Tag: <span>Autodesk</span>

Tag: Autodesk

Announcement, Bricsys, Bricsys Conference, Hexagon

Hexagon acquiring Bricsys – what does it mean for the future?

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As reported earlier, Swedish Hexagon AB has acquired Bricsys. It goes without saying that this was the big talking point among everyone at Bricsys 2018. Surprise! This announcement was a big surprise to almost everyone at the conference. Hexagon has been working very closely with Bricsys for nearly two years, so if someone was going to buy Bricsys then Hexagon would have been my first guess, but the fact that it was happening at all came straight out of the blue. Most Bricsys employees in London only found out about the acquisition at a meeting in the hotel on the …

3D, Autodesk, Cloud, CloudyCAD, Customer Service, Other Autodesk Products, Rental

Autodesk Fusion 360 massive subscription price rise/drop

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Autodesk’s cloud-based 3D design tool, Fusion 360, is changing price and structure from 7 October 2018. Whether it’s a huge price rise or a huge price drop depends on your perspective. Price rise The current annual subscription cost for Fusion 360 is US$310 and that’s going to change to US$495, which represents a 60% price increase. Existing subscribers are being kept at the same annual rate of US$310 or US$300 (depending on when you first subscribed) “for as long as you renew”. Existing subscribers, that looks like a promise to never increase your prices as long as you keep up …

AutoCAD 2019, Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Maintenance, Nostalgia, Rental, Subscription

Explaining the four tiers of AutoCAD license

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Yesterday’s tiers Once upon a time, long long ago, you could buy AutoCAD with or without sets of features  called Advanced Drafting Extensions (ADE) containing optional extras such as dimensioning. At one stage you could buy four tiers of AutoCAD license at different prices: AutoCAD AutoCAD + ADE1 AutoCAD + ADE2 (incorporating ADE1) AutoCAD + ADE3 (incorporating ADE1 and ADE2) (Interestingly, the above situation is similar to the current arrangement with BricsCAD, where BricsCAD Classic, Pro and Platinum are available with incrementing prices and feature sets, with BricsCAD BIM and Sheet Metal available on top of Platinum). As almost everybody bought …

Autodesk, Customer Service, Maintenance, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk subscription price rise certainty

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In my previous posts exploring the costs associated with various CAD software licensing scenarios, there was always a need for assumptions because Autodesk had failed to provide any pricing information beyond a point a year or so from now. As a result, expecting the worst appeared to be the safest strategy. To Autodesk’s credit, this situation is now partially addressed. From this Autodesk web page: We’re extending our price commitment through 2028 for customers who continue to renew after they switch. The special Move to Subscription renewal suggested retail price will increase by no more than 5% in 2021, 2023, …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2019, Customer Service, Interoperability, Maintenance, Subscription

What’s new in AutoCAD 2019 for maintenance customers?

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So you’re a long-term customer who has used AutoCAD since it ran on an abacus. You paid for upgrades when you could and switched to maintenance (then called Subscription) when that became the only cost-effective option for keeping current. You’re not about to fall for the subscription (rental) trick; they can prise your perpetual license from your cold, dead fingers. It’s no secret that the value for your maintenance dollar has been poor for years. Autodesk is jacking up maintenance prices in leaps and bounds; is the maintenance being performed at a rate that matches the amount being charged? In …

Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Fail, Subscription

Having trouble authorising Autodesk products?

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You’re not alone. At the time of writing, the Autodesk license service at auth.autodesk.com is down, so if you need a response from that service before your software will work you’re likely to be severely out of luck. That’s more likely to be inconvenient if you’re on subscription rather than a perpetual license, because Autodesk subscription software phones home every month. Yes, even if you have a 3-year license.

Autodesk, Autodesk University, Bricsys Conference

Is anyone going to Autodesk University this year?

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No, I don’t mean, “Hey, I’m going to Autodesk University this year, let’s hang out!” I mean, is anyone going to Autodesk University this year? Edit: in this post I am referring to AU2018 in Las Vegas, not any other event. Because I’m seeing lots of people saying they’re not going. People who haven’t missed it for many years. When Robert Green announced his forthcoming non-attendance on Facebook, I was amazed to see so many prominent long-term Autodesk loyalists do likewise. Here are a few comments: OUCH! With all the people I know who won’t be there, AU is going …

Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Spin

Autodesk removes ability to control products and updates by device

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If you’re a CAD Manager controlling Autodesk software through Autodesk Account, make sure you don’t ignore this little notice near the top: Full details can be found on the page Device Management Discontinued in Autodesk Account, but in short another level of control and flexibility will be removed from you in a month or so. I hope you’re sincerely grateful for Autodesk improving and simplifying the user management experience. This only applies if you allow Autodesk desktop app to be installed, which I’ve always advised against. Of course, if you’re in a secure proxy environment there’s a good chance that …

Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Rental, Subscription

The great Autodesk Collections rip-off has ended

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I reported in January that, “The way Autodesk Collection licensing works, you can’t use more than two of the products in a Collection at once.” Thanks to a policy reversal from Autodesk, this is no longer true. Felice on the Autodesk forums shared the good news: Hi all, I have an update to share on this topic… we are removing the Industry Collection concurrent usage policy limitation. Here are some more details/background: Overview: Currently, the Industry Collection concurrent usage policy limits the number of collection products that can be used at the same time to two. The terms and conditions related …

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 …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2019, Autodesk, Customer Service

Andrew Anagnost apology for AutoCAD 2019 rollout disaster

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Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost has sent an email to customers affected by the AutoCAD 2019 rollout disaster that acted as a remote kill-switch for users of earlier releases of subscription software. The email’s subject is We Missed the Mark: Readers of this blog will be aware that Andrew and I have fundamental disagreements on where he has taken the company, but credit where credit is due. An apology was appropriate in this case, and Andrew stepped up and made one. He has also stated on Twitter that it won’t happen again. I don’t think such a guarantee is realistic, given …

Autodesk, Bentley, CAD Management, Customer Service

Autodesk contemplates Bentley-style licensing

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Some of you may have received an invitation from Autodesk to provide survey feedback. This hints at a possible move towards time based licensing (e.g. hourly), and asks what kind of tools you will need to handle that. Sometimes these questions lead to nothing, other times they are a precursor to inevitable change (desirable or not). If it’s the latter, I can only surmise that Autodesk is concerned that its customers haven’t been thoroughly peed off by anything new in a while and is investigating novel and interesting ways to annoy them. Ask a Bentley customer what annoys them most …

Autodesk, Polls

Discarded Autodesk employees – how old were you when you were let go?

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Some things have been mentioned to me privately that have made me curious. Curiosity is like an itch for me, I just have to scratch it. So here goes. If you have been let go, fired, made redundant, discarded, dumped, sacked, had your office closed, encouraged to take a termination offer, sidelined into an untenable position, failed to have your contract renewed or otherwise ceased your employment at Autodesk in a not-entirely-voluntary manner in the last ten years, I’d like to know how old you were at the time. There’s a poll in this post and in the left sidebar. …

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 …

Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Rental, Spin, Subscription

The great Autodesk Collections rip-off

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Autodesk not only wants to move its customers from perpetual licenses to subscription (rental), it wants to move them from individual products to Industry Collections. Why? Because the rental cost of Collections is higher and more money can be extracted from each customer. There’s nothing conspiracy-theorist about the above statement, it has been explicitly laid out by now-CEO Andrew Anagnost at an Investor Day, and the cunning plan has been placed on the public record. Have a good read of that document, it’s very revealing. AutoCAD LT users are going to be “encouraged” into full AutoCAD, AutoCAD users are are …

Autodesk, Rental, Subscription, Thoughts

ADSK bubble trouble

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Autodesk has now recorded ten successive quarters of losses totaling $1.289 billion. Autodesk’s share price had been rapidly rising during the previous nine lossy quarters. If last quarter’s $119.8 million loss was business as usual, why did the ADSK share price plummet? At the time of writing, it’s $23.65 down on its pre-Q3-results high. Alongside the usual we’re-doing-great stuff in the Q3 announcement, Autodesk announced big layoffs, with another 13% of the workforce to go. Merry Christmas, employees. This follows on from another 10% who were axed last year. Don’t think I’m gloating about this. I’m not; these are real …

Autodesk, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Subscription, Web Stuff

Cloudy and/or subscription CAD still adds vulnerabilities

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Remember when I skewered the myth of CAD on the Cloud being available anytime, anywhere? Back then, I pointed out that Autodesk’s infinitely powerful cloud services had managed a grand total of 2 problem-free fortnights out of the preceding 25. But maybe Autodesk just had a bad year or something. How are things in 2017? Thanks to Autodesk’s health check site with its History option, I can see that so far this year, the grand total of 14-day pages that show no problems is… Zero. That’s right, there have been no clean 100%-uptime fortnights at all this year. None. Most …

Autodesk, Autodesk University, CAD Management, Cloud, Customer Service, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Subscription

The cull continues – yet more Autodesk products are bumped off

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While you’re enjoying yourselves at Autodesk University (not that there’s anything wrong with that), spare a thought for a few products that didn’t make it through the year. Their unfortunate ends are unlikely to be announced at AU with flashy videos and gung-ho words, but should still not go unnoticed. More than just a few products, actually. Autodesk killing off its wares is not new, but 2017 is surely the year where the scythe has been wielded with most gusto. I’ve updated the Autodesk Graveyard again to include a few more ex-products. Thanks to JM and others who have pointed …