Category Archives: Autodesk

Huge PDFs? AutoCAD 2017.1.1 could be to blame

Autodesk has yet again demonstrated why continuous automatic updating is no panacea for avoiding CAD update disruption. On the contrary…

If you have noticed some of your PDFs exported from AutoCAD getting huge and unwieldy lately, AutoCAD 2017.1.1 could be to blame. Try uninstalling it using Programs and Features > View Installed Updates and see if the problem goes away. It may also be possible to work around this by going into PDF options and turning on Include Hyperlinks. Source: The Swamp.

Here’s one possible* install history:

You install AutoCAD 2017. This defaults to also installing Autodesk desktop app. If this works on your system and you leave it on there doing its thing and consuming your resources, it will attempt to automatically keep your Autodesk software up to date.
Autodesk desktop app installed AutoCAD 2017.1. You like this because it has added a couple of nice features. In apparently unrelated news, you seem to be getting more fatal errors and several of your add-ins have stopped working. You decide to do without them.
Autodesk desktop app installed AutoCAD 2017.1.1. Your add-ins have magically started working again and there seem to be fewer fatal errors.
You get some huge PDFs from AutoCAD but read this post and uninstall AutoCAD 2017.1.1. The PDFs you create are no longer huge, but your add-ins have stopped working again and there seem to be more fatal errors.
You read this other post and manually install the AutoCAD 2017.1 Hotfix. Your add-ins start working again. The fatal errors remain.
Autodesk desktop app continually and perpetually nags you to install AutoCAD 2017.1.1.**
You uninstall Autodesk desktop app. Your system speeds up and the nags go away.

Moral of the story? Autodesk isn’t competent enough to trust with automatic updates. Uninstall Autodesk desktop app. Relax.

* YMMV
** I don’t know if this actually happens (Autodesk desktop app is not going to be installed on any of my systems to find out) but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Return of the bullshit – baked beans edition

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In an October 2015 post I’ve only just noticed, snappily titled No More Software Like a Can of Baked Beans: Why Software Subscription Serves It Up Fresh, Autodesk VP (edit – now CEO) Andrew Anagnost bravely attempts to sell Autodesk’s move to all-rental software. This is a rather belated response, but fortunately there is no statute of limitations on skewering spin so let’s get started.

How does he go? On a positive note, top marks for creative writing! The general theme is a strained and somewhat Californian analogy in which perpetual licenses are like canned goods (bad), and rental is like fresh produce (good). However, it’s presented well and professionally written. Among the highlights are:

