Yearly Archives: 2017

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 people with real jobs, many of them undoubtedly very good people, and they have my sympathy.

But doesn’t the market love companies cutting jobs? Maybe not when the bill is going to be $135 to $149 million when the CEO states it’s not going to cut costs anyway:

Every penny generated reinvested back in the company – just in different areas: digital infrastructure and construction products. We’ll hire at least that number back. Not cost cutting. Rebalancing.

It may not have helped if traders noticed the Autodesk CFO selling stock on 24 November, a few days before the 2018 Q3 financials were out? This was smart, because he made about $113,000 more on that transaction than he would have if he had sold on 29 November. I’m not suggesting there was anything improper about this, but it was hardly a confidence-inspiring move.

Edit: From R. Scott Herren via Twitter: “…that sale was a 10b5-1 planned sale setup more than 6 months ago. You can find that info on the SEC filing.”

But I suspect it’s just Autodesk’s ongoing failure to pull itself out of the loss trough and desperate-looking need to shed workers that has started to erode confidence in the veracity of its repetitive “Another Great Quarter!” narrative. Maybe the market has started to look a bit deeper than just giving Autodesk a simplistic “it’s OK, revenue always dips when moving to subscription” free kick? Maybe the oft-quoted “new subscriptions” metric has lost its shine as it becomes apparent that subscription numbers aren’t directly proportional to income?

I’ve said it before, but ADSK ain’t ADBE. Different products, different customers, different history, different pricing strategies, different results.

Autodesk’s high-price strategy with poor customer acceptance and big losses differs markedly from Adobe’s low-price strategy with reasonable customer acceptance and merely reduced profits during the transition. Here is Adobe’s record, before and after giving up selling perpetual software licenses. Note the lack of red ink.

All is not well with Autodesk’s subscribe-or-GTFO plan, and it looks like people other than customers have started to notice. Autodesk’s bubble has been pricked and some rapid deflation has occurred. Time will tell whether this is a blip or a trend.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial analyst. This is not financial advice. Make your own decisions.

Autodesk founder outraged by Amazon snatch of cloudy purchases

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Autodesk co-founder John Walker (it’s not his fault, he relinquished control of the company many years ago) recently posted this on Twitter:

In a move reminiscent of the infamous removal of Orwell’s 1984 from Kindle devices (which Amazon promised a court it would never repeat), John’s Audible.com (owned by Amazon) audio books, purchased in 2009-2010, simply went away.

John’s reaction was to post a video of harmless inanimate objects being blown away by a powerful firearm, so I think it’s safe to say he was not overly pleased about this turn of events. Can’t say I blame him.

This is a variant of the old joke on those cheesy pre-show anti-piracy ads that have annoyed owners of legitimately purchased videos for many years:

“You wouldn’t steal a car.”
– I would if I could download it.

Amazon’s version goes:

“You wouldn’t steal a book.”
– I would if I could delete it from my server.

OK, Amazon is obviously doing evil here, but what can John do about it? Maybe nothing. As pointed out in a series of responses to John’s post, Amazon considers itself fully entitled to do this. Amazon also allows itself permission to change the rules as and when it sees fit.

Does this sound familiar? It should. “What’s yours isn’t really yours, even if you paid for it. It can go away when we feel like it. We can change the rules when we feel like it. No guarantees. Just keep paying and hope for the best.”

This is why we don’t CAD in the cloud. Or subscription CAD, for that matter. Owning stuff is still important.

AutoCAD 2018 for Mac – welcome to twenty years ago

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In the past, I’ve described how AutoCAD for Mac was released half-baked (as I predicted) and has remained half-baked ever since.

But wait! Autodesk has proudly announced AutoCAD 2018 for Mac. Skimming through that blog post, I must admit my jaw dropped when I saw some of the new features. This one, for example:

This “new feature” was first provided to AutoCAD users in the 20th century. It was an Express Tool in AutoCAD 2000 (released 1999) and was absorbed into mainstream AutoCAD a few years later. The alias editor goes back even further, to the Release 14 Bonus Tools (1997). That one was absorbed into AutoCAD in 1999. Some of the other new features are also old. Migrating your settings was new back in the century that started without powered flight. Now, not so much.

These features are new to AutoCAD for Mac, of course, and that’s kind of the point. Autodesk is advertising, as new, features that were born before some of the adults who are now using their products.

