Autodesk has just released the latest iteration of its free online CAD app, AutoCAD WS. It’s available directly via your browser or as iOS, Mac or Android apps. This is the closest Autodesk has yet come to showing us what real CAD in the Cloud can do. Autodesk has now had three years’ work behind it [...]
 19 December 2012, 2:03 pm |  8 comments | Tags: AutoCAD WS, Cloud, Review | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Review, Web Stuff As reported by Joe Francica (via WorldCAD Access), Carl Bass has confirmed, in a somewhat ambiguous way, that his Cloud-only vision rules at Autodesk. I do believe that everything is moving to the cloud. But… There are a lot of applications that will [still] be done on the desktop. Whether Autodesk does it or [...] 30 November 2012, 2:20 pm | 18 comments | Tags: Carl Bass | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Fail, Other Sites, Spin, Web Stuff Ever wondered why Autodesk is putting so much emphasis on social media these days? Why AutoCAD needs Facebook and Twitter commands? It’s because Autodesk pays social media consultants lots of money to tell them about the importance of social media, and how to be social and media-ish. In this video, one of those consultants [...] 22 November 2012, 9:14 am |  One comment | Tags: Parody, The Onion | Category: Advertising, Autodesk, Cloud, Fun, Spin, Video, Web Stuff Does Autodesk intend to move all its applications exclusively to the Cloud? That is, online only and no longer available on the desktop? Autodesk people who say yes: Carl Bass, CEO Phil Bernstein, Vice President, Building Industry Strategy and Relations Scott Sheppard, Autodesk Labs Software Development Manager (with private Cloud caveat) Autodesk [...] 20 November 2012, 11:37 am | 14 comments | Tags: Damn Lies, Lies, Truth | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Spin, Web Stuff It’s probably unwise to make predictions about what is going to happen in technology. If so, I’m about to be unwise. So be it; if I’m wrong you can taunt me about this post in a few years. Here’s my prediction: Autodesk’s attempt to move CAD users onto the Cloud is doomed [...] 6 November 2012, 8:13 am | 29 comments | Tags: Carl Bass, Cloud failure, Psychic Prediction | Category: Cloud, Fail, Interview, Other Sites, Polls, Thoughts, Web Stuff Following up on its acquisition of Socialcam (which was then abandoned by 50 million users), Autodesk has acquired social media platform Qontext from Indian company Pramati. What exactly is this? I have no idea. I tried to find out by reading the Pramati site, but it’s so heavily obscured in trendy but vague corporatespeak [...] 5 October 2012, 4:50 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Buzzwords, Plain English, Social media | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Spin, Web Stuff In a recent post on Between the Lines, Shaan passed on the following response from the AutoCAD Team: There has been some recent discussions about the built-in help system in AutoCAD 2013, both positive and some criticism. As our longtime users know, AutoCAD help has been through many evolutions. We are particularly proud of [...] 20 September 2012, 5:00 pm | 5 comments | Tags: Cloud, Documentation, Help, Navisworks, Shaan Hurley | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Bug, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Rant, Spin, Thoughts, Tip, Web Stuff Three years ago, I was happy to promote Autodesk’s then-new site AutoCAD Exchange. However, Autodesk has now given up on this attempt to maintain a social site of its own. My comment at the time, “AutoCAD Exchange is an important and potentially very useful site for AutoCAD users” turned out to be optimistic. I [...] 27 July 2012, 4:04 pm | 4 comments | Tags: AutoCAD Exchange | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Fail, Other Sites, Web Stuff Jimmy Bergmark has reported a particularly unpleasant piece of malware, so please check it out. The Autodesk Knowledge Base item can be found here. 22 June 2012, 2:20 pm | 4 comments | Tags: ACAD/Medre.A, Malware, Virus, Worm | Category: AutoCAD, LISP, Web Stuff I’ve made the point before that while Cloud proponents like Autodesk have been happy to talk big on the potential benefits, they have been conspicuously (suspiciously?) silent on the legitimate concerns their customers have raised. The best responses you have been likely to see regarding such concerns can best be characterised as “glossing over”. [...] 