Category Archives: Autodesk

Bloatware – a tale of two installations

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In a previous post, I showed that AutoCAD is bloatware by comparing the size of its downloads to that of BricsCAD. Obviously, an application that’s ten times the size it should be is going to cost you a lot of unnecessary bandwidth, download time and drive space. But maybe you don’t care about that. What practical difference does it make?

Well, for one thing, the blimping-out of Autodesk’s former flagship product has a big effect on installation time. Vast and ever-increasing amounts of time are wasted by users of Autodesk products, just waiting for the things to finish installing. But isn’t this just the inevitable price to pay for the functionality provided?

No. Again, BricsCAD proves it.

The installation comparison is shown below. These installations were performed on a mid-range Windows 10 i7 PC with 8 GB RAM. The downloaded files were executed from a local hard drive and the applications were installed to a local SSD. If I needed to enter information manually, I stopped the clock while that was going on. Times are the total elapsed time from commencement in minutes and seconds. More user input was required for the AutoCAD install, but that has not been counted in this comparison. That is, by eliminating the human input stages I’m being kind to Autodesk.

I performed a complete default installation of BricsCAD. In the case of AutoCAD, I turned off the installation of Recap and A360 Desktop to make for a fair comparison, as equivalents are not part of the BricsCAD install and those components are not required by the average CAD user. Everything else was as per default settings.

BricsCAD V17.2 64-bit Windows Installation
Installation Operation
 Timestamp
Execute BricsCAD-V17.2.03-1-en_US(x64).msi 0:00
Prompt for questions 0:03
Click Yes for UAC Allow 0:14
Installation complete, start application 0:35
First run startup 0:40
Total time from install to ready to draw
 0:40 (100%)

That’s astonishingly fast. Remember, this is an application that is more capable than AutoCAD overall. How does installing AutoCAD itself compare?

Equivalent AutoCAD 2018 64-bit Windows Installation
Installation Operation
 Timestamp
Execute AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_001_002.sfx.exe 0:00
Self-extractor finishes initializing 2:46
Self-extractor finishes extracting, click Yes for UAC Allow 4:56
Install screen appears, answer questions, start install proper 5:04
Desktop icon appears 8:10
Install complete, restart required 10:21
Restart complete, start application 11:41
Activation begins 12:05
Activation complete 12:21
Close AutoCAD, execute AutoCAD_2018_Product_Help_English_Win_32_64bit_dlm.sfx.exe 12:25
Self-extractor finishes initializing 14:44
Self-extractor finishes extracting, click Yes for UAC Allow 14:54
Install screen appears, answer questions, start install proper 14:57
Offline Help installation complete, execute AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe 15:44
2018.0.1 install complete, start AutoCAD 16:50
Second startup complete 17:18
Total time from install to ready to draw
 17:18 (2595%)

Installed sizes are roughly 0.5 GB for BricsCAD and 2.4 GB for AutoCAD. It’s hard to be exact because Autodesk likes to perform multiple installs when one is requested and tends to squirrel away various components in a variety of places. Here are the ten(!) new entries in Add or Remove Programs after just the first stage of the AutoCAD install:

OK, so maybe AutoCAD takes 26 times as long as BricsCAD to install. But the AutoCAD installation images are so much prettier than the plain old BricsCAD dialogs! Shall we call it a draw?

No.

Autodesk, you took a real pounding here. Bricsys chewed you up, spat you out, ground the chewings into the dust, set fire to the remains and then put out the fire with bodily fluids. Sorry, but you deserve it. Your installations have been ridiculously slow for years and are getting worse. Installing a vertical product or suite is beyond a joke; it makes even the AutoCAD install look speedy. It’s not good enough.

AutoCAD 2018.0.1 mystery deepens with silent withdrawal

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As I mentioned earlier, the release of AutoCAD 2018 was followed almost instantaneously by the first update, 2018.0.1. At the time of writing, there was no official information about this update. Some information was later made available, but questions remained.

Now the update has been silently withdrawn. Go to Autodesk Account > Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons and you will no longer see this:

The infamous Autodesk desktop app also shows no sign of this update. So why has it been withdrawn? Autodesk isn’t saying, but thanks to Jimmy Bergmark, we know that installing the 2018.0.1 update re-introduces a bug from AutoCAD 2016 (pre SP1) where signed VLX files don’t load. This means various 3rd party applications won’t load if the developers have done the Autodesk-recommended right thing by digitally signing their code.

If you’re a developer and want to test your code under the different versions, these direct links still work at the time of writing:

If you’re not sure whether or not you have 2018.0.1 installed, the About command will show you.

You can also check for this under program control by inspecting the system variable _VERNUM. In AutoCAD, it’s “O.49.0.0” before the patch and “O.61.0.0” after. I don’t know about LT, and I don’t know about the situation with verticals. Do they incorporate the 2018.0.1 fixes? How about the VLX bug? Should users who have applied this update uninstall it? Is this going to be done automatically or by Autodesk desktop app? How should users manually revert to the pre-2018.0.1 state if they need to load applications that use signed VLX files?

I think it’s fair to say that Autodesk’s management of this update has been a disaster. This is just one in a long line of AutoCAD update screw-ups going back decades. It proves comprehensively that continuous updates from Autodesk are a non-starter.

Autodesk can’t be trusted avoid breaking things with its updates. It can’t be trusted to effectively communicate about the updates. It can’t be trusted to provide fixes for its broken fixes. It can’t be trusted to provide an automated update mechanism that doesn’t hog your resources or one that works properly.

The AutoCAD 2018 install inflicts the execrable Autodesk desktop app on your systems without asking, which in itself is a betrayal of trust. I recommend you uninstall it immediately after all Autodesk installs. You will need to right-click the app tray icon and use the Exit option before you can uninstall it using Add or Remove Programs.

Autodesk needs your trust to make its continuous update idea work. Autodesk doesn’t have that trust. Autodesk doesn’t come close to deserving it.

Why owning stuff is still important (repost)

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This post was originally published on 19 November 2012. What’s happened since then is that Autodesk has indeed ended the sale of perpetual licenses and gone all-rental even though customers remain reluctant.

Autodesk’s cloud push, however, is struggling. Many Autodesk cloud products are dying or dead. Others (mostly free) carry on but many have failed to live up to expectations.  Some paid cloud products (e.g. Fusion 360) are starting to generate some return on Autodesk’s huge investment. However, it’s all years behind schedule. We were supposed to be cloudy CAD users several years ago. It hasn’t happened. How much of that is because of technical blockages, how much is because we have problems trusting the cloud, and how much is because we prefer to own our software licenses? I have no way of telling, but I’m sure the latter factor is somewhere in the mix.

Most of this post might as well have been written today. The three Cs matter in 2017 and I believe they always will. Here’s the original, unmodified.

Let’s start with a few questions:

  • Do you own your home or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?
  • Do you own your car or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?
  • Do you own your TV or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?
  • Do you own your computer or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?