Perpetual software licenses are like high-fructose corn syrup – no, I’m not making this up. Stop laughing at the back there!
This is a change that is simply a better experience for everyone – everyone who likes the experience of paying more for less, that is.
It’s to create a better product, something tailored to customers – creating a better product seems beyond Autodesk, at least where AutoCAD is concerned. Actually, it’s to create a more expensive product. Tailoring is something we customers been doing for over 30 years without the use of rental software, thanks.
There will be less disruption – except a) how we pay for the product is independent of how/when the product is updated and the disruptions inherent in that, and b) even ignoring the erroneous conflation, it’s a mistake to assume that continuous updates are less disruptive. Recent history proves otherwise.
Companies (e.g. Autodesk) will work even harder to keep you happy as a rental customer – history gives the lie to this one, too; the closer Autodesk has got to this model and the more people have been locked into annual subscription/maintenance payments, the worse the value for money has become. It also ignores the various alternative ways Autodesk will use to try to keep you tied in. What do you think all that Cloud investment has been for?
Autodesk is focusing on helping customers succeed with its products and services – I don’t think so. Autodesk is focusing on trying to keep its shareholders happy.
Serial numbers are a terrible dehumanizing thing, rental will make them go away and relying on Autodesk’s internet expertise for Cloud-based licensing is a much more attractive proposition – serial numbers are fine, that’s just silly. There are a host of unnecessary problems introduced by Cloud-based licensing, even when dealing with companies that aren’t as crap at the Internet as Autodesk (e.g. the Redshift site won’t even let me scroll back up once I’ve scrolled past the end of the post). The idea of Autodesk disposing of serial numbers and implementing a phone-home scheme instead is pretty terrifying, and I can only hope that technical issues prevent it from ever reaching production. Mind you, the fact that some new thing is clearly unfinished to the point of uselessness doesn’t seem to prevent Autodesk releasing it these days, so who knows? Hmm, I feel another post coming on about this…
Autodesk will make all your customization work for you on all computers and other devices wherever you go – let’s put aside for a moment Autodesk’s total failure to even provide a usable vanilla AutoCAD on the Cloud so far. CAD Managers, would any of you care to hop in and let Andrew know what’s wrong with this picture?
Constant automatic incremental updates are like reading news articles daily and much more convenient than larger upgrades which are like getting a whole year’s worth of news at once – again, this makes the fatal error of conflating payment and upgrade delivery methods. Putting that aside, if we’re talking about virus definitions and OS or browser security hole fixes, then yes, automatic updates are the way to go. CAD software, not so much. Particularly software from Autodesk, given the incompetence shown to date in its attempts to make this model work. Even putting aside the practicalities, I could do a whole long post on why this concept is all wrong. Maybe I will later. Meantime, Andrew needs to talk to some CAD Managers to get some idea of how the real world works.
“OK, so there’s still the major elephant in the room: What about the cost?” – good of you to mention that elephant, tell me more.
For customers, there is real financial advantage by eliminating that huge upfront payment. – For some customers, yes. Not so many, though. Short-term customers are the minority. What about the millions of long-term users who would have their annual costs blown sky-high by falling into your rental trap? Andrew, I see you mentioned the elephant in the room and then tried to avoid meaningful discussion of it, giving the impression you had addressed the issue without actually doing so. Sorry, but I noticed. Care to try again? Tell me more about how you expect either a) customers to be better off by paying more, or b) Autodesk to be better off despite customers paying less. Pick either one of those and run with it, I’m sure it will be entertaining.
“And if you don’t need a product for months at a time, switch it off, and then switch it back on. It will be there ready and waiting for you” – strange, that kind of flexibility seems to work for perpetual licenses too, at a fraction of the long-term cost of rental. No guarantee that flexibility is a reality for rental products, though, because the vendor may not provide that product when I need it, or may have racked up the prices to exorbitant levels, or may have introduced new incompatibilities or other technical problems. Oh dear, the boot is very much on the other foot with that argument.
“After three years, software becomes obsolete…” – er, no. Many people (myself included) are happily productive using at least some software more than three years old. Some of it works better than the newer stuff. Hands up all those people who couldn’t possibly live without the latest version of Word or Excel, for example. Anyone? Didn’t think so.
“…and the pace of obsolescence is rapidly increasing” – if we’re talking Autodesk software, then the pace of obsolescence is doing the opposite. AutoCAD improvement has slowed almost to a halt, for example. There is little in any of the last few releases that gives an AutoCAD 2017 user a significant productivity advantage over an AutoCAD 2013 user, say. And anyone using AutoCAD 2010 or earlier has a much more efficient Help system than that provided in any of the last 7 releases. I guess that’s the kind of anti-progress that happens when you sack a bunch of knowledgeable people every few years and divert too many of the remaining resources to trendier projects that you end up junking anyway.
Customers of Autodesk can continue to renew their maintenance contracts for as long as they want – except that Carl Bass has now indicated otherwise. Andrew, maybe have a word with your boss and get back to me on that one?
“The company is always listening to how to improve the transition and setting out for the long road, not the short win” – except rental is all about the opposite: short term savings that cost big in the long term. And don’t get me started on the irony of claiming Autodesk is “always listening” while promoting an all-rental scheme that goes against the very clearly expressed wishes of customers.
“It’s this beautiful kind of world where things are connected and work together better” – does it have rainbows and unicorns, too? Strewth. Come off it, Autodesk is rubbish at CAD interoperability, even among the AutoCAD-based products. Why should anyone who’s been struggling with poxy proxy objects for a couple of decades believe that paying differently is going to act as some kind of magic spell to make everything exquisite in CAD Connectivity Kingdom?

Here’s the TL;DR version of my response to Andrew’s arguments if you can’t be bothered reading all that:

Bullshit.

What are the real reasons Autodesk is going all-rental?

Autodesk wants to charge us long-term users three times as much money for the same thing and leave us with nothing at the end of it.
Autodesk thinks we’re all stupid and don’t own calculators.
Adobe did this and made it work, and Autodesk thinks it can do likewise despite significant business differences, much higher prices and an untrusting customer base.
Autodesk has run out of motivation and/or ideas to improve its traditional cash-cow flagship products, to the extent that customers increasingly no longer see value in upgrades or maintenance.
Increasing income by product improvement is way too difficult; price gouging and spin is much cheaper.

