architecture tool is merely the midpoint between those too domains, right? :D

Blender was originally a closed-source product by Not a Number Technologies (NaN). After NaN went bankrupt, the creditors agreed to let Blender become released as open source for 100,000 €.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#280
post #198

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I always love comments like these, Having been through this cycle a few times at different companies, the bean counters always love OPEX until you move everything to OPEX causing that annual budget to explode then all of a sudden they want to "Reduce costs", so people start shifting things to CAPEX until that budget explodes then they want to "Reduce annual capital spend" so people start shifting thing back to opex..…

> bean counters and MBA's live in this mythical land where $100,000 over 5 years or $20,000 a year is some how different There are differences and they are far from mythical! A big one: Liquidity. If you spend $100,000 today, you all of a sudden have a $100,000 less in your bank account. That may limit what you and your team can do this year - because budgets are finite. If you have the option to pay $20,000 each yea…

lol, I figured it would be faster before a MBA responded about opportunity costs....

>>>Liquidity.

That really depends on how you budget, but for many things I have been involved in these are well known costs that can not simply be postponed really, while it may have some impact on Liquidity, if budgeted for property it would not no matter if it was lump sum or spread out. The effect on a 5 year picture is the same

>>Flexiblity

This is 100% false, SaaS Opex Spend is FAR FAR FAR less flexible than CAPEX spend in the IT Space, take for example Office 365 Vs ONPrem, with OnPrem I can forgo a Capital expense to upgrade some servers, EOL a SAN disk array a year later, or choose to stick on Office 2016 for another year if needed.

Office 365 you pay that bill or your services shut down. That is why company like AutoDesk has removed the ability to buy perpetual Licensing under a CapEx model and have moved to Subscription OpEx model, before if you wanted to Stay on the Previous version of Autocad sure you might take a security risk but the software still worked. Now you do not pay your annual licensing fee well your software no longer works

So no this new OpEx model is in no way more flexible, it more akin to ransomware, pay us or we lock you out

>>>Opportunity costs.

i will agree with opportunity costs. Still from a highly logical and engineering focus more than a Finance focus I will still look at $100k over 5 years or 20K annual to be the same...

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