There are other very important features (e.g. DCL support, essential for LISP compatibility) that date back even longer (Release 12, 1992) and which are still missing from AutoCAD for Mac. That’s right, in some areas AutoCAD for Mac is a quarter of a century behind. And counting.

On the bright side, you do now get access to the pointlessly-changed 2018 DWG format. A couple of features are reasonably new additions, but they represent a small subset of the small number of minor improvements in AutoCAD 2017 and 2018 for Windows. If anything, the rate of improvement of AutoCAD for Mac is lagging behind even the glacial progress of AutoCAD for Windows, despite starting from a much lower base point.

I note with interest that Autodesk’s comparison page is now hiding the detail of the differences between the full product and AutoCAD for Mac. I guess if you have two identically-priced products and one’s missing a bunch of stuff, you might be tempted to hide the fact from your potential customers. This post of mine from last year will give you some idea of what Autodesk’s not telling you about what’s missing from AutoCAD for Mac. Clue: it’s a lot.

Mac users pay full price for their product and deserve much better than this. If you want information on a full-featured “AutoCAD for Mac”, don’t bother looking for it from Autodesk. Try Bricsys instead.

Tip: what to do when your text becomes empty rectangles

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Dear person who used the search terms “writing has become empty rectangle in cad” and “autocad text has become an empty rectangle” on this blog, I suspect you probably have a drawing where QTEXT has been turned on. To fix this, enter QTEXT at the command prompt, set it to OFF, and if the problem doesn’t go away by itself then issue the REGENALL command.

Pedantic note: the command name is QTEXT, but this controls a system variable called QTEXTMODE. QTEXT OFF is equivalent to both SETVAR QTEXTMODE 0 and just QTEXTMODE 0. In LISP it would be (setvar “QTEXTMODE” 0).

This tip applies to all AutoCAD releases and variants you’re likely to run. Because BricsCAD has a high degree of command-line compatibility with AutoCAD, it applies to BricsCAD too. The same may apply to other AutoCAD-compatible applications.

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 of the pages show multiple failures in multiple products. To be fair, the number of problems shown on each page is rather lower than this extreme example from 2016:
 

Even when there are no technical problems preventing the use of cloud or subscription software, there is always the possibility that it will simply go away. For example, NVIDIA has announced End of Life for its formerly Autodesk-integrated, once-best-thing-ever Mental Ray renderer. As of today, you can’t buy a subscription to Mental Ray standalone or the plug-ins for Autodesk products 3DS Max and Maya. As of today, the NVIDIA site still states apparently unironically that Mental Ray…

…remains the rendering solution you’ve come to count on within Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max

Maybe you shouldn’t count on it too much.

Rendering, with its potential for massively parallel remote processing on multiple other people’s computers, is a relatively attractive cloudy CAD-related function. But if that function becomes temporarily or permanently unavailable, that can make life a little difficult.

Aren’t standalone perpetual licenses a thing of beauty?

The cull continues – yet more Autodesk products are bumped off

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 out products that have ceased to be.

While you’re getting excited about subscribing to the latest and greatest new thing, bear in mind that each of the 91 items on the list of demised Autodesk products was once similarly a latest and greatest thing. Also bear in mind that if you’re relying on software that’s cloud-based and/or subscription-only, if the vendor loses interest you could be up a creek without a paddle. You may have to deal with the consequences sooner than you might hope. For example, browser-based renderer Lagoa has been ignoreware since being acquired in 2014 (sound familiar?):

It was only a matter of time, and Lagoa had its pending ending announced on 2 November 2017. It will be put out of its misery on 22 December 2017. That’s not very long for customers to make adjustments.

A reminder: what’s listed on the Autodesk Graveyard is probably incomplete and may not be 100% accurate. Additions and corrections can be made by letting me know in the comments on the post Autodesk products are falling like parrots. If you could provide references that show the birth and death dates of the products you know about, that would be ideal, but all feedback is welcome.

Logitech demonstrates the power of the cloud and cops a bloody nose

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I’ve been a pretty satisfied customer of Logitech products for some years. The mice, keyboards, webcams and 3D controllers (branded as 3DConnexion) I’ve used have generally been well designed, well built and long-term software support has usually been very good (with an exception or two). So it’s with some regret that I have to report them as an example of what not to do in customer service.

Logitech recently sent this email to customers of its Harmony Link universal remote control:

This is an important update regarding your Harmony Link. On March 16, 2018,
 
Logitech will discontinue service and support for Harmony Link. Your Harmony Link will no longer function after this date.
 