30 May 2012, 5:28 pm | 18 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Autodesk 360, Cloud | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Legal, Spin, Web Stuff In an email to Subscription customers, Autodesk made several announcements about its Autodesk 360 Cloud services. Subscription users now get 25 GB per seat of Cloud storage, up from 3 GB. Non-Subscription users who create an Autodesk 360 account get 3 GB. The intent here, as with the trebling of upgrade costs, is to get [...] 4 May 2012, 12:25 pm | 4 comments | Tags: Cloud, Subscription | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Other Autodesk Products, Subscription, Web Stuff Autodesk’s API guru Kean Walmsley is the second Autodesk person I’ve seen who has been brave enough to stick his head above the parapet by discussing the Cloud, in writing, and in a medium that allows for public comment. Kean has always seemed like a straight shooter to me. Please note that his blog [...] 3 April 2012, 2:29 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Kean Walmsley | Category: Autodesk, Cloud, Development, Other Blogs, Web Stuff Autodesk has produced a 2-minute video explaining the features of the new Help system in AutoCAD 2013 that I recently panned. As you might expect, it’s kind of upbeat and chirpy, but the fact that Autodesk feels the need to provide a tutorial on how to use Help says it all, really. Whatever, it [...] 2 April 2012, 1:55 pm | One comment | Tags: Documentation, Help | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Spin, Video, Web Stuff In AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk introduced on-line Help. It was badly done and poorly received. It was slow and generally awful to use, and so obviously inferior to the generally well-crafted old CHM-based system in so many ways, that there were squeals of joy when somebody discovered that one of the AutoCAD-based vertical products hadn’t [...] 29 March 2012, 1:34 pm | 25 comments | Tags: Documentation, Help | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2010, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Web Stuff This year, Autodesk appears to have finally got its act together in terms of making software downloads and serial numbers available to Subscription customers quickly after the AutoCAD release. For me at least, the serial numbers and downloads were available as soon as I looked for them, so Autodesk deserves praise for improving matters [...] 28 March 2012, 12:54 pm | 3 comments | Tags: Akamai, Download | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Subscription, Tip, Web Stuff It’s AutoCAD new release time again and many of you will want to get hold of the trial software, or download the production software from the trial site rather than the Subscription site for performance or other reasons (the resultant downloads are identical). As in previous years, Autodesk is heavily pushing the use of [...] 28 March 2012, 9:23 am | 18 comments | Tags: Akamai, Download | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Rant, Spin, Tip, Web Stuff …for some things. The other day, I amused myself by creating a video using a site called Xtranormal. You’ve probably seen 3D cartoon-like videos of people with stilted voices. It’s done by signing up for a free account, choosing a background and some characters, then typing in your script. This is converted, generally fairly [...] This is a revisit of a post I made about three years ago, and repeated a year later. This has become more relevant recently because I changed the default avatars displayed next to comments to use random faces rather than random patterns. If you object to being portrayed as a grinning loon, read on. [...] 22 February 2012, 12:13 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Avatar, Comments, Gravatar, Image | Category: Announcement, Comments, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Tip, Web Stuff This site has gone dark for a day to support the movement against the proposed SOPA and PIPA bills. Rather than black out the whole site for a day like Wikipedia and thousands of other sites, I have decided to keep the blog somewhat usable. SOPA is really, really scary stuff. If you’re an [...] 18 January 2012, 1:40 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Evil, PIPA, SOPA | Category: Announcement, Other Sites, Web Stuff |
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I was wrong about AutoCAD 2013 Help, it still sucks
In my effusive welcome of AutoCAD 2013′s updated Help system, I wondered if I had been shocked into missing some glaring problem. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. In my enthusiasm, I managed to totally miss the fact that the new system has not been introduced for offline users.
If you use the new system, [...]