OK, that sounds [...]]]> As I’ve already discussed, one of the areas where CAD on the Cloud shows potential is in handling specific tasks that require performing intensive calculations that are suitable for sharing among many processors. That sounds great in theory, and a lot of Cloud marketing (e.g. Virtually Infinite Computing) emphasises that point.

OK, that sounds promising, but how does it pan out in real life? One problem dissuading me from finding out is that Autodesk is being very restrictive with access to many of its Autodesk Cloud products (I’d probably throw a few sample render jobs into the Cloud and compare the performance, but I’m not the right kind of Subscription customer so I’m not allowed). Another problem is that I’m not qualified to review things like structural engineering software where the greatest computational potential appears to lie. Fortunately, Alex Bausk is qualified, so it was interesting to read his review of Autodesk’s Project Storm software.

It’s important to point out here that anything Autodesk with ‘Project’ in the name is not a finished product. It’s an Autodesk Labs thing, designed to attract feedback rather than use in production. I very much approve of this process. It’s one area in which I’m happy to endorse the way Autodesk is approaching the whole Cloud thing, and has several benefits over the flawed private Beta process that Autodesk uses for its mainstream products such as AutoCAD.

The downside for Autodesk when it comes to doing pre-release things publicly is that the criticism can be public, too. For example, selected from Alex’s review:

…the product is, for reasons unknown, available only in selected countries…

…utterly meaningless popups…

Options for analysis settings are, to put it short, appalling.

Project Storm is nothing more than a web envelope for our good old ARSA package. It is basically the same “Robot link” that reviteers have already had for quite a long time…

But the software’s practical use is extremely tiny, to the point of no use at all. You may surely forfeit all hope to do anything with it that would even remotely be relevant to all the “cloud analysis” hype in videos, intros and announcements.

I was unable to make any use of Storm with the sample models that come packed with Revit Structure and Robot Structural Analysis. To feed these default, Autodesk-made models to Storm, some really disruptive editing had to be made that involved deleting whole parts of the model, rendering it practically useless, only able to demonstrate how the process is meant to work.

Ouch! OK, so far it’s mainly just pointing out how half-baked the product is at this stage. Given that it’s a Project and not a finished product, that’s not so bad. It’s shipping products and features that are half-baked that I object to, and Autodesk has certainly produced a few of those. Anyway, here’s the bit I found particularly interesting:

Analysis speed, to a surprise, isn’t looking any good compared to desktop. The Storm’s cloud web analysis is extremely slow, likely because the server would yield a tiny fraction of its resources to your particular task.

In other words, the cloud speed and resource claim in case of Project Storm is no more than a standard cloud computing mantra.

…cloud calculations took around four minutes for this simple model, compared to fraction of a second using desktop…

What does this all mean? It could mean that Alex forgot to turn on the Ludicrous Speed toggle. It could mean that Autodesk is doing this experiment on the cheap and hasn’t paid for enough resources to make it work well. If so, that would be pretty short-sighted, and if Carl wants this Cloud thing to impress people he should sign off on a bunch more cash for Scott’s server farm budget. It could mean that this type of calculation is unsuited to parallel processing, in which case it’s probably not a great candidate for a Cloud product. Or it could mean that the calculation parts of this software haven’t been done properly yet, and everything will fly like the wind as soon as the developers get the hang of things.

Or maybe, just maybe, it means that the reality of Cloud computing isn’t quite as infinitely powerful as the hype makes out.

A few [...]]]> Using your suggestions and a few of my own, I have added two polls for you to select what are, in your opinion, the best and worst features ever added to AutoCAD. To help us find The Answer, there are 42 items in each poll, from which you can choose up to three.

A few items (e.g. Action Recorder) made it into both lists, while several items in the ‘worst’ list (e.g. 2012 Array, Ribbon, Annotative Scaling) were suggested multiple times. It will be interesting to see how the poll results pan out.