If you’re like me, you answered the same for most or all of those questions. I own all of the above and rent none of it. I prefer owning all of the above. Why? Three Cs:

  • Continuity. If I own my home, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be able to go on living in it as long as I like. There are exceptions (wars, natural disasters, etc.), but ownership is generally much safer than renting if it’s important to retain access in the long term. This is because it removes the significant possibility that the owner may eventually terminate the agreement for reasons of their own, or make the relationship financially impractical.
  • Control. If I rent my home, for example, there are strict limits on what I can do with it. I can’t just install an air conditioner if the place gets too hot in summer. The owners or their representatives can come calling to make sure I’m looking after it as they desire. If I want to keep pets or smoke in the property, my options are severely limited.
  • Cost. There’s a reason people invest in property to rent out to others, or run profitable multinational businesses hiring out cars. It makes sense to be on the side of the relationship that’s taking the money rather than the one that’s paying it out. In other words, it usually makes financial sense to be the owner rather than the renter.

That doesn’t mean renting things never makes sense, of course. I wouldn’t buy a car to drive around while visiting another country, for example. Many people can’t afford to buy their own homes and have no alternative but to rent. But that doesn’t alter the basic point that ownership is the most desirable situation to be in. Let’s look at another situation and see if that point still applies:

  • Do you own your music or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?

There are an increasing number of people who feel that owning music is old hat. For example, have a look at Scott Sheppard’s blog post on this subject. Here’s one thing Scott has to say:

When you think about it, you don’t want to own an album or CD, you want to hear the songs when you want to.

Sorry, Scott, but there is more to it than just hearing songs when I want to. I have thought about it, very carefully, and I do want to own an album or CD. I want this for the same reasons I want to own my home, my car and so on.

  • Continuity. If I own a CD and look after it, I know I’m going to be able to keep using it indefinitely. I don’t have to worry about whether the rights holder wishes to continue making that music available, or changes the terms of the agreement to my detriment.
  • Control. If I own a CD, I can listen to it in good conditions on my home system without the music suffering from lossy compression. I can put it in my car’s player along with a few others and quickly flip to it without having to search for it among several thousand tracks. I can rip the music from the CD and place it on my iPod Nano watch, or Android phone, or computers, and play it when and where it’s convenient. I’m not reliant on any external parties or connections.
  • Cost. Once I’ve paid for my CD, the incremental cost of each listen is extremely close to zero. I’m still enjoying music I bought years ago, cost-free. My eldest daughter only listens to music on her iPod, but she generally buys CDs rather than downloading songs from iTunes. She does this because she works out what’s cheapest and it’s usually the CD, even allowing for one or two tracks she doesn’t want.

The cost issue may or may not apply, depending on the album and the service, but for me the other two factors are dealbreakers anyway. Besides, there are other reasons I want to own an album. These include artwork, lyrics, the pleasure that comes from collecting and owning an artist’s works, and so on. I understand that these aspects are down to my personal preference. There are plenty of kids out there who just want to listen to this week’s stuff without thinking about the future too much. However, huge numbers of those sort of people aren’t customers, and don’t enter into the commercial equation. When they download music, they don’t pay for it.

Scott’s experiment with Spotify is hardly a compelling argument for non-ownership. He lists a whole bunch of things that are irritating and which detract from his ability to listen to the music when and where he wants to. Things that don’t apply to those of us who own our music (or those who download it for free). In fact, it’s a very convincing argument that the “anytime, anywhere” mantra needs to be turned on its head. Want to ensure that you’ll be able to listen to the music you want? Anytime, anywhere, uninterrupted, problem-free and independent of external factors? Ownership, not Cloudy stuff. Every time.

With that in mind, let’s look at one more situation:

  • Do you own your software or rent it? Given the choice, what would you prefer? Why?

Let’s sidestep the convenient (and court-approved, in some locations) legal idea that customers don’t actually own the software they buy. Let’s interpret the word “software” above as the ability to use the software. This includes whatever is required to do so, from a media, technical and licensing perspective. While you and I might prefer to permanently own our software (or licence to use that software), Autodesk likes to think that society:

is moving from [sic] only requiring access to products instead of owning them

and so it wants to:

move from offering a perpetual license with maintenance to a termed subscription model

In other words, Autodesk doesn’t want you to own software any more, it wants to rent it to you. This desire is clearly the prime mover behind its Cloud push. Never mind that the last time Autodesk tried renting out its software, the experiment was a dismal and short-lived failure because of a lack of customers. This has nothing to do with what you want, it has everything to do with what Autodesk wants.

Is this all OK with you? Do continuity, control and cost really not matter when it comes to software? Are you happy to hand matters over to your friendly vendor and not think about the future too much, like some pop-happy teenager? Or, like me, do you think owning stuff is still important?

Please let me know if you would like to see occasional selected reposts like this in future or would prefer to avoid post necromancy.

Simplifying CAD Management the Autodesk way

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According to Autodesk, one of the benefits of subscription (rental) is simplified administration. To prove it, Autodesk has provided a simple guide for CAD Managers called The Software Administrator’s Guide to Autodesk Subscriptions – How to Set Up, Install, and Manage Your Software and Users.

It’s 18.7 MB and 78 pages long.

Don’t worry though, this simple guide helpfully includes a simple guide on how to read it.

Among other things, this eBook provides handy hints on how subscription’s simplified administration regime for standalone licenses requires you to pre-emptively name all your users, set them all up with Autodesk accounts and define what software each is allowed to use. There’s a note to say that your Internet connection needs to be working at the time of installation (obviously) and also every 30 days (less obvious) or you won’t be able to use the software.

The guide describes how you can simply go online to Autodesk Accounts (assuming it’s up), and switch those permissions around when Bert is away on site and Ernie needs to hop on his PC at 6 PM to make a quick change before a drawing goes out. It mentions how Ernie will be sent an email with a link to follow so they can sign up before using the product. The CAD Manager is encouraged to check with Ernie to make sure it all worked, and check online to ensure Ernie’s sign-in went according to plan.

Make sure you get in early tomorrow morning before Bert’s shift starts so you can switch the user permissions back again. What? You planned to have the day off? Don’t you understand that your job has been redefined by Autodesk? I dub thee “not a team player”.

Don’t complain, because the new procedure is clearly much more simple than the old-fashioned perpetual license method. You know, the one which involved the far more complex procedure of Ernie logging on to Bert’s PC and using the software, then Bert logging on and using it the next day. How did we ever cope before Autodesk’s magnificent management enhancement?

If the huge job efficiency boost provided by this simplified new method doesn’t have CAD Managers throwing their perpetual licenses at Autodesk in a subscription-hungry frenzy, I don’t know what will.

Simplifying CAD Management is alive at Autodesk.