I’ll conclude with my own strained analogy:

Autodesk spin is like a tin of baked beans. No matter how attractive the packaging, the end result is just a bad smell.

Autodesk’s big Cloud failure

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Back in 2011, Autodesk, some other vendors and many industry pundits were utterly convinced of the inevitable and near-imminent victory of Cloud-based CAD over standalone software. I wasn’t. I wanted to get a feel for how isolated my viewpoint was, so I started a poll and let it run for a while. Here’s how that turned out:

As you can see, this blog’s readers were less than convinced about the inevitability of that Cloudy future. Not so Carl Bass, who had this to say in an April 2012 TechCrunch interview:

I’d say two to three years from now, every one of our products will be used online. The only way to use them will be online.

Here’s what I had to say about that:

So let’s say you’re an AutoCAD user. A successful Cloud push by Autodesk will mean that you and very large numbers of people just like you be using AutoCAD or an equivalent Autodesk product on the Cloud by 2014 or 2015. If that doesn’t happen for you and all the other users of Autodesk products, then that’s failure by definition. Autodesk will have failed to meet its own publicly stated goal, and that’s exactly what I’m expecting to happen …. I am convinced there is a dichotomy between the expectations of Autodesk and those of its customers, and that spells trouble. Autodesk is either going to succeed in pushing its customers into a future they are not expecting, or it is going to fail and be forced to revise its expectations. I predict that the latter will happen…

It’s now way past Carl’s predicted online-only timeframe. A successful strategy by Autodesk would mean we Autodesk customers would have all have been exclusively CloudyCADing for a couple of years by now. Is that what happened?

Knock me down with a feather, it turns out that Autodesk’s big Cloud-only push has worked out just as predicted, not by Carl but by the readers of this blog. Take a bow, Nostradamuses!

Yes, there are now Cloud-saving options in a lot of Autodesk’s software, as there are in most competitive products. Yes, Autodesk is still attempting (often astonishingly badly) to online-tie-in desktop CAD users. Yes, Autodesk has a lot of Cloud-only software products, even if many of them don’t generate revenue and some of them are headed for the chopping block. Yes, some of Autodesk’s online offerings now have utility. Yes, there are many students and hobbyists out there, often isolated from commercial and production realities, having fun tinkering with Autodesk’s largely free online software and in some cases producing some seriously cool stuff that looks great in Autodesk publicity material.

Real paying customers, using Autodesk Cloud-based products as their primary mission-critical CAD software in a production environment? Not so much. People are still using that terribly old-fashioned desktop software for that. Autodesk has failed to make reality conform with Carl’s prediction.

Why should I care? I care because Autodesk has taken vast sums of money from AutoCAD customers, and is trying hard to extract even larger sums via its compulsory rental scheme. Instead of spending that cash on genuinely useful improvements to the product that is the source of that income and the basis for many of its vertical products generating further income, Autodesk has left AutoCAD to wither on the vine. It has been some years since an AutoCAD upgrade was anywhere near good enough to be worth the amount Autodesk currently charges for maintenance, let alone the trebled(?) amount it likes to think it can get away with charging in a couple of years.

It’s not because there’s no potential for improvement, either. Autodesk gets a lot of feedback about what could be improved in AutoCAD, but ignores most of it, sometimes choosing to do dumb things instead that make things worse. In contrast, Bricsys has proven that it’s possible to make huge strides in improving a straightforward 2D/3D DWG-based desktop CAD application in a single year; Autodesk’s efforts are woefully inadequate in comparison. Meanwhile, by chasing an elusive exclusive Cloudy cornucopia, Autodesk has frittered away a fair fortune on a plethora of production-pointless products.

Autodesk to pull the plug on 123D

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The reason you should never rely on SaaS for anything important is that, well, you just can’t rely on it. If the software breaks, or the vendor goes under, or decides that line’s not profitable enough, or just loses interest, you’re screwed. More importantly, you’re screwed on a timeframe that’s out of your control, and probably much shorter than you would like. You can’t just go on using the software until you’re ready to move on, like you can with perpetual licenses.

Thanks for the latest lesson, Autodesk, regarding 123D:

Over the past few years, millions of people have unlocked their creativity with the Autodesk 123D apps and community. We’ve grown from one desktop tool in 2011 to multiple apps across desktop, web, and mobile.