I’ll keep my opinions to myself for a while, as I’d like your input and [...]]]> Audience participation time, I think. A comment on one of AutoCAD 2012′s new features recently set me thinking about what were the worst features ever introduced to AutoCAD. That in turn got me thinking about what were the best.

I’ll keep my opinions to myself for a while, as I’d like your input and don’t want to influence it. Please add a comment with your list of what you consider the best three features ever added to AutoCAD and the worst three. If you can’t think of three of each, you can submit less, but please don’t submit more. By all means discuss at length the things you love or loathe, but make it clear what you’re submitting by using a clear format like this (meaningless examples only):

Best:
1. Content Explorer
2. Online Help
3. Nudge

Worst:
1. AutoLISP
2. Transparent zoom and pan
3. Paper/model space

What do the words “feature”, “best” and “worst” mean? I’ll leave that for you to decide for yourself. You might consider “worst” to be something that’s a bad idea, poorly implemented, slow, inefficient, poorly documented, bloated, buggy, half-baked in the short or long term, clueless in some other way, or some or all of the above. It’s up to you.

When I have enough submissions, I’ll collate the most popular (and unpopular) features into a pair of polls for you all to vote on. Have fun!

Edit: I have now added the polls and closed comments on this post.

After I managed to overcome Autodesk’s obstructive download manger and download AutoCAD 2012, it became available on the Subscription site (when that site wasn’t running unusably slowly). Or it became kind-of available. Here’s [...]]]> Note: this post is not an April fool’s joke. It may be ridiculous and hard to believe, but unfortunately it’s all true.

After I managed to overcome Autodesk’s obstructive download manger and download AutoCAD 2012, it became available on the Subscription site (when that site wasn’t running unusably slowly). Or it became kind-of available. Here’s what is actually available:

• AutoCAD 2012 Multilingual 32 bit
  Download File Size: 2,080,558,319 bytes (1,984.2 MB)
• AutoCAD 2012 English Korean Traditional-Chinese Simplified-Chinese Win 64bit
  Download File Size: 2,240,915,999 bytes (2,137.1 MB)

These file sizes are roughly double those of the AutoCAD 2012 English files I’ve already downloaded from the trial page and installed. The 32-bit English file is 1,144,011,680 bytes, or 55% of the size of what the Subscription site is trying to offer me.

Why? Because the Subscription downloads contain three bonus Asian language packs. It has apparently escaped Autodesk’s notice that Australia is an English-speaking country, and that the ability to install a Korean version of AutoCAD 2012 isn’t going to be spectacularly useful here. Duh!

There was a a distribution fiasco last year when Autodesk couldn’t make up its mind which AutoCAD 2011 language variant Australian users were supposed to use. This resulted in weeks of delays, uncertainty and disrupted shipments. This year, there’s less uncertainty. Somebody has made a firm decision about what we’re getting, right from the start. What a shame it’s the wrong one, and it makes Autodesk look utterly clueless.

Just in case you’re wondering, the AutoCAD 2012 English from the trial page installs and works fine, correctly detecting that I’m in Australia and presenting the correct legal information. The installation also registers and authorises correctly using the serial number provided on the Subscription site. No problems there, then.

What, then, is the reason for the massive download bloat? Is it really just stupidity, or is there some legitimate reason for it? I’m informed that installing the English version of 2012 in Australia may cause some problems with Migration when upgrading to 2013. I am unconcerned about this for two reasons. First, I’m sure migrating from 2012 English to 2013 English will work just as well here as it does elsewhere in the world. it’s not as if the Migration utility has to invert the bits or anything for Down Under users. Second, I have avoided Migration anyway since AutoCAD 2006, when “improvements” rendered it effectively unusable to me.

Exactly how far do they move? Let’s try it, shall we. First time, the move was about 4.5565 units. Zoom around a bit and try again. This [...]]]> If you preselect some objects in AutoCAD 2012 and hold down [Ctrl], then the objects will move a bit if you hit an arrow key. Great, cool!