Autodesk customers are still revolting

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I described before how customers are outraged by Autodesk’s attempt to price-force them onto subscription (rental). That’s still happening. The Autodesk Community forum moderators are still vacuuming up threads and Ideas submissions and moving them to the Moving to Subscription forum, which despite its obscurity is still active with some threads now having hundreds of posts.

Other discussions in various non-Autodesk locations are extending over many pages of comments. Almost all comments are highly critical of Autodesk. A large portion of these customers say they are abandoning Autodesk. Many are discussing the specific competitors’ software they are moving to.

In addition to the Autodesk forum staff confining commentary to a quiet corner, another way of keeping the public noise down is by directing people to talk to their resellers. Yesterday, I did just that. The rep who came to see me is a good guy from a great reseller and I was not unkind.

Autodesk obviously knows it’s hard to sell such a bad deal and is pushing its resellers hard to get with the program. They are being briefed and provided with PowerPoint presentations to help sell the deal. My reseller says he’s had to deal with “many angry customers” and feels like the meat in the sandwich. He did his very best to present the deal in its best light, but the poor guy is too honest to make it sound good. He has my sympathy.

There were some differences between the numbers he provided and what I’ve described based on Autodesk information. The major pieces of new information I gleaned (assuming my reseller is right) were:

  • For people who surrender their licenses and switch to subscription, the cost that’s locked in for the first three years is 5% more than maintenance, not the same price.
  • After the three-year lock-in, the year four subscription price rise will be about 15%.
  • After that, nobody knows.

The net effect is slightly worse for subscription than it looked before the meeting, but not hugely so. It’s not worth redoing my graphs.

Switching to subscription is still just a really bad deal that’s being presented as a good deal by comparing it with another deal (maintenance) that’s being artificially worsened. Sorry, but I’m not just comparing it with Autodesk’s other deal. I’m also comparing it with the deals provided by Autodesk’s competitors. According to that comparison, both Autodesk’s deals are shockingly poor. The same happens if I compare Autodesk’s subscription deal with rental success-story Adobe’s pricing.

I explained to my reseller the problem with surrendering perpetual licenses. Autodesk is requiring a decision to be made with permanent, irrevocable consequences, based only on short-term information. He said the message from Autodesk is that further information isn’t going to be forthcoming because, “No other company is going to let you know its prices five years in advance.” My reply was that no other company is expecting me to give away what has already been paid for.

Last week, I had a telephone conversation about an Autodesk rep about this issue. Among other things, I told him:

You’re asking me to give you my balls in a bag in the hope that you won’t squeeze too hard.

 
It ain’t happening.

Autodesk updates Design Review

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Despite the previously announced end-of-active-life for Design Review (Autodesk’s DWF viewer), there is now a new release available. This wasn’t supposed to happen, because we should all now be using cloud-based solutions.

A new version of DWG TrueView was needed to deal with the new DWG 2018 format, and one knock-on effect is that a new Design Review was needed to be compatible with DWG TrueView 2018.  It’s still only 32-bit, so it appears to be a matter of Autodesk just touching it up enough to keep it compatible.

Interestingly, the new Design Review is not called 2018. Here’s where to find it:

On the bloatware theme, if there’s a particular reason this download (421 MB) is over eight times the size of its predecessor (49 MB), it’s not readily apparent.  The installed application is 212 MB, so it’s all a bit mysterious.

The downloaded executable is a WinZip self-extractor. If you’re a CAD Manager, there’s no point in having the unzip happen 100 times for 100 users when it could happen just once, so you’ll want to grab the extracted files and install from those. This installer makes that difficult, but not impossible. If you want to do that, read on. If you’re just installing it once, skip the next two paragraphs.

Running SetupDesignReview.exe (note the lack of version information), the extraction started but I couldn’t find out where it was extracting to. I eventually found it in the folder %Temp%\XXX.tmp, where XXX is a random name, e.g. _AID0D9. This folder gets automatically erased on completion or cancel, so what you need to do is run SetupDesignReview.exe once, wait for the unzipping to finish but don’t go ahead with the install, copy the %Temp%\XXX.tmp folder elsewhere, then cancel the initial installation. You can then run as many installations as you like using the extracted files.

It would be useful to have these things documented. The Installation Help, System Requirements and Readme links in the installer all rather unhelpfully point to a generic Knowledge Network search.

The install proper will uninstall Design Review 2013 without asking, which is antisocial. For example, if you wanted to keep using HP Instant Printing (not supported in the new release), this installation would mess you up. In my case it also threw up an error during that uninstall, although it still seemed to go through with it.

Note there’s no sign of a release number. The only versioning I can find is in Help > About, with a build version of 14.0.0.177. When you run it, you’ll notice that it hasn’t had the UI of Doom treatment, so it looks like a cut-down AutoCAD from a few releases ago. Not a bad thing.

How about the product itself? Seems to work OK. If you go to open something, it will show you DWG files as well as DWF(x) files. What happens if you try to open a DWG file? This.

Everybody familiar with versioning knows you never put “the latest version” on anything because it’s meaningless. I was once told about a Head Drafter in the early CAD days who had special stamps made up to stamp paper plots with THIS IS THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS DRAWING. The above message is about that smart.

What happens when you pick the Learn More button? Nothing. So I learned nothing.

Anything else? Well, on my system, it takes about twice as long to start up this simple DWF viewer than it does to start up a full-blown CAD application. Want to take a guess at which application I mean?

Can’t complain too much. This product is free, Autodesk is still providing it and still making efforts to keep it up to date. Props for that much, at least.

Bloatware – a tale of two CAD applications

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You may have seen me mention in passing that AutoCAD is bloatware. That’s not just the general grumpy-old-user moan you see from long-term users like me, who can remember when AutoCAD used to fit on one floppy disk.

Yes, programs get bigger over time as new functionality is added and old functionality needs to be retained. Hardware gets bigger, better, faster over time to compensate for that. I get that. Understood.

The AutoCAD bloatware problem is much more than that. AutoCAD is literally ten times the size it needs to be, to provide the functionality it does.

How do I know? BricsCAD proves it. Here’s what I mean.

BricsCAD V17.2 64-bit Windows Download
Downloaded File Size (KB)
BricsCAD-V17.2.03-1-en_US(x64).msi 248,812
Total (1 file) 248,812 (100%)
Equivalent AutoCAD 2018 Downloads
Downloaded File Size (KB)
AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_001_002.sfx.exe 2,065,829
AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_002_002.sfx.exe 328,277
AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe 120,663
AutoCAD_2018_Product_Help_English_Win_32_64bit_dlm.sfx.exe 180,013
Total (4 files) 2,694,782 (1083%)

Which dog is which? They’re both cute, but which would you put your money on in a race?

(Original image: Przykuta)

(Original image: Lisa Cyr)

I’m actually being very generous to Autodesk in this comparison. The two primary AutoCAD download executables alone expand from 2.4 GB to 5.2 GB before install, requiring a total at least 7.6 GB of disk space before we even get to the same ready-to-install point as BricsCAD’s 0.24 GB MSI file.

