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Autodesk criticised by architects

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Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#301

Post by neutronicus »

tomxor wrote: post #236
poseva wrote: post #50

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 liste…

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 work for a competitor in this space, and we make a living off of poaching AutoDesk customers. We're owned by a pretty deep-pocketed holding company as well, so I don't think we're going to get bought.

IMO it's not just about "values of architects". They're a population that does cognitively demanding work (so polished UX is of fundamental importance) that tends to have more of a fine arts background than a software background (so right-to-modify does nothing for them).

FOSS is just ... a bad deal for them. They want someone they can call and yell at when they're on a deadline and the software isn't working, and they want tools that get out of their way.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#302

Post by neutronicus »

rbanffy wrote: post #297
IshKebab wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Architecture tools are way more niche. I think a better place to look is mechanical CAD: how many decent open source mechanical CAD programs are there? Approximately one: SolveSpace. And that is quite basic - even simple stuff like bevels is not supported. Absolutely nobody whose livelihood depended on it would use it. It's just too niche and too complicated for there to be enough developers willing to writing it for…

How much money would be needed to turn SolveSpace into something usable?

Call Siemens and ask what they charge for Parasolid. Hint: you have to ask, so...

Computational Geometry is hard. FOSS CG Kernels are not going to spring from the ether. CGAL exists, but its target audience is CG researchers. OpenCASCADE exists, but it's really a loss-leader for proprietary extensions and consulting contracts.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#303

Post by Dirlewanger »

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…

It's all about bilking customers. It's the natural endgame for capitalism. Same idea with planned obsolesence. It's why big ticket items like washing machines and fridges last a fraction of the length as their counterparts from 60 years ago.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#304

Post by krewast »

syshum wrote: post #280
krewast wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 >…

> That really depends on how you budget

It depends on how big your budget is. If it's tight, the problem of purchasing expensive licenses at once may be a blocker - bad for the buyer AND the seller!

> 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.

I don't see how this proves that SaaS is not flexible? You also forgot to account for the necessary expenses to run all this On-Prem stuff. You need an expensive team that you pay on a monthly basis --> OPEX

> Now you do not pay your annual licensing fee well your software no longer works

I agree with you that this sucks.

> 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...

You can look at it this way but that still doesn't make it (not even "highly logical") the same. Sorry.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#305

Post by neutronicus »

jfindley wrote: post #256
twelvechairs wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not just Autodesk, all big software shops tend towards low innovation. Look at Adobe, ESRI, even Microsoft office etc. Core products often haven't changed appreciably in 20 years - the business/money isn't in innovation, it is in having proprietary file formats that are industry standards and bundling big packages of software together that makes it hard to shift off the platform.

Whilst that's true, there's also a question of degree. Revit, which is the source of complaint here, takes long enough to open your file you might as well go make a sandwich while it does so. The developers only found out that CPUs have multiple cores somewhere around 2017, and still haven't really worked out how to actually use more than one core for anything much. They still appear to be largely unclear what a "GPU…

Ha. I work on a competitor and our story is similar.

We're a little more aggressive with multi-threading but you have to understand these code-bases are massive legacy things whose value comes from a ton of business logic accreted over 25 years.

I assure you I've heard of multiple CPU cores (before this I did high-performance physics simulations across thousands of cores) but I still don't have the first idea how to get something to execute on a background thread in this codebase.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#306

Post by Blackthorn »

poseva wrote: post #50

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 liste…

RIP to SoftImage. And we're all worried about the future of Inventor. The only reason I use that at all was because of the generous student license...other companies don't seem to do that, which feels like a giant mistake.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#307

Post by tomxor »

neutronicus wrote: post #301
tomxor wrote: 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 work for a competitor in this space, and we make a living off of poaching AutoDesk customers. We're owned by a pretty deep-pocketed holding company as well, so I don't think we're going to get bought. IMO it's not just about "values of architects". They're a population that does cognitively demanding work (so polished UX is of fundamental importance) that tends to have more of a fine arts background than a software…

I get where you are coming from, but when I say FOSS i do not necessarily mean a "FOSS project"...

I can imagine when it's very niche with a small user base, you probably do need closed source + for profit company developing it with a high per-license fee to produce anything of useful quality. What I am suggesting is _both_. The FOSS part is purely licensing, as an insurance policy for the users, and to make acquisitions repugnant to the likes of Autodesk (since all that would achieve is funding the software that competes with theirs)... I know that is far from easy to achieve and there is no straight forward business model for that - like I said, i'm probably being too idealistic.

[edit]

I wonder if such a legal mechanism exists which automatically triggers FOSS licensing upon acquisition or bankruptcy (i.e what happened to blender, but as a requirement)... that would prevent takeovers that do not benefit users as a kind of legally binding promise while also sidestepping the issue of being profitable while developing niche FOSS software.

If legally feasible this is a nice promise any currently existing software company can add to their products without changing their business model.

In fact thinking about this, as someone who pretty much never buys software anymore, not because I am unwilling to spend money, but because the experience of having the rug pulled from under me too many times frankly makes closed source unpalatable to me - this would make buying (currently) non-free closed source software a lot more comfortable again.

It also feels like a good strategy to combat anti-competitive monopolies like autodesk from destroying choice in software.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#308

Post by jfim »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
sfvisser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dassault does both Catia and Solidworks, and as far as I know, they're French.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#309

Post by rbanffy »

neutronicus wrote: post #302
rbanffy wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money would be needed to turn SolveSpace into something usable?

Call Siemens and ask what they charge for Parasolid. Hint: you have to ask, so... Computational Geometry is hard. FOSS CG Kernels are not going to spring from the ether. CGAL exists, but its target audience is CG researchers. OpenCASCADE exists, but it's really a loss-leader for proprietary extensions and consulting contracts.

Maybe they can spring from a consortium of interested architects.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#310

Post by MiroF »

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…

Agreed. Blender as of when I last used it (1.5 years ago) is not usable on serious projects.
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