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Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

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Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#11

Post by superchroma »

riedel wrote: post #8
superchroma wrote: post #2

I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know people will pay because they set the standards across many industries. In architecture, anyway, the proble…

Supporting FreeCAD [1] would be IMHO the way to go as they already provide both interfaces to BIM [2] and Blender [3]. Would be great if there were more architects or structural engineering companies that invest in open source. Maybe then universities would follow instead on building on education licenses that after graduation become very expensive. [1] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Donate [2] https://wiki.freecadweb.o…

Yeah, definitely. Blender is a shining example of what's possible, and people are starting to take notice, particularly in the cinema space.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#12

Post by superchroma »

Rackedup wrote: post #3
superchroma wrote: post #2

I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know people will pay because they set the standards across many industries. In architecture, anyway, the proble…

Blender is really nice but it isn't super easy to always get non-destructive/permanent modifications (but there might always be a way).

They're starting to lean into it now. Add-ons like HardOps have shown it's definitely possible, and I think there's a lot of interest in that space so they can rope in the parametric modelling guys.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#13

Post by wnkrshm »

superchroma wrote: post #11
riedel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supporting FreeCAD [1] would be IMHO the way to go as they already provide both interfaces to BIM [2] and Blender [3]. Would be great if there were more architects or structural engineering companies that invest in open source. Maybe then universities would follow instead on building on education licenses that after graduation become very expensive. [1] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Donate [2] https://wiki.freecadweb.o…

Yeah, definitely. Blender is a shining example of what's possible, and people are starting to take notice, particularly in the cinema space.

I wonder whether that has its downsides though - with Google, Apple etc. being involved in development I wonder whether that hollows out the core of participating developers and functionally makes the project dependent on paid employees.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#14

Post by doublesocket »

superchroma wrote: post #2

I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know people will pay because they set the standards across many industries. In architecture, anyway, the proble…

FWIW I've enjoyed using Rhino with VisualARQ for architectural work.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#15

Post by oliwarner »

narrator wrote: post #10

Adobe should come up with a competitor. QuarkXpress abused its customers badly with high license fees and hardware dongles and all sorts of stuff like that. When Adobe came out with InDesign, everyone switched and Quark lost its dominant position. Same thing happened to Microsoft in Mobile. People were so sick of their monopolistic behavior that they lost totally to Apple and Google when they came out with a competit…

Summoning Adobe to fix a monopoly feels... Perverse.

At a technical level, they might have the chops to build something from scratch, but they've more than abused their market position over the last two decades. We don't need another standard without interop.

Put the engineering into open source or open standards. We can't continue with software society relies on being locked in like this.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#16

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

superchroma wrote: post #2

I'd rather see firms chuck some money to perhaps Blender or something to get a viable alternative developed than send angry letters to the featureless monolith that is Autodesk. They're the market leader. They don't care. They already have firms by the metaphorical balls with astronomical licensing fees and know people will pay because they set the standards across many industries. In architecture, anyway, the proble…

> a lot of firms think Archicad isn't industry ready

It's similar in many other industries. Take InDesign, the current market leader in DTP. Say you are working on a book that has multiple indexes: index of places, index of people and so on. Well InDesign doesn't support that! This is not some fancy feature - you will find multiple indexes in many non-trivial books. But for some reason the most popular and supposedly advanced DTP solution on the planet doesn't support that and people need to use workarounds.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#17

Post by Arcanum-XIII »

narrator wrote: post #10

Adobe should come up with a competitor. QuarkXpress abused its customers badly with high license fees and hardware dongles and all sorts of stuff like that. When Adobe came out with InDesign, everyone switched and Quark lost its dominant position. Same thing happened to Microsoft in Mobile. People were so sick of their monopolistic behavior that they lost totally to Apple and Google when they came out with a competit…

The main thing also is that the interface of Indesign was year ahead of Quark for a small price. There wasn’t everything (at first typesetting a big book was hard), and it was lacking a lot of feature regarding copy editor cooperation. And no Git was not and his still not a solution for revision :) incopy is using text though, so…

But to be completely honest regarding indesign it took year to be enough for lot of shops.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#18

Post by jl6 »

The recent change from unlimited local simulations to pay-per-use cloud simulations was far worse than a mere price hike. It transformed a known, manageable cost into a variable cost that is going to impact users’ workflow as they learn to control it.

If I were the architecture industry, I’d be rapidly forming an industry consortium to develop an alternative. Otherwise, this supplier’s monopoly will continue to optimize pricing until all the industry’s profits flow to them.

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#19

Post by userbinator »

oliwarner wrote: post #15
narrator wrote: post #10

Adobe should come up with a competitor. QuarkXpress abused its customers badly with high license fees and hardware dongles and all sorts of stuff like that. When Adobe came out with InDesign, everyone switched and Quark lost its dominant position. Same thing happened to Microsoft in Mobile. People were so sick of their monopolistic behavior that they lost totally to Apple and Google when they came out with a competit…

Summoning Adobe to fix a monopoly feels... Perverse. At a technical level, they might have the chops to build something from scratch, but they've more than abused their market position over the last two decades. We don't need another standard without interop. Put the engineering into open source or open standards. We can't continue with software society relies on being locked in like this.

"An enemy of an enemy is a friend."

Re: Autodesk criticised by 35 named architects (2020)

#20

Post by lucumo »

This is only tangentially related, but former Autodesk CEO Carl Bass did an interview on Guy Raz' podcast Wisdom from the Top. The monopoly issue doesn't come up, but it could still be interesting to get a sense of the guy.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/08/1116377413/autodesk-carl-bass

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