We’re incredibly proud of these products, and even more proud of what you all have MADE with them. But we recognize that the portfolio has become complex. We are making some changes to simplify our Autodesk portfolio and workflows for people everywhere who love to make things. We are consolidating these tools and features into key apps such as Tinkercad, Fusion 360, and ReMake.

Today, we are sharing the news that in early 2017, after we complete this consolidation, we’ll be shutting down 123dApp and turning off many of the apps to new download. Rest assured that we remain committed to providing free tools to hobbyists, kids, hackers, and makers around the world. We value you, your models, and are going to do this consolidation in the right way.

You’ll be able to access and download your content from 123dApp in the coming months. We will make every effort to make sure you will be notified before we make any changes to the apps or website.

What’s next? We’ll be working closely with you, the 123D Community of users, to make sure your questions are answered. We’ll be sharing more details on this blog and our support forums, and will notify you when we start to implement changes.

Autodesk is committed to help people make anything and we are committed to help you continue to do just that. Look for more detailed information in the next few days, weeks and months.

–The Autodesk 123D Team

Whether Autodesk’s definition of “the right way” coincides with that of users remains to be seen. Of course, Autodesk 123D is free and you get what you (don’t) pay for. But if you think Autodesk won’t do this with its paid SaaS products, you’re dreaming. The same applies to any vendor, but Autodesk in particular has a horrible history of killing products and leaving masses of crying orphans to fend for themselves.

BricsCAD startup LISP bug fixed

Autodesk perpetual license owners to get screwed big-time

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Hidden in amongst a bunch of the usual highly dubious subscription statements from Carl Bass is an announcement that spells doom for Autodesk perpetual license owners. I will resist the temptation to skewer Carl’s spin (for now) because this announcement is much more important:

Bass also confirmed that the company plans to converge the two existing subscription models — maintenance and product subscriptions — into a single offering over the next two years. “If you look out to fiscal year 2020, we want to be in a place where, first of all, we have a single kind of offering with a single back office and infrastructure to support it, one that will be a combination of product subscriptions as you see them plus a consumption model on top of it. That’s where we see the business heading.

“Along the way, it’s how do we motivate customers to move from one model to another in the program, what are the price points, and how does that transition work? In our mind, getting to a single model is really important. It will give the best service to our customers, it will be the most affordable for us to have, [and] we can start getting rid of some of the systems that were designed for a different era and concentrate on giving a world-class experience to users.”

Translation: Autodesk is going to drive up prices of maintenance subscription (perpetual license keeping-up-to-date fee) to match the much higher prices of product subscription (rental). Maintenance subscription will then be merged into oblivion. Your return on your long-term investment in Autodesk software will be zero. Your reward for decades of loyalty to Autodesk will be to have your software costs blown through the roof.

If you’re not already making plans to abandon the Autodesk ship, you really need to do so now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Don’t say Carl didn’t warn you.

Get out or get screwed big-time. I mean, get out or get motivated to transition into a world-class experience.

Autodesk has some great documentation people

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The most heavily commented post on this blog is AutoCAD 2013 – An Autodesk Help writer responds, featuring Dieter Schlaepfer‘s response to posts and comments here about AutoCAD 2013’s Help. I don’t always agree with Dieter but I respect him enormously, and not just because he was brave enough to stick his head above the parapet in a hostile environment. Dieter is a principal technical writer at Autodesk with many years’ experience and is therefore responsible for large amounts of documentation content. You’ve almost certainly read his work.

I’ve been critical of AutoCAD’s Help system since it was broken in 2011, and I make no apologies for that. The Help system sucked then, it sucked even worse in 2013, and it continues to suck badly in 2017. None of that’s Dieter’s fault. It’s the Help engine that’s at fault, or to be more accurate the Help engines, because the online and offline engines still both suck in various ways. Clearly there’s someone important at Autodesk satisfied with the ongoing Help engine awfulness, but that’s not Dieter. He’s responsible for content, not the engine. Content isn’t the problem. The content is actually very good, and gradually improving as Dieter finds ways to do so. It’s just that the system for accessing that content is so terrible that not many people get to read much of it these days, which is a crying shame.

I digress. Dieter’s awesome.

Also awesome is 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.

Everybody knows Lynn Allen, of course. Not just an entertaining and engaging presenter at AU and a thousand smaller gatherings, she has been producing beautifully prepared tips-and-tricks and what’s-new articles, posts and documents for so long she must surely have been a toddler when she started. The value of Lynn to Autodesk and its customers is hard to calculate, but is clearly immense.

