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Autodesk criticised by architects

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Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#381

Post by patmorgan23 »

mcguire wrote: post #324
esperent wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Easy solution you either get A) all minor updates untill the next major version or B) free minor updates for X years.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#382

Post by IshKebab »

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?

At a complete wild guess I would say something like $50m.

(Obviously it depends what you mean by "usable" - I use it now, so in a sense it is already usable. I guess you mean to get to the point that businesses would rely on it.)

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#383

Post by mattkevan »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #378
cenal wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe bought Macromedia and killed off fireworks. I still run the last version they made. I know your pain. Once you learn how to do everything in an editor and they stop supporting it you need to either reinvest time into learning a new editor or in supporting the obsolete one. I’ve chosen the latter for now mostly because there doesn’t seem to be a clear winner in the market and I hate to keep investing time in lea…

Adobe bought Macromedia and killed off fireworks. I still run the last version they made. At least you can do that, with the shift to SaaS people are going to be out of luck when these projects get abandoned.

Yeah, that's why I'm still wary of using Figma.

Great though it is, I'm worried about all my designs going up in smoke if the company gets bought and shut down by Adobe or Google or someone.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#384

Post by tfinniga »

mianos wrote: post #356
tfinniga wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While this is true of programs like Rhino, it's not as true for fusion360. There are no NURBS in fusion360. I would guess that the fusion360 kernel is very focussed on deterministic solutions, specially being constraint based, where the errors in heuristics would multiply across the history. Interestingly, in situations where the math has more guesswork, as I think lofts and such are, fusion can be really quite bad.…

While Fusion 360 does have many non-NURBS procedural surfaces, they definitely also have NURBS. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to import an IGES or step file.

Using a solids kernel with procedural surfaces can help many cases, as you keep the modeling tree around and can recompute portions at higher tolerance as needed. However that's just another cumbersome workaround to the fundamental problem that the math doesn't have clean solutions.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#385

Post by Woberto »

namibj wrote: post #235
ramshanker wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Totally agree on TEKLA Structure. Their Concrete detailing also improved substantially in past few years.

Is there anything a non-professional can use for the following four usecases (separate software is ok): 1) Reinforced concrete structure design, with support for non-trivial surfaces (e.g. splines/Bezier curves/surfaces). 2) Non-finely-meshed (in comparison to local volume thickness) truss structures, ideally not just classic steel beams + welded/riveted joints, 3) but also aluminium (considering fatigue from non-sta…

Sounds like you might want to use something like finite element software, which is essentially what other programs do. FEniCS is an example of an open source library that could maybe help. People usually use something like ls-dyna or Abaqus

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#386

Post by namibj »

Woberto wrote: post #385
namibj wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything a non-professional can use for the following four usecases (separate software is ok): 1) Reinforced concrete structure design, with support for non-trivial surfaces (e.g. splines/Bezier curves/surfaces). 2) Non-finely-meshed (in comparison to local volume thickness) truss structures, ideally not just classic steel beams + welded/riveted joints, 3) but also aluminium (considering fatigue from non-sta…

Sounds like you might want to use something like finite element software, which is essentially what other programs do. FEniCS is an example of an open source library that could maybe help. People usually use something like ls-dyna or Abaqus

Yes, of course. But I'm specifically interested in the design side, because the analysis side is already handled by open and/or free software, due to it being so close to what a small university research group might just publish or adapt for unconventional FEM analysis.

Design software is much less easy to find, though.

Re: Autodesk criticised by architects

#387

Post by Woberto »

namibj wrote: post #386
Woberto wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you might want to use something like finite element software, which is essentially what other programs do. FEniCS is an example of an open source library that could maybe help. People usually use something like ls-dyna or Abaqus

Yes, of course. But I'm specifically interested in the design side, because the analysis side is already handled by open and/or free software, due to it being so close to what a small university research group might just publish or adapt for unconventional FEM analysis. Design software is much less easy to find, though.

Ah, sorry. Have you tried rhino 3d? There are some nice additions to it like grasshopper
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