Exactly how far do they move? Let’s try it, shall we. First time, the move was about 4.5565 units. Zoom around a bit and try again. This time, it’s about 11.6677 units. Zoom around a bit more and it’s different again. And again. What’s actually happening is that the Nudge feature is moving the objects by 3 pixels. What? Since when has AutoCAD dealt with object location in terms of pixels? Since 2012 came out. Does object snap help? No. So you can expect to see a bunch more drawings that have been eyed in. “Looks near enough to me!”

OK, so you can turn Snap on and have the objects nudged around in a more rational way, or just ignore the feature altogether. But that’s not going to help you clean up the messy drawings that are now going to come your way for editing. Of course, some people have never needed any help to make messy drawings, but those that needed a little nudge in that direction have just been given it.

In a move that I can only applaud, Autodesk has now published its own list of missing [...]]]> You may remember my pre-release speculation about what was likely to be missing from the Mac version of AutoCAD 2011. It turns out that my list was pretty accurate as far as it went, but very incomplete.

In a move that I can only applaud, Autodesk has now published its own list of missing Mac features. It includes this statement:

Although AutoCAD 2011 for Mac is based on AutoCAD 2011, it was written to be a native Mac application. As such, it is a new and separate product and not simply a port from the Windows version. In the first release of this new product, there are some features and functionality that exist in AutoCAD 2011 that are not yet available in AutoCAD 2011 for Mac, including (but not limited to):

This is followed by a list of over 80 holes in the product. Many of them are minor, but the number of absent but important features is quite an eye-opener. I really can’t imagine anyone who is used to the Windows-based product being content with AutoCAD for Mac 2011 if forced to switch by a Apple-centric boss. Hardware, great. OS, fine. App, not so much. I expect future releases will gradually fill many of those holes, but Autodesk isn’t promising that. For now, I can state that at least one of my dire predictions was spot-on. AutoCAD for Mac is indeed half-baked.

Autodesk has stated that the Mac version is the same price as the Windows version, despite being incomplete, because Mac users (particularly architects) won’t notice the missing stuff. That may be true (if somewhat insulting to architects and fanboys) or not, but it definitely doesn’t apply to the rest of us.

Existing AutoCAD users, have a look at the list. What in there would be a dealbreaker for you? From my own CAD manager point of view, I can see about a dozen killer omissions, with the API holes at the top of the pile. No DCL support, for example? Wow.

Bad news! Autodesk has decide to call it AutoCAD WS, which is bordering on the fraudulent. It’s not AutoCAD, is nothing like it, and is unlikely to ever be anything like [...]]]> Good news! Autodesk has announced an app that will link iPads and iPhones to Project Butterfly. This provides viewing, markup and limited editing facilities.

Bad news! Autodesk has decide to call it AutoCAD WS, which is bordering on the fraudulent. It’s not AutoCAD, is nothing like it, and is unlikely to ever be anything like it. I can call my dog Prince, but that doesn’t make him royalty. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media appears to be blissfully unaware of this. This is gaining Autodesk some short-term column inches, but at the longer-term expense of furthering the myth that “AutoCAD” is going to run on iPhone and iPads. People will start using Butterfly, think it’s AutoCAD, and then, if they need CAD for their Macs, wonder why they should spend thousands on something so basic and limited.

Good news! It will be available Real Soon Now, and you can sign up for it at http://butterfly.autodesk.com/mobile/.

Bad news! You can’t sign up for it using your iPhone or iPad (unless it’s jailbroken). Apple may be convinced you don’t need Flash, but Autodesk disagrees. The Butterfly signup page requires Flash, you see. It wants to send you off to adobe.com.

Ouch! You have to admit, that’s pretty funny. Cluelessness? There’s an app for that. I guess iUsers will just have to use their Macbook Pros to sign up.

In addition to the drawings and operations being deliberately hand-picked to demonstrate new features, no direct comparison is performed at all between the [...]]]> Following on from the AutoCAD 2011 productivity study I critiqued earlier, there is now an LT version. Do the same credibility problems apply to this study too? Yes, and then some.

