Category: <span>Announcement</span>

Category: Announcement

Announcement, Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service, dear Autodesk, Other Sites, Web Stuff

What to do while the forums are down, dear Autodesk?

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In common with most online services, the Autodesk forums are down for maintenance from time to time. That will be happening this weekend: Announcement: The forums will be unavailable starting 1 p.m. on Friday, April 6 (Pacific time) while we implement the forum redesign. We will be back online at 9 a.m. on Monday, April 9, or sooner. I really wish Autodesk would act like a company with an international focus and use universally understood time standards for its announcements. Allow me to translate for those people outside North America for whom “Pacific time” means nothing. Pacific Time (UTC-7) UTC Off line: …

Announcement, Autodesk, Bricsys, Documentation, Win

Heidi Hewett – Autodesk loses, Bricsys gains

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The most excellent Heidi Hewett was, bafflingly, one of the big-name casualties in Autodesk’s latest experience cull. What was already a big loss to Autodesk has been compounded by her arrival at Autodesk’s most significant AutoCAD competitor, Bricsys. Heidi has accepted a position as User Success Manager with the Belgian company. I don’t blame her. Bricsys is where the action is. Here’s her opening salvo: For well over a decade, the world was told that the .dwg file format is not suitable for advanced design workflows. It can’t be used for mechanical design, and it certainly can’t be used for …

Announcement, BricsCAD, Bricsys, CAD Management, Travel

Bricsys 2018 comes to London

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I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Bricsys Conference in 2016 (Munich) and 2017 (Paris). This year’s conference will be in another great European city, London, on 23 and 24 October. Other details have not yet been revealed, but will be posted on the Bricsys Conference page as time goes on. You can sign up on that page for email notifications. This is a great opportunity for British companies looking at reducing costs and improving efficiency in their CAD and BIM operations to get an idea of what BricsCAD and related applications can do. If you’re further afield, it’s still …

Announcement, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk kills ArtCAM, proves subscription is terrible for customers

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This story goes back over 50 years. A British company called Delcam was founded in 1965 and developed many products. These included ArtCAM, an application for producing 3D parts using 2D artwork as a base. It won a Queen’s Award for Innovation in 2003. In 2014, Autodesk acquired Delcam for approximately USD$286 Million and ArtCAM (among others) became an Autodesk product. As with all Autodesk products, sales of perpetual licenses ceased a couple of years ago. Owners of perpetual licenses were encouraged to ditch them and switch to subscription instead. Financially encouraged, with “discounts” and promises of price rises for …

Announcement, Autodesk

Autodesk has lost some of its best people

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If you follow certain people on social media this may not be news to you, but Autodesk has just suffered a shocking loss. People at SOLIDWORKS World were amazed to see Lynn Allen, probably the most famous person in CAD, and for decades the face of Autodesk, in attendance. Image credit: Craig Black via Facebook No, she wasn’t spying on the competition; she’s praised aspects of what Dassault is doing and has described the event as “pretty amazing”. In her own words, she’s now a free agent. Lynn, a highly professional and entertaining presenter, was undoubtedly Autodesk’s biggest drawcard. No …

Announcement, Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Fail, Maintenance, Other Autodesk Products, Rental, Spin, Subscription

Too soon? Autodesk cancels 30% subscription price increase

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Autodesk had announced plans to increase some subscription prices by 30% on 7 November 2017. Resellers have already passed that information on to customers. Here’s the detail of what was going to happen: Three Important Changes to Subscriptions with Multi-User Access Autodesk is increasing prices on subscriptions with multi-user access to reflect the value and flexibility that sharing licenses provides our customers. As part of this change, we will stop selling new subscriptions with multi-user access for select products. Beginning November 7, 2017: Prices for new and renewing subscriptions with multi-user access for most individual products are increasing by ~17-19%. …

Announcement, Autodesk, Customer Service, Development, Fail, Other Autodesk Products