Although your Harmony Link is no longer under warranty, we are offering you a 35% discount on a new Harmony Hub. Harmony Hub offers app-based remote control features similar to Harmony Link, but with the added benefit of the ability to control many popular connected home devices. To receive your discounted Harmony Hub, go to logitech.com, add Harmony Hub to your cart, and use your personal one-time promotional code […] during checkout.
 
Thank you for being a Logitech customer and we hope you will take advantage of this offer to upgrade to a new Harmony Hub. If you have any questions or concerns about Harmony Link, please email the Harmony customer care team.
 
Regards,
 
Logitech Harmony Team

This isn’t just a matter of no longer supporting an old product (and it’s not that old, anyway – it was still sold directly 2 years ago and old retail stock has been sold until a few months ago). It’s a matter of actively disabling all instances of a product from afar, world-wide.

That’s right, Logitech has demonstrated the (destructive) power of the cloud by using it to remotely kill your perfectly functional device. If it’s out of warranty, send Logitech more money for a newer one. No guarantees on how long it will be before the replacement gets the remote kill-switch treatment.

As you might expect, customers weren’t overjoyed at being treated in this way. Threads popped up on the Logitech forums (where the words “class action lawsuit” were auto-censored), Reddit, Twitter, and as comments on various IT news sites that reported on Logitech’s move.

The supposed reason for Logitech’s decision seemed to make no sense:

We made the business decision to end the support and services of the Harmony Link when the encryption certificate expires in the spring of 2018 – we would be acting irresponsibly by continuing the service knowing its potential/future vulnerability. Our system shows this product, which was last sold by Logitech in fall of 2015, had a small active user base.

Such certificates are commonly purchased and renewed by hardware and software companies for relatively tiny amounts of money. It would have cost Logitech less to renew a certificate than it would to have someone write the explanation about why they weren’t doing it. Very odd. As a business decision, it sucks. It also exposes Logitech management as utterly out of touch with the reality in which their customers live.

In a reaction that should have come as a surprise to nobody (but apparently did to Logitech), pretty much everybody gave the company a major roasting. Many people pointed out that such a move would be considered illegal in their countries (including mine), or at best (for Logitech) it would entitle the customer to a full refund from the retailer. Many people promised to never buy anything from Logitech in particular, and any device capable of being remote-bricked in general.

Once it became apparent that this was a major PR disaster, Logitech did a belated partial U-turn and extended the offer of a free replacement to customers with units that were out of warranty.

“I made a mistake,” head of Logitech Harmony Rory Dooley explains to Wired. “Mea culpa. We’re going to do right by our customers, and do the right thing.”

This reminds me of those politicians who get caught out misusing expenses who then say sorry and offer to pay back the ill-gotten gains, as if that’s enough to get them off the hook. Nope. Too little, too late.

Logitech, you just destroyed a whole bunch of customer trust. How valuable is that to you? How much is it going to cost you in sales? How much will it cost you in marketing to try to regain it? It stands to be a fair bit more than the cost of updating a certificate, I would guess. And you’re still bricking a whole bunch of perfectly functional devices. How is that environmentally responsible?

The idea of any product that can be remote-disabled or even reduced in functionality by anybody should be anathema to all of us. Any product. Not just gadgets. (How’s your internet-reliant juicer going? Oops.) Oven, garage door, fridge, car (Tesla can do this), hardware, firmware, software. Yes, software.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don’t do CAD in the cloud. I’ve explained years ago how cloudy CAD adds multiple points of failure. I’m still not wrong about that. One of those additional points of failure is when the vendor decides to stop offering the service. And, of course, the same applies to subscription software, even when it’s not cloudy. The vendor loses interest and you’re left high and dry.

Don’t think it won’t happen. It happens repeatedly and will continue to happen. Don’t be a victim when it does.

Tip – making your 3D controller work sensibly in BricsCAD

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This tip applies to BricsCAD V14 to V18 inclusive, and possibly other versions too.

BricsCAD automatically works with a 3D “mouse” (e.g. 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator controller), and due to the generally excellent performance of BricsCAD in 3D, it works very smoothly and is a real productivity boon for 3D work. If you don’t already have one and you work in 3D, it’s well worth spending a fraction of the money you saved by switching to BricsCAD to get hold of one.