No, it’s not because BricsCAD is a cut-down application compared with AutoCAD. The opposite is true. Overall, BricsCAD is significantly more feature-rich than AutoCAD. It near-exactly duplicates over 95% of AutoCAD’s functionality and then adds a big slab of its own on top of that. Some of it is in paid-for optional extras, but the code that provides that functionality is still included in the same small download.

This issue isn’t unique to AutoCAD. Super-morbid obesity seems to be standard among Autodesk products. The AutoCAD-based verticals that add a comparable level of functionality to that the BricsCAD download includes are much bigger again!

Anybody care to explain what’s going on here?

New Autodesk subscription idea – any interest?

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Let’s say Autodesk came up with a new offer for customers currently under maintenance. Let’s say you could switch to subscription (rental) with the same price as maintenance, locked in with no increases for three years. In addition, you get to retain, but not upgrade, your perpetual license.

Let’s say you’re on maintenance which is up for renewal later this year. You currently have a perpetual license of AutoCAD 2018. If you accept this offer, you will always retain that AutoCAD 2018 license. You switch to subscription and pay the maintenance amount for one to three years. Your subscription fee is guaranteed to rise by no more than 20% total by year five.

As long as you continue to pay subscription, you get access to new releases (2019, 2020, etc). If you decide to no longer renew your subscription at any point, you can no longer use the new releases, but you can still fall back on using your perpetual license, which remains as AutoCAD 2018. The use of the software would be subject to the usual fair use restrictions, e.g. during the subscription period you can’t use AutoCAD 2018 on one PC while using AutoCAD 2019 on a different one.

Would you be interested in such an offer?

I’ve added a poll, so please vote and feel free to comment on why you would or would not be prepared to switch under those circumstances.

Would you be interested in switching to Autodesk subscription if you could keep your old (non-upgraded) perpetual license?

  • Yes (24%, 32 Votes)
  • Maybe (25%, 33 Votes)
  • No (51%, 67 Votes)

Total Voters: 132

Loading ... Loading ...

Please note that this offer is entirely hypothetical. It arose from a recent telephone conversation with a non-Autodesk person. I have no inside information that suggests Autodesk is considering such an offer.

New Autodesk subscription offer to perpetual license holders

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Don’t get too excited. Autodesk’s recent attempt to price-force perpetual license maintenance customers onto subscription (rental) remains in place, unchanged and just as unappealing as before. If you’re one of those customers, there’s nothing new here of interest to you.

This new offer, at 30% off the normal but extremely high subscription price, is at first sight even less appealing than the approximately 60% saving that the above offer provides. But it’s aimed at different customers, and there’s the remote possibility that such customers might find it worthwhile.

The new offer is called FY18 Q1 Autodesk – Global Field Promotion and is aimed at bringing into the rental fold those customers who hold old perpetual licenses that are not on maintenance. If you have an old AutoCAD Release 14 lying around that has never been upgraded, or an AutoCAD 2007 license where you allowed the maintenance (then called Subscription) to lapse, you can trade it in for the 30% discount on a wide range of subscription products. You need to surrender the perpetual license, and you need to pay up front for three years of subscription. Read the FAQ for details.

Three years of subscription at only 30% off is actually really expensive. Depending on what product you go for, it could work out about the same as a perpetual license cost back when Autodesk used to sell software. Despite that substantial investment, you’ll be left with nothing whatsoever at the end of the three years. You will then be expected to wear a huge increase in rental costs when the 30% discount wears off. It works out to a price jump of about 43%, plus whatever price rises there may have been in the meantime.

Excited by this offer? No? Gee, you people are hard to please!

Don’t dismiss it out of hand, though. If you meet all of the following conditions, you should still consider this offer:

  • You have an old non-upgraded eligible license lying around.
  • You’re never going to want to use that license ever again.
  • You have an absolute need to rent one of the Autodesk products on offer, and would otherwise be paying 100% rather than 70% of the huge subscription fees.
  • You can afford to pay those high fees in advance for three years.
  • You’re definitely going to need that rented software for more than two years (otherwise it works out cheaper to rent at 100% for 2/3 of the time).
  • You can budget for a huge price increase at the end of the three year period, assuming you’re going to use the software long-term.
  • You don’t think Autodesk is going to come up with a more attractive offer later.

Maybe the Autodesk execs think this is going to be perceived as an attractive offer, but if they do there’s a fair bit of self-delusion going on. I fully expect this campaign to fail to live up to Autodesk’s expectations, and much better offers to follow later, in order to try to tempt the remaining hold-outs. No guarantees, obviously; it’s your money and your gamble.

Having had a good look at what Autodesk execs have been telling the stock market, I’ve been expecting this move. Old perpetual license holders have been identified as a target market. However, I was expecting the move to come later than this, and I was expecting the terms of the offer to be much more attractive. Are perpetual license converts thinner on the ground than Autodesk expected? Is Autodesk getting desperate for cash to make this quarter’s numbers look better than they otherwise would? Wouldn’t surprise me.

AutoCAD 2018 – at last, something to praise

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This isn’t supposed to be an Autodesk-bashing blog. Really, it’s not. Sure, Autodesk (and anyone else) gets criticism where deserved. There’s been a lot of that lately, but only because Autodesk has thoroughly deserved it. I don’t make up things so I can have a go; Autodesk provides the material all by itself.

Among other things, I’m a customer advocate. I don’t care who you are, act in an anti-customer manner and I’m going to slam you. Hard but fair. Dish up bullshit to your customers and I will gleefully point that out and heap derision on you. Deal with it.

On the other hand, act in a pro-customer manner and I’m going to praise you. I do praise Autodesk (and anyone else) where deserved. There are dozens of examples of that on this blog. Lately, the pickings have been slim. Time to redress the balance a little.

I’ve mentioned before that Autodesk has some great documentation people, including Lee Ambrosius…

…who does a great job with developer documentation. That job’s less visible, but still very important and performed to an excellent standard. Lee is very technically knowledgeable and understands users, developers and their documentation requirements. Within the confines of the systems he’s forced to work with, Lee has done the very best job it would be possible for anyone to do.

Lee has again stepped up to the mark and done exemplary work with the AutoCAD 2018 developer documentation. See Lee’s post for details. This list of AutoLISP changes is an example of the sort of thoughtful addition Lee has provided. Thank you, Lee!

AutoCAD 2018.0.1 mystery partially resolved but questions remain

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As I mentioned earlier, the release of AutoCAD 2018 was followed almost instantaneously by the first update, 2018.0.1. At the time of writing, there was no official information about this update. Some information is now available, but more questions have arisen.

If, like me, you don’t/won’t/can’t have Autodesk desktop app running on your systems, the only current official way to get at the download is using Autodesk Account (but read the whole of this post before you go there). That’s also how you get at information about the update. Go to Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons. From there, it’s not obvious how to get the information, but it’s under More options.