In addition to the drawings and operations being deliberately hand-picked to demonstrate new features, no direct comparison is performed at all between the two releases on the same platforms. Every single quoted “productivity improvement” figure includes, free of charge, three years of hardware and operating system progress and a more upmarket graphics card.

If you read business “news” sources that just reprint press releases, such as this Yahoo! Finance one (thanks, Carol Bartz), you won’t see this mentioned. Instead, you will see deceptive statements like these:

David S. Cohn, an independent consultant

Er, no, in this context he’s not independent, he’s an Autodesk consultant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

overall productivity gains of 44 percent for users moving from AutoCAD LT 2008 or earlier versions to AutoCAD LT 2011

…as long as you only ever perform certain carefully selected operations and upgrade your hardware and operating system. Like the other study, the 44% figure is totally meaningless and quoting it without qualification is downright deceptive.

Most users will be able to get more work done faster by upgrading to AutoCAD LT 2011

This statement is totally unsupported. There is no analysis of what “most users” do with the software, and no attempt to quantify the portion of time such users spend on these hand-picked operations. Neither is there any analysis performed on more common operations to see if the new releases introduced any detriment to productivity in those areas.

Improvements to the graphical user interface deliver a 43 percent productivity increase.

If that’s true, why do so many users of 2009 to 2011 immediately turn off the new user interface? Are they all stupid Luddites who have a burning desire to work much less efficiently? This study, like its non-LT counterpart, contains many unqualified statements about the Ribbon improving productivity and providing other benefits. I’d really like to see a proper independent study done into that.

To sum up, Autodesk is quite prepared to say misleading stuff about its products that will be regurgitated unquestioningly by those who don’t know any better, in the hope that it will be believed by those who do, and not exposed by those who care. But it’s not prepared to answer straightforward legitimate questions about its business, offering a pile of spin instead. This, supposedly because “management in publicly trade companies are forbidden by US laws and accounting regulations to discuss some topics”.

I think I’ll borrow a phrase from Deelip here, as it seems appropriate.

Bottom line. This is bullshit.

It just so happens that right now I’m in a no-bullshit mood. I’ve been exposed to more than enough of it lately. Unfortunate timing, Autodesk.

I know this sort of marketing device is nothing new, and maybe that’s the point. This kind of thing is so 20th century. In the good old days, negative commentary about stuff like this would be seen by few, and largely confined to company-controlled environments and one-way media such as printed magazines. Things aren’t like that any more. This sort of nonsense is being increasingly noticed, criticised and derided in blogs and social media. I have hope that the point will soon come when companies’ PR consultants work out that the negatives of spewing bullshit outweigh the positives. When that point is reached, the bullshit will stop. And won’t that be great?

According to a recent independent study, AutoCAD® 2011 can help you work up to 44% faster with the latest productivity enhancements.

I have a couple of problems with that sentence. First, it’s not an independent study. It’s a study conducted by [...]]]> Heidi Hewett just reported the following on her blog, about a productivity study:

According to a recent independent study, AutoCAD® 2011 can help you work up to 44% faster with the latest productivity enhancements.

I have a couple of problems with that sentence. First, it’s not an independent study. It’s a study conducted by long-time respected CAD figure David Cohn, but it was specified and paid for by Autodesk:

This productivity study was performed at the request of Autodesk Inc., which funded this work.

That’s not exactly independent then, is it? Second, the study does not state that AutoCAD 2011 is responsible for a 44% improvement. That’s a figure that combines both the effects of AutoCAD 2011 (over AutoCAD 2008), plus the effects of using a newer, faster PC. Just stating that figure wthout such a disclaimer is misleading.