Unfortunately, the way BricsCAD reacts to use of this device fails to lock the horizon by default. This means it does not keep the vertical axis vertical, so unless you have an exceptionally light and skilled touch, you will soon have your model skewed, upside down and/or flopping around all over the place.

OK, this may be a silly default setting, but how do you change it? Read on.

Method 1

Press the left button on your controller. If you’re lucky, you will see the 3dxWare Panel. (I’m not seeing it in V18 so maybe I need a driver update). Use the Button Configuration tab and change it from “All Applications” to “BricsCAD”, then it should show as:

  • L: BricsCAD Default Menu
  • R: Fit

Picking the controller’s left button in BricsCAD after doing this brings up a context menu containing a Lock Horizon option.


Once you turn this on, the controller will work as expected.

Method 2

If you don’t have those options available to you when you pick the controller’s left button and you’re comfortable messing around in the Registry (the usual caveats apply here), you can fix it up.

First close BricsCAD. Now start REGEDIT and search for the 3dMouseMenu section, e.g. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bricsys\BricsCAD\V18x64\en_US\Profiles\3D Modeling\3dMouseMenu. Under there is a LockHorizon value: change that from 0 to 1. Next time you start BricsCAD, the controller should work as expected. If therre are multiple user profiles, you will need to repeat this process for each profile.

Method 3

If you don’t have rights to use REGEDIT or you don’t feel comfortable doing so, you can achieve the same result by exporting and importing a user profile, with a little bit of text editing inbetween.

  • Close BricsCAD
  • Start the User Profile Manager (e.g. Start > All Programs > Bricsys > BricsCAD V18 (x64) en_US > V18×64 User Profile Manager
  • Choose a user profile and export it
  • Manually edit the resultant .arg using a text editor (e.g. Notepad) and change the appropriate line under 3dMouseMenu to “LockHorizon”=dword:00000001
  • If that section doesn’t exist, add it as follows (ensuring you use the right version information, e.g. V16x64 in place of V18x64):
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bricsys\BricsCAD\V18x64\en_US\Profiles\3D Modeling\3dMouseMenu]
    "Rotate"=dword:00000001
    "PanZoom"=dword:00000001
    "LockHorizon"=dword:00000001
    "RotCenterModeAuto"=dword:00000001
    "RotCenterModeSelected"=dword:00000001
    "Speed"=dword:00000001
    "3dMouseMode"=dword:00000000
    "RotCenterVis"=dword:00000002
  • Import the edited .arg – you’ll have to provide a different name to any existing profile. Don’t worry, you can rename and delete profiles later as required.
  • Set that profile current
  • Start BricsCAD

You can do the same from within BricsCAD using Tools > User Profile Manager, but as you need to restart BricsCAD anyway before the change takes effect, you may as well do the above.

BricsCAD V18 – showing Autodesk how to do DWG CAD

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For years now, Autodesk has done very little worthwhile with AutoCAD. There have been a few small but welcome improvements, but it’s really just tinkering at the edges. The product as a whole continues to stagnate and yet blimp out. It’s getting bigger and slower with each new release. The downloads get bigger. The install times get longer. The startup times drag out. The responsiveness suffers. And for what? Pretty much the same old thing, every time. Sometimes you don’t even get a new desktop icon. Don’t get me started on value for money.

It’s as if Autodesk considers DWG-based desktop CAD to be a solved problem. Many CAD users accept this. There’s not much more that can be done to improve it, right?

Wrong.

Bricsys has, yet again, proven Autodesk wrong. It is very possible to significantly improve DWG-based CAD. The improvements to the just-released BricsCAD V18 go far beyond anything Autodesk has done for many years, and that’s improving on an already-excellent and innovative product in V17. I’ll be covering some of the most important changes in future posts, but for now here are a few Bricsys links:

Don’t take my word for it. The easiest way to test the validity of what I have to say is to try it out for yourself. Unlike Autodesk products, Bricsys downloads and installs are small, fast and efficient. How efficient? This efficient (R.K. McSwain, Twitter):

It’s a 258 MB download for an entire DWG-based CAD application which is significantly more fully-featured than AutoCAD. No nasty malware-like download manager. It’s not a stub or a pre-installer that expands itself before even starting the install proper. It’s a ready-to-run installer for the entire top-of-the-range product capable of parametric 3D, sheet metal design and BIM. It installs and starts up quickly. You can have no trace of BricsCAD on your computer now and be editing your DWGs with it (yes, including your AutoCAD 2018 and Civil 3D DWGs) in a few minutes.