From there, pick View Details. This will show you the following information (after you pick More):

As you can see, the severity is considered high. If you pick View release notes, you can see the readme, or you can go straight to it if you have this direct link. Here are the fixes described in the readme:

  • Occasional crashes when ending an AutoCAD session using specific API code no longer occur.
  • Publishing annotative multiline attributes no longer results in incorrect annotative scaling.
  • PFB fonts can now be compiled successfully as SHX files.
  • The border of a mask is no longer plotted in PDFs when “Lines Merge” is turned on.

Although it would be easy to have a go at Autodesk for shipping a product that needs fixing within hours of release, that wouldn’t be entirely fair. No software is flawless. Stuff happens, and the sooner fixes are provided to resolve that stuff, the better. So I commend Autodesk for getting this fix out quickly.

That doesn’t mean Autodesk is blameless, though. Read on.

First, the way the information about this update was (or wasn’t) disseminated was sub-optimal. It has required too much prodding and guesswork to get to the point we are now, and we’re still not where we should be.

Next, there’s scant information in the readme. I don’t see any documented way of including this fix in a deployment, for example. That means it’s not possible to create a one-step automated install without resorting to trickery.

Further, this update isn’t available on the main Autodesk site. It needs to be. Even if you know the version number to look for, a search at autodesk.com will come up blank:

Using the Autodesk Knowledge Network Download Finder won’t help, either:

Fortunately, these direct links appear to work:

This brings me to my fourth point of criticism. See that the 64-bit executable has “r2” on it? The one I downloaded on 23 March doesn’t. The 64-bit executables are similar in size to each other but the binary content is different. The 32-bit 2018.0.1 has a date of 22 March and the 64-bit 2018.0.1 r2 has a date of 24 March. So it looks like the patch has been patched, at least for 64-bit users.

Information on this patch-patch is non-existent. Should somebody who downloaded and applied the 64-bit 2018.0.1, download and apply 2018.0.1 r2? Will that work? Do they need to uninstall 2018.0.1 first? How should they do that? Will the 32-bit 2018.0.1 also be updated to r2? Should those users hang off a few days to avoid wasting time or go ahead with what’s there now?

Over to you, Autodesk.

What’s in a name? AutoCAD 360 / mobile app confusion

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Has Autodesk’s online DWG viewer/markup tool had yet another rename? It’s hard to tell. I suspect there’s a rename process going on that’s not yet complete.

Here’s the list of names so far. I think.

  • Visual Tau (when acquired by Autodesk)
  • Project Butterfly (Autodesk Labs name)
  • AutoCAD WS
  • AutoCAD 360
  • AutoCAD mobile app

The last two names appear to be interchangeable right now. What led me to this confusion is the very sub-optimal customer experience I had in attempting to try out AutoCAD 360. The best way to describe it is a wild goose chase.

I started from a point familiar to current AutoCAD maintenance and subscription customers, the Autodesk Accounts page. Like the majority of AutoCAD users, I accessed this using a browser on a Windows PC. Among the options in there was this. Hmm, AutoCAD® 360, free, Access now. Let’s try that out.

I picked that option and was taken here:

Huh? Where’s AutoCAD 360? What’s AutoCAD mobile app? What’s this 7 day free trial thing? Autodesk Accounts told me it was free, not just a trial. What’s this, clickbait? Undeterred, I clicked the GET WINDOWS APP button and arrived here:

I’m off the Autodesk site and on the Microsoft one now, and it’s no longer AutoCAD mobile app, it’s back at AutoCAD 360 again. It says it’s available on Windows Holographic, PC and mobile device. But Get the app  is disabled and I’m informed This app does not work on your device. This is on the same page as “…AutoCAD drawings across desktop, web and mobile devices – anytime, anywhere” – except here and now, apparently.

This page says it’s free, not just a 7 day trial, but it looks like it’s free for everybody, not just subscription/maintenance customers. Confused yet? I sure am.

On this page I’m also informed that this is “the most powerful drafting and editing tool available” – wow! More powerful than AutoCAD 2018, the AutoCAD-based verticals and everything from Autodesk’s competitors? Cool! If only I could use it, I might be impressed. At least until I tried to do something that boring old desktop AutoCAD could do over 30 years ago, such as fillet two lines. I’m informed by somebody who can actually use the product that basic functionality like that is still missing; so much for the infinite computing power of the cloud.

Back to my product chase. In an attempt to find out what’s going on, I fired up the video on the previous Autodesk page. This one says it’s AUTODESK® AUTOCAD® | mobile app:

It also says “IN 36 SECONDS” during a 43-second video, but hey, let’s not get too tied up with accuracy. A few seconds into the video, we see an iPad user picking this:

Yes, that’s an AutoCAD 360 icon. It’s not even the current red A, it’s an old one from a couple of years ago. So is it AutoCAD 360 or AutoCAD mobile app? Looking for clues, I wandered over to Twitter: @AutoCAD360 now calls itself AutoCAD mobile app.

As mentioned above, there’s probably a rename process going on that’s not yet complete, but whatever the cause, it’s confusing as heck. Doesn’t anybody at Autodesk proof read anything or consider the customer experience before putting it out there?

Naming is a trivial matter compared with functionality, and I have been provided with none. I still haven’t managed to use the free product I was promised in Autodesk Accounts, whatever Autodesk eventually decides to call it. I still don’t know if it’s free to subscription/maintenance customers, free to everyone, or just a 7 day free trial.

Autodesk spends a billion dollars a year on marketing and sales. This little episode indicates it’s not getting great value for money.

AutoCAD 2018 – why did the DWG format change?

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In my review of AutoCAD 2018, I had this to say about AutoCAD 2018’s changed DWG format:

Why does AutoCAD 2018 need a new DWG format? It probably doesn’t. The 2013 DWG format is capable of holding pretty much anything you want… Although Autodesk cites performance reasons with certain drawings, I strongly suspect the new DWG format was introduced purely to make life difficult for competitors, and to encourage wavering customers to stay with Autodesk for fear of losing compatibility. In other words, it seems likely this is an anti-competitive change rather than a technical one.

In a recent blog post, highly respected Swiss-based Autodesk development and research person Kean Walmsley had this to say on that subject:

The main reason for the break in compatibility is some longer-term work that’s going on inside the AutoCAD codebase. For now this is really only surfacing in small ways – I expect it’s contributing some performance benefits, for instance – but the work is absolutely critical to the long-term viability of the product.

Kean’s a straight-shooter and I’m always ready to be corrected if it can be shown that I’m wrong. So I would be interested to learn more detail about this long-term work that’s critical to the long-term viability of the product. It might be good news for customers or really terrible news. If the groundwork is being laid for a file format that’s more heavily cloud-reliant or subject to continuous change, say, that would be an absolute tragedy for customers.

