Autodesk wants your input again in its annual API survey. This used to be a closed survey for Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) members, but has been open to all for the last few years. If you do any AutoCAD-based development at all, I encourage you to take part. That includes those of us who [...]
 15 June 2012, 11:37 am |  4 comments | Tags: API, Autodesk, AutoLISP, Feedback, LISP, Listening, Survey, Visual LISP | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Cloud, Customisation, Development, LISP, Thoughts 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 I have closed the polls asking if you trusted various companies to do the right thing by their customers. Here is a summary of the results, showing the percentage of “Yes” votes for each company. The most trusted company is at the top, the least trusted is at the bottom. Honda 69% Amazon 65% [...] Using any software involves some degree of trust in the vendor. Using the Cloud requires a much higher level of trust. Autodesk boss Carl Bass is a maker of carefully crafted things, so I’ll use that as an analogy. Using standalone software requires the sort of trust that a maker has in a tool [...] I have closed the Which of these is most evil? poll, which had been running from 20 February 2009. It attracted 2,351 voters, each of whom could distribute up to three votes among thirteen (yes, that number was deliberate) candidates. Here are the ranked results: Satan (36%, 846 Votes) Microsoft (31%, 721 Votes) Apple (26%, 614 Votes) [...] 14 November 2011, 1:53 pm |  One comment | Tags: Apple, Autodesk, Big Content, Brown list, Dell, Disney, Evil, Gaahl, Google, Microsoft, Miley Cyrus, RIAA/IFPI/MPAA, Satan, Sony, Spam, The Pirate Bay | Category: Apple, Autodesk, Fail, Fun, Hardware, Microsoft, Music, Polls, Rant, Thoughts Steve: Another issue I have with Cloud-based environments is the lack of customisation. One of the things that makes AutoCAD so efficient for people is that they can get it exactly the way they want it. With a browser-based environment, we’re pretty much stuck with what you guys decide to give us. Can you [...] 11 November 2011, 10:08 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff Steve: Autodesk is currently giving away these Cloud-based services, Butterfly for example. Presumably you’re not going to keep doing that for ever. Are you going to start charging for these services eventually? Guri: Again, you’re pushing us to talk about future. Currently, for as long as this is in a Labs environment, we’re encouraging [...] 8 November 2011, 1:05 pm | 2 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff On 26 May 2010, I had the opportunity to ask Autodesk some questions about the Cloud in general and what was then Project Butterfly (now AutoCAD WS) in particular. The Autodesk people were: Guri Stark,Vice President, AutoCAD & Platform Products Tal Weiss, R&D Center Manager (Israel) Noah Cole, Corporate Media Relations The interview was [...] 4 November 2011, 10:12 am | Leave a comment | Tags: Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Interview, Other Autodesk Products, Web Stuff Autodesk recently made a big announcement about its Cloud initiatives, and reactions have been all over the place. Some people can barely contain their breathless excitement while others are outraged to the point of passing out the pitchforks. Why? It’s pretty much business as usual. It’s nothing like Dassault’s disastrous we’re-moving-you-to-the-Cloud FUD campaign against [...] 30 September 2011, 1:00 pm | 3 comments | Tags: AutoCAD for Mac, AutoCAD WS, Autodesk, Cloud, Hype, Labs | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Cloud, Other Autodesk Products, Spin, Subscription, Thoughts, Web Stuff The observant among you may have noticed that for many years, Autodesk’s free patches, service packs and updates haven’t added any new functionality. Bugs may get fixed, severe performance issues may be addressed, but design errors generally have to wait for the next release (at the earliest), and new features definitely don’t get added. The [...] 12 September 2011, 1:06 pm | 5 comments | Tags: Accounting, Autodesk, FASB, SEC, Service Pack, SOP 97-2, Update, VSOE | Category: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2012, Autodesk, Autodesk University, ClassicArray, Customer Service, Navel Gazing, Nostalgia, Other Products, Thoughts In a comment in response to a Deelip post yesterday, Brad Holtz pointed to an article he wrote in 1999. It’s interesting to note that while much of the computing world today bears little resemblance to the scene at the end of the last century, this article remains almost completely accurate and relevant. Indeed, [...] 27 August 2010, 12:42 pm | 2 comments | Tags: 12-Month Release Cycle, Autodesk, Brad Holtz | Category: Autodesk, Nostalgia, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Thoughts, Writing 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 [...] 25 August 2010, 1:23 pm | 4 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Fail, Spin | Category: AutoCAD LT, Autodesk, Fail, Rant, Spin Here’s an announcement from the AutoCAD Product Design & User Experience Team: AutoCAD User Research Study: “AutoCAD Groups”(AutoCAD Group command) AutoCAD Product Design & User Experience Team is looking for your input regarding the AutoCAD GROUP command usage. The GROUP command (Object Grouping Dialog) in AutoCAD allows creating a selection set of objects called [...] Autodesk is looking for participants to help validate potential future AutoCAD viewport enhancements in online sessions. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ViewportStudy As always, I encourage your participation in such feedback mechanisms. On 4 June 2010, Autodesk turned off NNTP access to its discussion groups as part of the process of updating its software to use a different engine (the new one is from Lithium – here are its own forums). I am preparing a large post about what I think of the new web interface, [...] 11 June 2010, 12:00 pm | 10 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Discussion groups, Newsgroups, Polls | Category: Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service, Polls, Web Stuff In my recent interview of Autodesk Subscription VP Callan Carpenter, he made these statements: …there is a very small fraction of our revenue that comes from upgrades at this point in time. We’re down to very low single digits of customers who upgrade, and of those only half of those upgrade 1 or 2 [...] 28 May 2010, 12:55 pm | 6 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Callan Carpenter, Deelip Menezes, Owen Wengerd, Ralph Grabowski, Statistics, Subscription | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Interview, Navel Gazing, Other Blogs, Polls, Spin, Subscription As of 4 June, Autodesk intends to update its discussion group software to something that does not support newsgroup (NNTP) access. From an email by Autodesk’s Eric Wright to NNTP users: “As an active NNTP user, we wanted to reach out to you directly. We recognize this will change your experience participating in the [...] 27 May 2010, 12:39 pm | 9 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Newsgroups, NNTP | Category: Announcement, Autodesk, Other Sites, Polls, Web Stuff According to Shaan, Autodesk does not discuss its future plans. Or does it? In a comment, Ralph reckoned it does. Putting aside technology previews and various NDA-bound circumstances (e.g. Beta testing), can you think of cases where Autodesk has revealed what it intends to do in future? Here are a few off the top [...] 26 May 2010, 1:57 pm | 6 comments | Tags: AutoCAD for Mac, Autodesk, Bizzaro World, Secrecy | Category: Apple, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Legal, Microsoft, Other Blogs, Spin, Thoughts I do. If you’ve added a couple of toolbars and changed a few settings, it’s probably fine for you. But I think it’s been effectively broken for significantly customised setups ever since Autodesk “improved” it by introducing the CUI mechanism in AutoCAD 2006. It’s undocumented and whenever I’ve tried it, unreliable. I ran some [...] 26 May 2010, 8:25 am | 2 comments | Tags: Autodesk, Feedback, Migration | Category: AutoCAD, Autodesk, Customisation, Fail, Rant |
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Why don’t you trust Autodesk?
As I mentioned earlier, any company that wants to move its customers to the Cloud is going to need the trust of those customers. Three months ago, I started a poll to try to get some measure of how trustworthy you consider Autodesk to be, in terms of doing the right thing by its [...]