Yet more Autodesk software falls off the perch

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Just when I thought I was having a nice vacation from tending the Autodesk Graveyard (see also Autodesk products are falling like parrots), another bunch of former best-thing-ever products have bitten the dust. This time, it’s Autodesk’s Gameware middleware products that have been read the Last Rites. Scaleform, Beast, HumanIK and Navigation can no longer be purchased or maintained. If you used these products, support will cease as soon as your existing maintenance agreement expires. More details on cgchannel.com. That leaves Stingray as the only surviving middleware product (for now). That’s probably only still alive because Autodesk wants the halo …

Announcement, AutoCAD, BricsCAD, Bug, Customer Service, Fail, Navel Gazing, Performance, Pictures, Polls, Web Stuff, Win

What’s changed at blog nauseam and why

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Last week, blog nauseam died. This post explains the background to that. You’re probably not that interested, so feel free to skip to the dot points that list the changes that have resulted. The problem was a faulty WordPress installation was using excessive resources. This caused severe performance issues and resulted in the server software stepping in to throttle the site to prevent more widespread problems. The trigger for the WordPress fault has not been determined and may never be. This is somewhat akin to an old AutoCAD drawing suddenly going bad for unknown reasons. The problem may date back …

Announcement, Fail, Greetings, Web Stuff, Win

blog nauseam has moved!

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My apologies for the inconvenience, but please adjust your bookmarks! The home page URL for blog nauseam is now:

https://www.cadnauseam.com/blogs/

The old URL of http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/ is now permanently inoperative, along with all URLs based on it. The cad nauseam URL of www.cadnauseam.com is unchanged.

The content from the old blog has been carried across and can be found at related URLs. For example, one of the most popular posts is AutoCAD 2017 – Putting things back to “normal”. The URL for this was:

www.blog.cadnauseam.com/2016/07/19/autocad-2017-putting-things-back-to-normal

The new URL is now:

www.cadnauseam.com/2016/07/19/autocad-2017-putting-things-back-to-normal

So all you need to do to is remove “.blog” from the old URL and it will work. I will automate this process if possible but there are complications preventing that in the short term.

Also missing in the short term are polls and image galleries. I’m working on those. If you have any other problems with the site, please let me know by commenting on this post. If you have trouble commenting, please hit me up on Twitter.

I’ll explain some of the other changes around here in a later post.

Announcement, Web Stuff

blog nauseam maintenance issues

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For as yet unknown reasons, this blog went down a couple of days ago. The basics are back but it’s not all there yet. There may be performance issues for a while. Please be patient while I work with some people to get things back how they should be. I would like to thank all of those people who informed me of this issue using various means. I appreciate it!

Announcement, Autodesk, Video

Autodesk now has only one CEO

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The speculation is over. Autodesk no longer has Schrödinger’s CEO. Elon Musk has missed out, the winner is… Andrew “Baked Beans” Anagnost!   Here’s the press release and here’s a letter from Andrew. The other obvious internal candidate, Amar Hanspal, has decided to leave the company. Resigned on the spot, so I’m told. As the financial rewards for winning the CEO race are akin to winning the lottery, coming second must have been a major disappointment to product guy Amar, who I first met when he was helping to drive the hugely successful Release 14 program. Best wishes to Amar …

Announcement, Autodesk, CAD Management, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk subscription offer begins today

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It’s 15 June, which means all of those millions of Autodesk customers with perpetual licenses on maintenance can now give those licenses back to Autodesk and rent them back for about the same amount. Tempted? Despite Autodesk’s best efforts to sell this deal as a silk purse, it’s a real pig’s ear. Artificially raising maintenance prices doesn’t make the subscription changeover deal any more attractive. It only serves to annoy those customers too sensible to throw away their valuable perpetual licences in return for a temporary price freeze and the vaguest of promises not to gouge you in future. History …

Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Fun, Other Products, Spin

Autodesk acquires Angry Birds developer Rovio (repost)

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This post, originally published on 1 April 2012, brings back fond memories. That’s mainly because of this tweet from Carl Bass: Autodesk announced today that it had welcomed Rovio Entertainment into the Autodesk fold. Following a US$2.6 billion acquisition, the publisher of mega hit video game Angry Birds is now Autodesk’s Mobile Entertainment division based in Espoo, Finland. “This is a tremendously exciting development for Autodesk going forward,” said Autodesk CEO Carl Bass. “Rovio is the world leader in mobile entertainment software,” he added, “so for Autodesk to have access to that market and that technology opens up a whole new …

Announcement, Autodesk, Rant, Rental, Spin, Subscription, Video

Video nicely captures Autodesk customer sentiment

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In this video starting at 42:21, Greg from Pixel Fondue had a few words to say about Autodesk’s attempt to price-force perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental). I think he captures the current Autodesk customer mood quite nicely.