Autodesk is clearly manoeuvring customers into a position of maximum tie-in using various nefarious means, and if the DWG format change is part of that then it’s to be condemned. Maybe further information would help alleviate such concerns. Kean can’t provide that information, and neither can the selected bloggers who were given some insight under NDA last week, but I’m sure someone at Autodesk could. That is, if there really is nothing to worry about.

Kean also had this to say:

AutoCAD continues to be a core part of Autodesk’s business – and it continues to receive significant investment in terms of development resources – but don’t expect that to translate to buckets of shiny new features: AutoCAD’s feature maturity means the investment is rightly being focused in other areas (at least for now).

This had me wondering if Kean mistyped “immaturity”, because almost every AutoCAD feature from the last decade was released immature and only the lucky few eventually got finished. There’s a huge mass of outstanding work left to do in AutoCAD just to bring its existing half-baked features up to scratch, practically all of which could be done without disrupting customers with a new DWG format.

As for the feature set itself being mature, I can’t agree with that, either. Maybe it’s considered mature within Autodesk because of defeatist thinking about what’s possible with DWG-based CAD software? Kean’s comments seem to reinforce that impression. From where I’m standing, the lack of progress in recent AutoCAD releases demonstrates a severe lack of imagination and hunger to improve the product, not any inherent natural plateau in CAD development.

I believe this because Autodesk’s keener competitors have shown that no such plateau exists. Bricsys has proven that it’s very possible to improve an AutoCAD-like DWG-based product out of sight with genuinely useful and productive new features, and they can do it without changing the DWG format. Incidentally, my preliminary tests indicate BricsCAD V17 opens and saves DWG significantly faster than AutoCAD 2018, again without the need for a new format. More on that in a later post.

Back to Kean:

This is a tricky balance – and could easily be interpreted as a big company not caring about (some of) its users and only being interested in milking its cash-cow – but the work happening behind the scenes is significant and I believe will ultimately prove to be of real value to our customers.

Real value? History has taught me to be dubious about that. Many things that Autodesk promotes as being of value to customers turn out to be of net negative value. Time will tell with this one.

Sorry, but I really don’t believe that Autodesk cares about AutoCAD and its users as anything but an income source. I know there are still honest, hardworking, enthusiastic people within Autodesk (like Kean) who want to improve the product on behalf of customers. Good luck to those people, because their efforts are being stymied by management. The results we’re seeing out here in customer land are dismal, and no matter what spin is put on that, it must be disheartening.

Autodesk people, caring about users? Sure. Autodesk, the public listed company, as directed from the top? Nope. Autodesk’s actions and inactions tell me otherwise. Zero cares are given. No words can fix that, no matter who they come from.

AutoCAD really is being treated as a cash cow; hang one of those bells around its neck and be done with it.


(Original image: Daniel Schwen)

Ask Teresa from Autodesk your maintenance and subscription questions

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As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted earlier, Greg reports:

Since then Teresa Anania (Teresa from the letter) has contacted me and has agreed to do a pixelfondue livestream and answer some questions people may have. So…if you want to ask Teresa something directly post your question here and I will send it to her. I obviously can’t guarantee that I will ask (or she will answer) all questions. Teresa is (to her credit) reaching out to customers in a more personal way here – and maybe we can help her understand our feelings about AD’s move to subscription, especially how it pertains to current license holders.

Teresa Anania is Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success. It is indeed commendable that Teresa is prepared to step out of the Autodesk PR safe zone and field questions and comments from real people in an environment outside her control.

If you want to ask Teresa a question, hop over Autodesk forum and reply to Greg’s post. I’ll let Greg know about this post here too, so if you reply here he should see it.

AutoCAD 2018 – bear this in mind

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Given the dearth of new functionality in AutoCAD in recent years, it’s understandable that Autodesk has taken to claiming credit for the same thing twice. The same features have been touted once for the 2017.1 mid-term update and again as 2018 new features. Even I fell for it, listing linetype gap selection as a 2018 feature in my original review.

For the purposes of reviewing the earlier AutoCAD releases and AutoCAD 2018 as upgrades, I have included the 2017.1 features in 2018, not 2017. Some of those features are praiseworthy, and there have been some minor improvements to some of the 2017.1 features in 2018, but let’s count them just once, please.

Blogs and sites that just regurgitate Autodesk’s take on what’s new in AutoCAD 2018 might inadvertently repeat the double-dipping. Bear that in mind when you read reviews.

AutoCAD 2018 – 2/10, would not rent

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It must be March, because another AutoCAD has just been launched. Despite this one being codenamed Omega, I’ve been assured it’s not the final AutoCAD release. The good news is that AutoCAD 2018 is twice the upgrade that 2017 was. But hold your excitement, because the bad news is that 2017 was only a 1/10 upgrade.

Autodesk has continued the well-established tradition of acting like a low-quality sausage machine, reliably popping out consistently unexciting products at regular intervals.

Here’s what’s in this year’s underwhelming sausage:

  • Xrefs now default to relative path attachment and there are a few associated tweaks including find/replace path
  • You can select objects off-screen (handier than it sounds)
  • File dialogs remember settings
  • A couple more dialogs can be resized
  • There are a couple more tiny user interface tweaks
  • The stuff from 2017.1 is included, of course, some seeing minor improvements since then
  • iDrop support is gone (will anybody miss this?)

Thrilled? Me neither. The xref stuff is worthwhile, and Autodesk does deserve credit for not adding any seriously undercooked “headline” features or pointless eye candy. That, along with the 2017.1 stuff, quietly fixing some old bugs, sorting out a few old feature issues and some unsung but worthy API documentation improvements, is just about enough to make this a 3/10 upgrade.

But wait! Autodesk earned itself a minus point to take it from 3 to 2 by inconveniencing customers with yet another API change (so your 3rd party stuff will need updating), and most unfortunate of all, a DWG format change. We had grown used to enjoying a lack of compatibility issues (with plain AutoCAD, anyway – don’t get me started on the verticals), thanks to the 2013 format surviving five releases rather than the traditional three. Now that’s over.

Why does AutoCAD 2018 need a new DWG format? It probably doesn’t. The 2013 DWG format is capable of holding pretty much anything you want, as Bricsys has shown with BricsCAD V17’s ability to compatibly store 3D parametrics and (optional) BIM and sheet metal features within that format. The changes to AutoCAD 2018 don’t come anywhere near that level of complexity. Although Autodesk cites performance reasons with certain drawings, I strongly suspect the new DWG format was introduced purely to make life difficult for competitors, and to encourage wavering customers to stay with Autodesk for fear of losing compatibility. In other words, it seems likely this is an anti-competitive change rather than a technical one.

Oh, and the desktop icon is the same as 2017, so if you run both releases side by side while you’re waiting for your add-ons to be updated, you’ll find it difficult to see at a glance which shortcut is which and what’s already running. Minor irritant, but an unnecessary cheapskate move.