Here’s the download link. You can evaluate it for 30 days.

Did I mention that perpetual licenses are available? Or that it’s way cheaper than AutoCAD? Or that when you report a problem it goes to a real developer who actually cares about fixing it in a reasonable timeframe?

Bricsys 2017 Conference

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I have recently returned from the Bricsys 2017 Conference, held this year at the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris. There were many impressive things demonstrated at this conference and I will be posting about them in due course. In the meantime, here is a short video from Bricsys:

You may wish to check out my Twitter feed to see what I live tweeted at the time, along with the #bricsys2017 tag to see what myself and other CAD press and bloggers thought of it.

Press and bloggers at Bricsys 2017

Disclosure: Bricsys covered my travel expenses for this conference.

Too soon? Autodesk cancels 30% subscription price increase

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Autodesk had announced plans to increase some subscription prices by 30% on 7 November 2017. Resellers have already passed that information on to customers. Here’s the detail of what was going to happen:

Three Important Changes to Subscriptions with Multi-User Access

Autodesk is increasing prices on subscriptions with multi-user access to reflect the value and flexibility that sharing licenses provides our customers. As part of this change, we will stop selling new subscriptions with multi-user access for select products.

Beginning November 7, 2017:

  • Prices for new and renewing subscriptions with multi-user access for most individual products are increasing by ~17-19%.
  • Price for customers to switch from a maintenance plan to an industry collection with multi-user access will increase by ~30%.
  • New subscriptions with multi-user access will no longer be sold for Revit, Inventor Professional, and Navisworks Manage

This was basically an attack on multi-user (network) licensed subscription customers. It’s not obvious what Autodesk has against such customers. On the one hand, Autodesk states that sharing licenses provides customers with value and flexibility. On the other, it states that it’s going to stop selling such useful licenses! You might think that such cooperative customers would be spared the worst of what Autodesk has in mind, but apparently not.

Well, now they will be spared. For now, at least. The 30% increase is being cancelled (confirmation from Autodesk’s Felice S can be found here). I’ve asked for clarification on whether the other measures are also being canned.

Edit: Felice has confirmed that only the 30% element of the announcement has been cancelled and the other measures are going ahead.

It’s unclear why Autodesk would announce such increases at this stage. It’s obvious that Autodesk intends to rack up subscription prices hugely at some point in the future, but it struck me as unwise for Autodesk to show its hand this early. We know the prices are going to shoot up, not only because it’s obvious to anyone capable of joining the dots, but also because Autodesk has already done the rack-up-the-prices thing with multi-million increases for angry but trapped Enterprise Agreement subscription customers.

Unfortunately, most Autodesk customers aren’t aware of what has happened to Enterprise Agreement customers. Even among those who do, there are some trusting souls who would discard their valuable permanent licenses to maybe save a few short-term bucks in the vain hope that Autodesk won’t later impose massive price increases on them, too. I’m not sure what would give anyone reason to believe that, but I have seen people express such a view. What the 30% increase did was to destroy such a charmingly optimistic belief.

That’s why the price rise decision has been reversed. Autodesk might state that this flip-flop shows that it is responsive to customer feedback, but that would be bullshit. Although it was hardly a popular move, there has been relatively little angst about this. The 5%/10%/20% maintenance price increases have attracted far more public criticism. There’s no sign of those increases being reversed, so Autodesk, please don’t come the “we’re listening to our customers” crap. If you listened to your customers, you’d still be selling perpetual licenses.

No, this increase has been reversed because it became obvious (thanks to feedback from resellers, not customers) that it was badly mistimed. It gave the game away too soon.

Too late! We noticed.

It’s probably more accurate to call this a postponement rather than a cancellation. Autodesk will impose ~30% price increases on its subscription users just as soon as it thinks it can get away with it. And 30% will be just the start. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, how much and how often.

We have also learned that multi-user (network) licenses are distinctly unpopular with someone very important at Autodesk. Why? Because they’re useful to customers! What a bizarre anti-customer culture there must be within parts of Autodesk for somebody to even think this way, let alone communicate it externally.

