Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autodesk criticised by architects

extranetevolution.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 387 posts

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#321

Post by jessaustin »

tacticus wrote: post #169
jalk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was looking into creating some tooling for the construction industry perhaps 15 years ago as drawings were send over emails with all the version nightmares that creates. Some Danish government agency had a ‘Digital Construction’ project going on so I initially thought I was too late. After a couple of years all they had amounted to was creating a ton of convoluted documents defining common CAD drawing layers. I’ve si…

There are a fair few doc management for construction companies around now. So i'd be surprised if any large project wasn't using a managed or self hosted one today. and several of them have fancy tools that can pull in 3d models and the like. (oracle bought one that i worked at)

I've hired an architect at a "big" construction firm (they regularly manage multistory hospital construction) to design some "medium" buildings and remodels. When I visited his office to talk through some change orders (I'm thinking this was about three years ago?), it was all Windows shared folders and carefully constructed file names.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#322

Post by ethbro »

brutt wrote: post #278
ethbro wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've worked at both kinds of shops. I'd never work at somewhere that follows the above strictly again.

It's been my experience that you get crappy software, produced with great effort and much gnashing of teeth, if your developers don't know your users.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#323

Post by rurban »

alkonaut wrote: post #253
rurban wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreDWG comes to rescue, and for better formats JSON is widely used.

There are multiple open reverse-engineer efforts, but Autodesk changes the format every single year, and customers expect to be able to read drawings immediately in the latest format. This is deliberate by Autodesk I think. LibreDWG is also GPL I believe with no option for commercial?

Autodesk changes the format only every 3 years, and since r2007 the changes were minimal. Haven't looked into the r2021 changes yet.

Afaik only LibreDWG matches Acad and ODA/Theiga, the rest does only DXF, no DWG write and a minimal numbers of objects.

LibreDWG only offers GPL, but many CAD packages thrive with the GPL: Qcad, FreeCad, SolveSpace, Blender.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#324

Post by mcguire »

esperent wrote: post #277
elliekelly wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

The problem with this: updates. You buy a version. They fix the bugs you report and release a new version. Do you pay full price for it? No, it's just an update. You'll pay a reduced upgrade price, but you want it for free. Your price probably doesn't pay for ongoing upgrades and might not pay for the updates. So no one is paying for updates. Every new version has to be sufficiently improved to get everyone to buy a new copy. Or the company could release a version and coast on it until revenue stops coming in.

Renting software is ridiculous, but at least the incentives are kind of pointed in the right direction.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#325

Post by rurban »

fsloth wrote: post #258
rurban wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays you don't have to pay ODA anymore when can use GPL-3 LibreDWG. In the end opensource CAD will win, but it's still a long march.

If the options are to hook up to GPL-3 or pay ODA quite few software products probably go the ODA way still. ODA has quite a large development org to support their stack. I presume if maximum feature parity with DXF was a requirement then ODA would still win. Open source is really great for innovation. I don't see much innovation or excitement in reverse engineering a stone-age proprietary black-box format. It would…

DXF is a too stupid and irregular format, JSON is much more regular and easier to read and write.

There are several open source alternative formats, but I never warmed up to them. They look very overarchitectured, like XML. But maybe I'll have to do some IFC converters later.

With all the constraints, dynamic blocks, mesh and solid formats it's very diverse, and Acad's new constraints system is extremely baroque and undocumented. A big C++ mess. Dynblocks and meshes also.

ACIS is extremely nice though. I recently reverse engineered their new ShapeManager format, which is just binary ACIS (SAB) plus history (ACSH).

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#326

Post by alkonaut »

rurban wrote: post #323
alkonaut wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple open reverse-engineer efforts, but Autodesk changes the format every single year, and customers expect to be able to read drawings immediately in the latest format. This is deliberate by Autodesk I think. LibreDWG is also GPL I believe with no option for commercial?

Autodesk changes the format only every 3 years, and since r2007 the changes were minimal. Haven't looked into the r2021 changes yet. Afaik only LibreDWG matches Acad and ODA/Theiga, the rest does only DXF, no DWG write and a minimal numbers of objects. LibreDWG only offers GPL, but many CAD packages thrive with the GPL: Qcad, FreeCad, SolveSpace, Blender.

They release their own library (ObjectARX/RealDWG) yearly in sync with the AutoCad releases, and at least call the format “DWg 2018“,2019,2020 and so on. The library (I think) refuses to open a 2019 file with version 2018. Even if the problem just occurred every 3 years that too would be unacceptable of course.