There are alleged to be performance improvements; probably true in places. I did notice a slight improvement in 3D Orbit performance, with AutoCAD 2018 now about up to BricsCAD standards. However, this aspect of AutoCAD 2017 performance wasn’t a problem with the sub-20 MB drawings anyway, so you may not notice a difference.

In my experience with the Beta, AutoCAD 2018 was frequently appallingly slow, particularly start-up time, which was atrocious. Those 14 million lines of code have added up over the years, and AutoCAD 2018 is bloatware; literally ten times the size of the more fully-featured BricsCAD V17 Platinum, which starts up in the blink of an eye. However, I will reserve final judgement on AutoCAD 2018 performance until I have had chance to properly test the production version. I have not factored performance in to my overall mark.

There’s nothing in this release that comes close to justifying the annual maintenance fees, let alone throwing away your perpetual license and signing up for subscription. If Autodesk wants customers to think it will be worthwhile signing up for a lifetime of rental fees in the hope that substantial improvements will result, this weak release represents a singularly unconvincing argument.

Overall, 2/10. This is a sub-mediocre release that shows once again that AutoCAD is in maintenance mode. Autodesk appears completely disinterested in AutoCAD other than as a cash cow, and severely lacking in imagination about ways of seriously improving it. Omega might not be the final AutoCAD release, but given the glacial level of improvement being shown, it might as well be.

ADSK v ADBE – a tale of two graphs

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I’m no financial analyst, so I’ll just leave these graphs here for your own interpretation. They show the profit/loss numbers for two software companies beginning with A that have abandoned perpetual license sales and gone all-subscription (rental).

Among other significant differences, one company went with very low rental prices while the other has extremely high rental prices. How have these differing strategies played out for Adobe and Autodesk? Green shows profit; red shows loss.

Adobe moved to the all-rental model earlier than Autodesk. The Autodesk graph therefore covers a shorter period than the Adobe one. Feel free to slide the Autodesk one along to the point you think best matches the equivalent point in the Adobe timeline.

The black lines are trend lines. The thick one is linear, the thin one is a 4-quarter moving average. The linear trend lines are not directly comparable because of the different timeframes covered (the Adobe one includes the revenue recovery stage which Autodesk has yet to enter).

Neither of these graphs reflect deferred revenue (money that is received but not counted immediately). Full details of Autodesk’s financials are available here. Make your own financial decisions based on your own interpretations and/or using the advice of parties better qualified than myself. For now at least, the stock market loves what Autodesk is doing, even if Autodesk customers don’t. I just found the comparison interesting.

Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

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This is a revised version of the Autodesk license costs options – summary post, where I examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. This version is based on limited new information from Autodesk. While this post can be read alone, to better understand the context you may wish to check out that summary and the preceding posts in the series:

1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary

In this post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up. All of these sections have been revised based on new information.

Assumptions

Because Autodesk still isn’t telling customers all they need to know in order to make a rational choice, I’ve had to make some assumptions in order to work out the relative viabilities of the various options. Here, I’ll lay those assumptions out and explain why I made them. Some of them are very soundly based, others less so.

  1. Autodesk will continue to make maintenance available long-term. This has been repeated by Autodesk people at all levels and is currently pledged in writing on Autodesk’s web site. On the other hand, Autodesk has said one thing and done the other on multiple occasions, so who knows? Autodesk is also making noises about how terrible it is for the poor thing to have to go on operating in the same way that has made it billions for decades. I certainly can’t promise that Autodesk’s promise is worth the pixels it’s written on. It’s safe to assume that Autodesk will do all sorts of nasty things to maintenance customers over the next few years, but I’m relying on our fortitude in standing up to that.
  2. The maintenance price increases of 5%, 10% and 20% are cumulative, resulting in actual price increases of 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%. This has been confirmed by Autodesk here.
  3. Following that set of increases, the following year (2020) will see an increase of between 0% and 20% and the year after that (2021) will see a 0% increase. This is based on the figures shown in Autodesk’s example here. I’ve provided option 1c that assumes the best-case scenario (0% + 0%) and option 1d that assumes the worst-case scenario (20% + 0%).
  4. Following that set of increases, from 2022 the cost of maintenance will increase by another cumulative 10% per year. I have adjusted this downwards from 20% on the basis that Autodesk’s example shows a total maximum increase of 20% from 2020 to 2022. In reality, anything could happen, and Autodesk isn’t telling us.
  5. The dollar figures shown in Autodesk’s examples are accurate. There are some minor discrepancies between Autodesk’s quoted percentages and dollar amounts. Where dollar amounts are available, I have used those.
  6. Subscription (rental) prices will be frozen until after 2019. I’ve assumed this because Autodesk will want to keep subscription looking good in comparison to maintenance while it tries to persuade people to come on board.
  7. Subscription prices will increase 10% per year from 2020. Another guess. I’m pretty sure the price will keep going up, and it may be worse than this if Autodesk gets a sizeable portion of existing users tied in by then. Autodesk will rack up prices as high as it thinks it will get away with. My 10% assumption, if it’s low, will make subscription look better than it really is in my comparisons.
  8. The offered 60%/55%/50% discount on subscription will be maintained for three years from the point of changeover, not three years from now. That appears to be implied in Autodesk’s statements, and a three-year lock-in appears to be a standard Autodesk marketing technique.
  9. Following the three-year lock-in, the subscription cost will then change to 16% more than maintenance. This has been adjusted down from the 60% that was based on an apparent transcription error in an Autodesk earnings call transcript. A corrected version is available here: Autodesk (ADSK) Q4 2017 Results – Earnings Call Transcript. Incidentally, the statement that was initially attributed to Amal Hanspal is now reported to be from Andrew Anagnost.
  10. This special subscription cost of 16% over maintenance will be based on the original pre-increase maintenance price. This has been stated by Autodesk and roughly corresponds to Autodesk’s example figures. This differs from my original assumption that the increase would be based on higher and ever-increasing costs.
  11. The 16% premium subscription price will remain in place permanently, subject to normal percentage increases. This is heavily implied by Autodesk’s promise that customers who convert to subscription in 2017/8/9 will “keep this discounted pricing, which will be lower than maintenance plan renewal pricing and far below the cost of a new subscription”. This is described as a “guarantee”, but it’s rubbery. Don’t expect to see it written into a binding contract with figures.
  12. The 16% premium subscription price will increase at 10% per year. This is a guess and Autodesk can increase it by 100% a year if it feels like it. However, I’ve used 10% a year for everything else, so I’m keeping this assumption consistent with the others.
  13. For option 8, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a 50% discount on subscription, locked in for 3 years. Autodesk has made very similar offers over the last year or so. I’m assuming such offers will continue to arise from time to time, but there are no guarantees.
  14. For option 8a, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a permanent 50% discount on subscription. If Autodesk gets as desperate in 2022 as it is now to convert people to subscription, such an offer could be made. Or not. In case it is, I’ve included the numbers.
  15. Bricsys will continue to provide perpetual license and maintenance options. I’m highly confident in this one. Autodesk’s rental-only move is manna from heaven to Bricsys, and the availability of perpetual licenses is a big drawcard for disaffected Autodesk customers. Bricsys won’t throw away that competitive advantage.
  16. For options 9 and 10, BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs will rise by 10% a year (compound). Another guess. Based on the Bricsys price history to date, 10% may be on the high side. However, because Bricsys prices are so much lower than Autodesk ones, an error in this assumption will have a much smaller effect than errors in the Autodesk price assumptions.