To sum up, here are the lessons from this episode:

  • If you sign up for Autodesk subscription, you’re going to get screwed. Hard.
  • The writing is on the wall for network licenses. If your business finds them invaluable, you’re also going to get screwed.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

When spambots get it wrong

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I’ve posted before about the amusement that can be had at the expense of the clueless spammers who set up their bots with poorly written strings. Thanks to the various anti-spam tools now protecting this blog, there are few comments appearing in my spam folder. There was one today though, and the cluelessness reached new heights. The dolt writing the spambot was too dumb to set it up correctly to spew out a series of inane generic comments from a list, but instead put the whole lot of the comment strings in a single self-contradictory comment!

Here it is in all its glory:

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CAD-related Twitter exchange of the year

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In a Twitter post (now deleted), the AutoCAD twitter account asks us to submit our feature ideas for AutoCAD, and links to the Autodesk Ideas Page:

Just one problem. As R.K. McSwain points out in his reply, the Ideas Page has no section for AutoCAD. There should be one, and should have been one for years, but there isn’t. That tells you all you need to know about how the level of concern Autodesk has about AutoCAD’s future development.

Here’s the exchange in all its glory:

Oops.

Autodesk resellers also appear dissatisfied with Autodesk

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I have closed the three satisfaction rating polls I started a couple of months ago and have reported the results individually. This is the final post on this set of polls.

The usual caveats about online polls apply. Please note that for most of the poll respondents, I have no way of knowing if they really are/were resellers. Whoever they are, it would appear that the sentiment is global; over ten countries are represented in the voting logs.

Although this poll appears to indicate that Autodesk is even less popular with its resellers than it is with its customers, the difference is not statistically significant. Also bear in mind that the number of respondents is smaller here than in the related polls. That should be expected, but accuracy is suspect with numbers this small.

With that in mind, here’s how the averages look. The mean rating is 2.55, the median is 1 and the mode is 0. Very dissatisfied respondents outnumber very satisfied ones by nearly eleven to one.

If this result has any validity, it’s an indictment on Autodesk’s relationship with its most important business partners.

Why would resellers be unhappy? Well, Autodesk is gradually eating up their market share by selling direct in bigger and bigger numbers. Resellers have had to act as the meat in the sandwich as Autodesk’s policies get more and more aggressively anti-customer. Trying to sell expensive rental software to smart people with calculators can’t be easy, especially if your heart’s not in it. If you’re a reseller that has worked hard over decades to build up a great relationship with your customers and Autodesk has damaged that relationship (in some cases beyond repair), you’re probably not pleased about that, either. And if you’re a reseller that has lost half its income over the last few years and has had to lay people off, you’re unlikely to rate Autodesk highly for satisfaction.

Is that what’s happening?

Feel free to comment here if you wish to discuss any aspect of this. Resellers in particular are welcome to expand on the reasons for their dissatisfaction, or to offer a counterpoint. Are you a happy Autodesk reseller? Or a customer that has had a candid discussion with your reseller on the state of play? Let’s hear from you. You don’t have to identify yourself accurately unless you want to and I will of course respect your privacy.

I have closed the three satisfaction rating polls I started a couple of months ago and will be reporting the results individually. The usual caveats about online polls apply.

This poll indicates that Autodesk customer satisfaction levels are perhaps not quite as elevated as they could be. The mean rating is 2.75, the median is 2 and the mode is 0. Yes, zero. Very dissatisfied customers outnumber very satisfied ones by nearly ten to one. That’s pretty emphatic.

If Autodesk had left its policies alone and tried to run a huge PR campaign to deliberately make itself as unpopular with its customers as possible, I doubt that it could have achieved anything like this poor a result. Congratulations, I guess.

Although this is an appalling result for Autodesk, it should come as no surprise to anyone. This reflects the sentiment I see pretty much everywhere, in a wide variety of online forums and when talking to all sorts of people in person.

Lesson for the day: there’s no point in spending a billion dollars a year on marketing if you’re going to do things that make you about as popular as a fart in an elevator.

I have closed the three satisfaction rating polls I started a couple of months ago and will be reporting the results individually.

Let’s start on a positive note. The poll indicates that in general, you’re reasonably happy with your Autodesk resellers. The mean rating is 6.04, the median is 7 and the mode is 8. Given the unpopular message they’ve had to pass on lately, I think this is a pretty positive result.

Feel free to comment here if you wish to discuss any aspect of this. Are you happy with your reseller?

Repost: Autodesk Subscription – it could be worse

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This is a repost of Autodesk Subscription – it could be worse from 18 April 2010.