Now to the study itself. Let me make it clear that I have no problem with David Cohn, who is respected, experienced and honest. I do not doubt that his study accurately describes his observations of the time taken to perform the chosen operations on the chosen drawings. The problem is that the study is designed to concentrate purely on a set of AutoCAD operations that benefit from the changes of the last three releases. In other words, the dice are very heavily loaded. To David’s credit, he states that very clearly in the study report:

Each drawing was chosen based on a number of criteria designed to showcase one or more features of the software that did not exist in AutoCAD 2008 but were added in subsequent releases. While each drawing could certainly be produced using the features and functions available in AutoCAD 2008, the advanced capabilities added in subsequent releases would likely enable a typical user to produce the drawing faster using AutoCAD 2011.

Since the premise of the test was to determine how much time could be saved by using a new feature, the test itself was already predisposed to show that using AutoCAD 2011 is more productive than using AutoCAD 2008.

A quick skim-read shows that there are several other problems with the study. For example, it doesn’t attempt to measure the productivity of those operations that are common to both releases, which are much more likely to be used in bulk by typical users. The report states that the Ribbon interface is likely to be more productive, but makes no attempt to justify that by comparing the exact same operations performed using the two interfaces.

In addition, both AutoCAD 2008 and 2011 are measured on a typical middle-age PC using XP, but only 2011 is measured on a modern PC running Windows 7. The report states that the latter tests were performed after the former tests, so the times will also be biased by familiarity with AutoCAD 2011, the drawings and the operations required. That’s where the 44% figure comes from, and it doesn’t mean anything.

What’s the point of studies like this, that are self-evidently designed to produce a good-looking outcome? Who are they supposed to fool?  Come on Autodesk, either do these things properly or don’t do them at all. Please.

A few hours later, the whole [...]]]> In a thread in the Feedback & Questions about the Discussion Groups section of the Autodesk discussion groups, somebody called ACADuser contributed what I thought was a highly amusing bar graph as a test image. Inspired by this, I contributed a couple of test images of my own.

A few hours later, the whole thread magically disappeared! It seems a shame that I went to the effort of making those images, and all for nothing. The handful of people who would have seen them on the discussion groups have now missed out on the experience. So I’ve decided to make up for that by posting them here, where thousands of people can look at them instead.

Here’s the first one (not that amusing):

Here’s the second one. Given the circumstances, it seems somewhat prescient:

If ACADuser wants to get in touch, I’ll be quite happy to post his image too.

Now I [...]]]> If you install Civil 3D 2011 using the ANZ (Australia/New Zealand) profile, when you start it up for the first time, you will see a large warning indicating that the drawing requires an Asian language pack to be installed. It also warns that this is a symptom of the acad.vlx virus:

Now I know that in this case it’s not an actual virus causing the problem, but rather the ANZ template drawing being “infected” with this Language Pack requirement. I have had to deal with quite a few incoming drawings in this state, and that’s painful enough without Autodesk also infecting every Australasian Civil 3D drawing with the problem. Other profiles may be similarly infected, but at the moment I don’t know. Edit: Matt Anderson reports that the problem occurs on US systems too.

Autodesk, I suggest that as a matter of great urgency you create a clean ANZ template file, post it as a hotfix and warn all your Civil 3D customers of the SNAFU. Neither “install the language pack” nor “turn off the warning” are adequate workarounds. Your customers do not want to send out or receive any drawings in this state.

Beyond the immediate issue of Autodesk shipping software that on first use warns the user that they may have a virus (and encourages the creation of drawings that spread that warning far and wide), I would appreciate some assistance in dealing with “infected” drawings, whether in Civil 3D or plain AutoCAD.

First, I need to be able to detect such drawings using LISP so I ensure they are rejected rather than allowed into our drawing management system, and this detection will need to work in releases at least as far back as AutoCAD 2004.

Second, I need a mechanism of cleaning up such drawings. The only thing I have discovered that works so far is the manual, time-consuming and dangerous process of recreating the drawings by starting from scratch and Copy/Paste in each layout. With big jobs using nested xrefs, this is fraught. I need to be able to provide a LISP-based cleanup mechanism that I can set up to work in batch mode on a set of drawings.

I would be grateful for any clues anyone might have about the above detect & cleanup needs.

Edit: see the comments for further important information.