Some or all of the above assumptions could be wrong. Autodesk has been invited to replace this necessary speculation with information and is welcome to do so. As with all content on my blog, I actively encourage being corrected on any factual inaccuracies.

Data

If you want to examine the full set of data and/or make adjustments to the values, assumptions or calculations, here is the updated Excel spreadsheet I used, AutoCADSubscriptionCostComparison2017-03-17.xlsx. I suggest you discard any earlier versions of the spreadsheet, including AutoCADSubscriptionCostComparison2017-03-16-1.xlsx that was incorrectly linked in this post for the first few hours of its life. Note that in this version of the spreadsheet, I have used bold to indicate the figures that are known to be correct.

The following tables show the cost winners and losers after the first three, five and ten years based on one North American AutoCAD license with a 2016 maintenance cost of $545 and (late) 2016 subscription cost of $1470. All values are in US dollars.

Three years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0 Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
0 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
474 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
570 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
631 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
643 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
648 Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
648 Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1470 Option 2 – subscription now
Five years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0 Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
303 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
416 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
607 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
650 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
679 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
680 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
689 Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
749 Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1561 Option 2 – subscription now
Ten years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
383 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
439 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
597 Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
769 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
790 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
805 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
848 Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
871 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
979 Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1195 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
1534 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
1975 Option 2 – subscription now

Graphs

These graphs show all 13 options together.

Annual Costs

Cumulative costs:

Average annual costs over time


Feel free to mess with the spreadsheet to produce the graphs that interest you. If you hide rows, those options won’t show up in the graphs.

Summary

Based on this revised set of figures and assumptions, the following conclusions can be drawn:

  1. The cheapest thing to do, with zero direct cost, is drop maintenance and keep using your perpetual license as long as it still does what you need.
  2. The next cheapest thing to do is switch to using BricsCAD. You’re well ahead of anything that involves sticking with Autodesk by a very significant margin. As a bonus, even if you stop paying anything to anyone you will end up with perpetual license of both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, and that’s two more than Autodesk wants you to have.
  3. Delaying a switch to BricsCAD won’t save you a lot of money.
  4. The financial implications of abandoning maintenance for a few years and then signing up for subscription are uncertain. It will depend on what Autodesk decides to do in the future in terms of offers to encourage people to sign up. If an offer similar to the current one arrives in five years, you’ll be well ahead. If not, you’re well behind.
  5. Abandoning maintenance for a few years and then signing up for subscription will cost least if you stay off subscription as long as possible.
  6. If you switch from maintenance to subscription with the special offer, it works out slightly cheaper the earlier you do it, contrary to my previous calculations.
  7. Switching from maintenance to subscription with the offer works out slightly cheaper than staying on maintenance, again contrary to my previous calculations. However, Autodesk’s perception of this as “huge incentives for loyalty that we’re giving to maintenance customers” is delusional. The pricing of these options is grouped closely enough to be considered about the same into the longer term, within a reasonable margin for error and with allowance made for Autodesk mind-changes. Any saving that might eventuate will undoubtedly be significantly less than the money you have invested in the perpetual license you would be giving up.
  8. Switching from maintenance to subscription without the offer costs a fortune and would be an utterly ridiculous proposition.

It’s worth noting that the special offer will lapse if at any stage you drop subscription for a while, or if you want to switch to a different subscription product. If you switch to subscription and take advantage of the supposed flexibility of the rental model by dropping a license for a while due to a recession, you’re back at full price. When that happens, see point 8 above.

You won’t have your perpetual license to tide you over, either; you gave that away. Signing up for this offer will permanently financially lock you into Autodesk subscription, whatever future price increases Autodesk decides its shareholders would like to see you pay. You’re also signing up for a lifetime of whatever conditions Autodesk decides to impose at each subscription renewal, however unreasonable you consider those conditions to be.

That’s why, despite Autodesk’s revised figures making the current deal less obviously terrible than before, the essential point from my first summary still holds true:

DO NOT switch from maintenance to subscription.

The savings from switching are relatively minor, can easily disappear with a wave of Autodesk’s magic wand, and don’t remotely justify giving up your valuable perpetual license. Remember, that license represents your safety net. It allows you to keep using your software for years without paying Autodesk, while you work out your escape route. Autodesk desperately wants that license because it gives you a tiny bit of control. Autodesk wants all of that control.

Don’t fall for it. Keep your perpetual license.

Video nicely captures Autodesk customer sentiment

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In this video starting at 42:21, Greg from Pixel Fondue had a few words to say about Autodesk’s attempt to price-force perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental). I think he captures the current Autodesk customer mood quite nicely.

Here are some of the highlights from Greg and others:

44:36 – If you’re gonna eff me, know my name.

45:20 – The only thing they forgot to attach to this was the head of a horse.

46:54 – If they didn’t think it was a tough sell, they wouldn’t have written a 2000 word essay…

49:14 – This is a trade-in, and they’re looking to take this [Entertainment Creation Suite]. So I give you this, this $12,000 investment … I give it back to you, plus like another $1,000 … and you give me the exact same thing. Except I no longer own it.

51:02 – Hi! Give us your thing you bought from us, we’ll rent it back to you… dumbass!

58:49 – It’s OK to be pissed, and Autodesk needs to know that people are pissed. So, Teresa, people are pissed. That’s a bullshit letter. Be honest with us.

Autodesk starts answering subscription questions, but many remain

1 Reply

Getting worthwhile non-rubbery information out of Autodesk on the maintenance to subscription push has been like pulling teeth. Well, one tooth has popped out now. There are a rotten mouthful still to go, but some progress is being made.

Here is the latest Autodesk communication on this subject. While it gives the impression of providing transparency, there’s still not enough there to provide enough certainty to convince any but the most naive customers to throw away their perpetual licenses. If you try pumping Autodesk’s numbers into my costing spreadsheet, you can get so far and then you’re back to guesswork again. If you guess low, it’s merely a bad deal. If you guess high, it’s an atrocious deal. For you, not for Autodesk; I’m sure Autodesk will be happy with whatever deal it decides to inflict.

There are huge holes in what has been stated that allow Autodesk to charge pretty much whatever they like in the future. I have about a dozen questions about those holes. If they get answered, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I suggest you still assume it’s a trap to leave you open to future massive price gouging without the safety net and escape route that a perpetual license provides.