We are developing a proprietary bespoke program, it’s not possible to use GPL style licenses, nor will the niche filfilled by it ever be filled by an OSS program.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#327

Post by heimatau »

StandardFuture wrote: post #102
heimatau wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an emerging EE, I fully agree. I honestly believe it could be done with solid quality. Early today I saw this very old video of Elon at SpaceX with their design software [1]. It's amazing to me that this video was six years ago. Revit is the prized gem. Whomever creates it, focus on Revit and focus on the pain-points. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S-zEBY

As someone who was working in the physical engineering world when that video came out ... I am not convinced that design software specifically actually empowers engineers to be any faster at designing new and novel engineering (over pen and paper -- with isometric style drawings, etc.). Both software and paper design require a huge amount of training upfront and a huge amount of effort per project. Anything that is s…

> I am not convinced that design software specifically actually empowers engineers to be any faster at designing new and novel engineering

I don't adhere to a luddite attitude. It's my opinion Autodesk's tools are deeply lacking and this is based on my experience and knowledge on software.

When I first starting learning AutoCAD, I was very annoyed at the slow snail pace to designing things (as to pen/paper). I used to be a web designer/developer for a handful of years, those tools are much more refined and allow a person to do more with less time.

Revit is a step in the right direction for the building industry but it has many drawbacks too. I strongly believe this is due to lack of competition and innovation on Autodesk's part. Adobe should be seen as the model. They've developed many tools that empower it's users and they continue to push the envelop forward.

Autodesk will be unseated, if they don't continue to push their tools forward like Adobe has with many of it's products. The software isn't terribly hard, just needs a lot of investment upfront for a MVP competitor that chips away the market, then reinvest back into improving the tools with AI/DL/ML. I.e. One agency may use specifically a specific contractor, the AI recognizes revisions and highlights them to the architect. Or using specific materials. Etc. Etc.

Construction industry is stuck in the 1940s, IMHO. Hopefully a competitor arises to bring it into the 21st century.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#328

Post by runxel »

imgabe wrote: post #177
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.?

The network effects are strong and it is a big hurdle. The problem is the software isn't just used by one team at one company. Architects hire subconsultants- MEP engineers, Structural Engineers, Civil Engineers, Landscape designers, Lighting designers, many others. They all need to share files so whatever you make has to be compatible with whatever everyone else is using (which is probably Revit). There are some com…

No wonder all the smaller AEC software firms out there are pushing OpenBIM very hard. If you think you need to convert an Archicad .pln into a Revit .rvt you're doing it wrong and essentially playing into the hands of Autodesk.

We really need to stop with all that siloing going on. OpenBIM with IFC and BCF are the only way of going forward.

Revit is a mediocre product in all categories, but that's the thing: People are using Revit since it somehow can do all the stuff a bit. Architects love Archicad because it's a software tailored to their needs and far superior to Revit in that domain, but if you're a consultant doing e.g. MEP work you will be probably not so happy. You still won't be while using Revit, but since "everybody" is using it at least you won't have to deal with OpenBIM and correct file workflows.

Source: I'm an architect myself.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#329

Post by tfinniga »

auggierose wrote: post #38
donquichotte wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also remarkable that while in many areas with "theory-heavy" software development (e.g. compilers), the open-source solutions are arguably better than the proprietary ones, this is not at all the case for mechanical CAD software. I wonder whether the overlap of people who can program, people who know enough math to develop a mechanical CAD software and the people who care about mechanical CAD is just too small f…

I guess people who can do the math would like to get paid properly for their efforts.

I think a big part of why this happens is that a lot of the fundamental math of CAD doesn't have good answers - everything is heuristics and approximations to within a tolerance.

You can get a simple NURBS kernel up and running in maybe 2 dev-years. But getting good heuristics created for all of the common edge cases is what takes the huge number of dev-decades, and what you pay for with one of the commercial kernels. You won't even know what the common edge-cases are until you start getting user reports of things failing, so you'll need to be doing this development with a large community of users.

There is no closed-form formula to tell how long a NURBS curve is. Offsets of NURBS curves are not NURBS curves. Likewise, intersecting NURBS surfaces produces intersection curves that are not possible to represent as NURBS curves.

So something as simple as a fillet is impossible to exactly produce in like 3 ways. Booleans then add the joy of topology to the mix. It's all heuristics and approximations and dirty hacks.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#330

Post by Tallasatree »

clusterfish wrote: post #69
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"…

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'm about as deep in the user space as you can get, and it would take YEARS for a new company to have a proven record before my company would even consider adopting it. years. And not only would it take years, it would need to prove that it is better than AutoDesk, not as good, better. Most likely, orders of magnitude better. We are so far deeply entrenched into AutoDesk ecosystem that any change would probably be on the scale of decades.
Post reply on HN