I’m posting this to show that I’m not just having a go at Autodesk’s policies because they’re from Autodesk. I’m having a go at those policies because they are reprehensible. Whoever it is that’s being anti-customer, spinning bullshit, or otherwise misbehaving, they can expect to receive a brutally honest critique here.

It’s interesting that in this old post I pointed out that this policy was bad business. (Not quite the expression I used, but the sentiment was there). My agreement with Buzz Kross on this subject goes back seven years, even though I only just discovered that was the case!

  • 2010: Autodesk Subscription – it could be worse
  • 2017: Autodesk subscription – it is worse!

The old post is below the line. Some of the old links are broken, but some work and provide a fascinating insight into how customers – anybody’s customers – view the idea of being charged to fix defects. Enjoy.

I’m still looking for your questions about Autodesk Subscription and upgrade policies and pricing. No matter what you think about that, you have to admit that Autodesk’s current policies are less anti-customer than those inflicted on SolidWorks users.

Disallowing bug fixes for non-subscription customers is reprehensible, no matter what kind of spin is put on it. Not only that, it’s clueless. So you’re annoyed at Autodesk for whatever reason and are looking for alternative software from a company that doesn’t mistreat its customers? You know not to even bother looking at SolidWorks, don’t you?

Edit: more relevant links and customer comments from Devon Sowell and Matt Lombard’s blogs.

Battle of the Bullshit part 5 – Bentley back in the bad books

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Having earlier earned my praise for raising its game in its PR battle with Autodesk, Bentley has unfortunately reverted to BS mode with its latest effort.

In its message “Upgrade your Autodesk Licenses – Top 5 Reasons Why You Have a Choice“, Bentley’s marketers have chosen to step beyond the facts. Bad idea.

Most of that page is just straightforward promotion of Bentley’s self-perceived strong points. No problem with that. But the first full paragraph? Hmm.

Here’s the first example:

Preserve the value of your Autodesk licenses that otherwise would be lost as a result of Autodesk’s decision to no longer offer or support perpetual licenses.

It’s true that Autodesk has decided to no longer offer perpetual licenses. It’s false to state that Autodesk will no longer support them. Perpetual licenses are fully supported with maintenance. Without maintenance, support suffers, but it’s still there. Of course, customers may be rightly fearful about the nasties Autodesk may introduce in future to “persuade” perpetual license owners into subscription subservience, but we’re not there yet and it’s misleading to imply that we are.

What else?

Your perpetual license is a valuable asset. But, if it cannot be upgraded and maintained, it loses all of its value.

It’s true that your perpetual license is a valuable asset. It’s misleading to imply that Autodesk perpetual licenses can’t be maintained. Maintenance is still available, although Autodesk is making it more expensive.

It’s misleading to imply that perpetual licenses can’t be upgraded. It’s true that Autodesk stopped selling upgrades to non-maintenance customers a while ago (having earlier priced them out of the market and then disingenuously citing lack of demand as the excuse for dropping them). But perpetual licenses under maintenance agreements can be upgraded (and are; it’s the biggest part of the deal). They’re obviously also being maintained, so Bentley’s not being fully frank there either.

Finally, a non-upgradable off-maintenance perpetual license does not lose all of its value. It’s still a valuable tool that is capable of doing useful work and generating income for years to come. That’s kind of the point of perpetual licenses; you can stop paying anybody anything and still use the product. In Europe you can even still sell the product.

Elsewhere, Bentley promotes its licensing flexibility. It’s true that Bentley’s continued support for perpetual licenses and availability of rental (term licenses in Bentleyspeak) means it’s 100% more flexible than Autodesk. That doesn’t make it all hunky dory in Bentley license land, though. I don’t see any mention of Bentley’s practice of rounding up your network license use to your detriment, allowing you to silently overshoot your license allowance, then sending you a huge punitive invoice at the end of the billing period.

To be fair, I wouldn’t expect to see that mentioned in marketing materials. But if you have a look at what Bentley customers have had to say about it, particularly from those people who have been over-billed because Bentley has counted license use unfairly, you’ll see that it doesn’t go down at all well with customers. So bear that in mind if you’re thinking of taking up Bentley on this or any other offer.

The rest of the marketing blurb seems fair enough, even if some of the clichéd stock photos are a bit groan-inducing. However, its effectiveness is severely curtailed by its failure to provide details of exactly what is being offered and under what conditions. As I noted with a previous Bentley attempt, curious customers are expected to fill in an online form to obtain information, and that’s a barrier.