Here are some of the highlights from Greg and others:

44:36 – If you’re gonna eff me, know my name.

45:20 – The only thing they forgot to attach to this was the head of a horse.

46:54 – If they didn’t think it was a tough sell, they wouldn’t have written a 2000 word essay…

49:14 – This is a trade-in, and they’re looking to take this [Entertainment Creation Suite]. So I give you this, this $12,000 investment … I give it back to you, plus like another $1,000 … and you give me the exact same thing. Except I no longer own it.

51:02 – Hi! Give us your thing you bought from us, we’ll rent it back to you… dumbass!

58:49 – It’s OK to be pissed, and Autodesk needs to know that people are pissed. So, Teresa, people are pissed. That’s a bullshit letter. Be honest with us.

Announcement, Autodesk, Other Blogs, Rental, Spin, Subscription

Autodesk starts answering subscription questions, but many remain

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Getting worthwhile non-rubbery information out of Autodesk on the maintenance to subscription push has been like pulling teeth. Well, one tooth has popped out now. There are a rotten mouthful still to go, but some progress is being made. Here is the latest Autodesk communication on this subject. While it gives the impression of providing transparency, there’s still not enough there to provide enough certainty to convince any but the most naive customers to throw away their perpetual licenses. If you try pumping Autodesk’s numbers into my costing spreadsheet, you can get so far and then you’re back to guesswork …

Announcement, Autodesk, CAD Management, Other Autodesk Products, Other Products, Rental, Subscription

One invitation to Autodesk and another to Autodesk’s competitors

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Dear Autodesk PR person, you are undoubtedly aware that I have published a series of posts that detail exactly why switching from maintenance to subscription is a bad deal. If you believe anything I have written to be in error, feel free to contact me with what you believe to be the correct information. I intend to publish an extensive detailed summary on Monday 13 March, with or without your input. You know where to find me, over to you. Dear Autodesk-competitor PR person, if you are providing any kind of special offer to entice disgruntled Autodesk customers over to …

Announcement, Autodesk, Comments, Rental, Subscription

Chat to Autodesk about being pushed onto rental

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I’ll post later about Autodesk’s oft–predicted–here but just-announced plan to use price increases to push you out of your perpetual licenses, and the execrable spin being used to sell it. This post is just to let you know that Autodesk has kindly provided a forum in which you can discuss this issue. Why not wander over there and have your say? Autodesk is deaf and blind on this subject so it won’t make a difference, but at least you might feel better to have your say and let others know they’re not alone. Here’s the link to the Moving to …

Announcement, Autodesk

Carl Bass resigns

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I only met Carl Bass once, and that was when I gatecrashed his party in 2006. Seemed like a nice guy. Didn’t kick me out. So now one of the worst-kept secrets in the CAD industry, Carl Bass’s impending departure from Autodesk, has now come to pass. Time to end this chapter & write next. Proud of what we’ve done together @autodesk in great hands, strong position https://t.co/gRXy0YWWGj — Carl Bass (@carlbass) February 7, 2017 At the Bricsys Conference in Munich last October, industry observers and Carl’s former colleagues were all aware Carl’s departure was looming. They were pondering only …

Announcement, Autodesk, Rental, Spin, Subscription

Autodesk perpetual license owners to get screwed big-time

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Hidden in amongst a bunch of the usual highly dubious subscription statements from Carl Bass is an announcement that spells doom for Autodesk perpetual license owners. I will resist the temptation to skewer Carl’s spin (for now) because this announcement is much more important: Bass also confirmed that the company plans to converge the two existing subscription models — maintenance and product subscriptions — into a single offering over the next two years. “If you look out to fiscal year 2020, we want to be in a place where, first of all, we have a single kind of offering with …