Leading architecture firms pen open letter to Autodesk over
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"The letter clearly lays out the pressures practices are currently experiencing. Since the move to subscription, Autodesk has been ratcheting up the cost of ownership considerably. In the last five years, the signatories of the letter have assessed that a seat of Revit has gone up 70%+ and with Autodesk’s planned licence changes this year will increase further."
Interesting.
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Exactly what I (and many other people) have been saying for a long time, DON'T DRINK THE SUBSCRIPTION COOL-AID.
Once you're locked in by subscription, they've got you by the short and curly's.
Congratulations on scr3w1ng yourselves by supporting subscription software, it's a very short term gain and short term outlook on things to have.
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Along with computing for the masses I believe that design software (in particular, for the everyday user) has been a triumph of style over substance. The advent of CAD meant that the designer could get his/her ideas into a drawing quickly and then edit same without too much fuss. Yes, the big ticket programs come with all the bells and whistles and are sold as the answer to all the problems. But still folks are asking for this or that feature to improve their workflow. The software people are only too happy to oblige but how many people actually need all those Bs & Ws though? Who pays for the minority requirements! In order to pay for development of the product new features have to be added, stuff that very few will use or need. Of course, new ways to part people from their money have to be found as well, hence the dreaded subscription.
I think what has now become apparent, to me anyway, is that by asking for and getting a particular feature you are then constricted by the way it has been set up to work. You have to feed it with information/parameters and what you get is probably not what you were thinking. So the hoped for leap in productivity doesn't happen and the reason it doesn't is that computers are no substitute for the human brain. Computers can number-crunch but they can't think, they can't design or go off at a tangent and be truly innovative.
A few years ago my nephew was considering a career in Engineering and he asked me to give him a potted tour of a CAD program. The first thing I asked him when he had sat down at the keyboard was if he could point out the 'Design a Nuclear Submarine' button. Lesson one - people design, computers are an aid. I should add that he now works in nuclear medical engineering so I guess he never did find the Submarine button.
To conclude this ramble, you get what you pay for but are forced to finance an awful lot that you don't need.
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@shawb said:
Along with computing for the masses I believe that design software (in particular, for the everyday user) has been a triumph of style over substance. The advent of CAD meant that the designer could get his/her ideas into a drawing quickly and then edit same without too much fuss.
I've been on a different track for years. I hopped-off the AutoDesk train at the beginning and my work is more of a computarized mechanical drawing than anything like BIM. I've assumed all along that those that use more parametric and BIM software are having great results and able to push a button for this or that. Meanwhile I think I traded for simplicity.
I've always been wary that any routine would give me what I am after anyway (always different in each project)-- or the complexity of finding and learning that routine is somehow comparable to me just doing it by brute force.
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Autodesk's reply to the open letter:
https://adsknews.autodesk.com/views/reply-to-open-letter-on-revitThe usual blah blah...
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Yep, whole barrow load of blah blah blah there! I do get it though, they have to sell the sizzle and not the sausage but I stand by my earlier comment of "people design, computers are an aid".
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