It seems I need to repeat something I wrote in an earlier post:

Raise your game, people; we’re not all stupid out here. If you can’t support your argument with the truth, then your argument isn’t a good one and you need to rethink it.

I’m used to Autodesk doing dumb things because it has forgotten to learn from its own history, including pretty recent history in some cases. This episode seems to indicate that Bentley has the same problem.

Bentley, here’s some free advice. You don’t need to exaggerate in order to make Autodesk’s treatment of customers look bad. Autodesk is doing a magnificent job of that without any help. The facts are enough. Also, if you have a great offer, just tell us what it is. OK?

First 2018.1-broke-my-AutoCAD reports coming in

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Thanks to R.K. McSwain for pointing out that at least one user has reported unexpected shutdowns from AutoCAD (Architecture, probably) following installation of the 2018.1 Update. The problem went away following uninstallation of the update.

Caveat updator.

Anybody else have any issues or are you all waiting for the early adopters to find out for you?

Edit: it turns out the crash occurs when opening 2013 DXF files.

Edit 2: a hotfix has been posted here.

AutoCAD 2018.1 released, but only for some

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Autodesk has released the AutoCAD (and LT) 2018.1 Update, not to be confused with the earlier ill-fated 2018.0.1 Update. It’s only available for currently-paying subscription and maintenance customers. The “non critical” bug fixes in this Update (by Autodesk’s definition) are being withheld from Autodesk’s other customers.

Those of you who have allowed your maintenance to expire due to Autodesk’s development inaction and unjustified price increases can consider yourselves duly punished for failing to fall into line.

If you have the execrable Autodesk desktop app installed (not recommended) and it works as expected, this update will present itself to you. Otherwise, get it from your Autodesk Account page. Go to Management > AutoCAD > 2018 Downloads > Updates & Add-ons and then pick the appropriate AutoCAD 2018.1 Update download.

It has yet to be seen whether this update will break things, so if you’re feeling nervous you might want to hold off for a while and let others find out for you. (Edit: it broke one person’s AutoCAD, see comment from R.K. below).

Weighing in at well over 400 MB, the AutoCAD 2018.1 Update download is about twice the size of a complete BricsCAD download, even before expansion. So it must contain a pretty impressive amount of stuff, right? Or is it all bloat? Well, it includes 2018.0.1 and 2018.0.2 and adds this:

  • Xref Layers Override – Improvements to Xref Layers make it easier to identify overrides and restore them to their default values.
  • Views and Viewports – A new Named Views panel is added to the View tab to make it easy to create and restore named views from the ribbon, and to create scaled views and viewports for your layouts. The new layout viewports are automatically assigned a standard scale that can easily be changed from a new scale grip on the viewport. Viewport grips have been enhanced.
  • High Resolution Monitor Support – Supports additional dialog boxes. Palettes and icons are correctly adjusted to the Windows setting for the display scale.
  • 3D Graphics Performance – Work on performance continues to optimize the speed of 3D display for the Wireframe, Realistic, and Shaded visual styles.

The user interface has been touched up to support the above changes. The Preview Guide has been prepared to the usual excellent standard.

That’s all useful stuff, and most welcome. Work has gone into providing some genuinely useful adjustments. But there’s not a lot of it. Autodesk is still just tinkering at the edges.

Overall, AutoCAD 2018.1 is a pretty minor mid-term update, falling a long way short of, say, Release 13c4. That update was shipped on CD to all customers. Free. No maintenance or subscription required.

Bricsys does much more significant and worthwhile mid-term updates than this, and doesn’t charge for them. Perpetual license owners, even those not on maintenance, get them for nothing. Along with the bug fixes. Which are properly documented.

Autodesk used to do all that too, but its customer service has since regressed to the point that the standards of the Release 13 days are something to yearn for. Long-term Autodesk customers will know just how damning that state of affairs is. Autodesk lags a long way behind not only the competition, but also its former self.

Autodesk CEO and all-rental architect Andrew Anagnost has asked Autodesk customers to give him a year to prove that his business model will provide them with better value. It’s not clear when that year was supposed to start, but the all-subscription start date of 1 August 2016 seems reasonable. However you reckon it, a big slab of that year is gone and there’s very little to show for it.

Time to get your finger out, Andrew.