Last but not least, Heidi Hewett has done an exemplary job for many years in producing preview guides, posts and other documents. You don’t get to see some of them because they are confined to pre-release testers, but I assure you that they are done to the same high standard as the ones that go public.

The work of our illustrious foursome and other talented writers can be found on the AutoCAD Blog and I’m sure my readers will find something of use there.

BricsCAD V17 – the best AutoCAD upgrade in years?

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I’ve been evaluating BricsCAD for a few years now, and have been looking at it pretty seriously as a DWG-based LISP-compatible AutoCAD alternative for a year or so. A couple of weeks ago, I flew to Munich for the Bricsys International Conference (at Bricsys’ expense – see the Legal page for disclosure) where I learned quite a few things I had failed to notice during my own evaluation of V17. As you may have noticed, I can be pretty hard-bitten and cynical about what CAD companies have to say about their products, but I came back impressed.

The conference and the product itself are not free of flaws, but I have to say the progress Bricsys has shown in developing the BricsCAD product is really quite astonishing. The rate at which serious, worthwhile-to-customers improvements have been made to BricsCAD over the last few releases is huge. Some of it’s just catching up with existing AutoCAD features, but most of it is going beyond what Autodesk has done. Overall, Bricsys lately has outstripped Autodesk’s efforts in improving its DWG-based flagship CAD product to such a degree that it’s frankly embarrassing for the much larger corporation.

I grabbed Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser for a brief chat at the end of the conference. I told him that while there were still important areas that need addressing, nevertheless if Autodesk had shipped a new release with a quarter of the improvements that Bricsys managed with V17, it would still have been the best AutoCAD upgrade in fifteen years. Yes, the gap in progress from Autodesk to Bricsys really is that big.

The difference appears to be one of attitude. The Bricsys development team (many were there in Munich to speak to) is focused, motivated and enabled. For Bricsys, BricsCAD really is the flagship product. That’s where all the effort goes; everything goes into the DWG-based product. High-performance 2D drafting, user interface innovation, parametric 3D models, IFC-certified BIM, sheet metal, everything. You would think this would lead to massive bloat, but somehow it doesn’t; the product remains small and fast.

For Autodesk, the emphasis has been elsewhere for some years now. The rate per release of worthwhile AutoCAD improvements, never stellar since the 12-month release cycle was adopted, has been trending downwards since AutoCAD 2010 and has slowed to a trickle. Autodesk is happy to accept the income from AutoCAD customers and use it to develop a hundred trendier products, neglecting the foundation on which the company was built. That’s relying on inertia, and there’s a big question mark over how sustainable that is.

Here’s a 5-minute YouTube marketing video outlining some of the changes. If you have a bit longer, here’s a 37-minute YouTube video of the new features from head of development Hans de Backer. The presentation lacks sparkle (no insult to Hans, but he’s no Lynn Allen) but the substance is there. Note that Hans was demonstrating live to the full conference using a pre-release product, including opening a huge drawing, which surely deserves marks for bravery! As a bonus, you can just about see Owen Wengerd and myself in the bottom left corner.

I’ll be going into more detail on BricsCAD V17 pros and cons later (yes, there are cons), but for now here’s the press release and here’s where you can download the product for evaluation. It’s a straightforward download of a 234 MB MSI file and the install takes just over a minute. That in itself is a breath of fresh air for people who are used to hanging around, waiting for AutoCAD downloads and installs to finish.

How to download Autodesk software without the Akamai download manager

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Note: this post is now out of date. AVA no longer provides the facility mentioned here. Instead, it tries (and fails) to be clever.

For reasons beyond my understanding, Autodesk chooses to make life difficult for customers and prospective customers who want to download its products by imposing the use of a download manager (DLM) by Akamai. You really don’t want to let such a thing loose on your system even if it works, for reasons that have been explained in previous posts.

Until a couple of years ago, Autodesk allowed prospective customers to get at a direct download link after jumping through a few hoops and ignoring a bunch of bullshit warnings, but in recent times even that small measure of semi-decency has been removed. It became impossible for anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t use the Akamai DLM to try out Autodesk’s products! Here’s what you get these days; there is no direct browser download option to be found, just a downloader stub you’re expected to install and give open slather on your system. Don’t.

Yes, I know this is marketing lunacy, and several years ago I made Autodesk very aware of this via direct email contact. Still, Autodesk remains determined to hamper itself in this way and there seemed to be no prospect of a solution. The old loophole of using an unsupported browser (e.g. Opera) was closed off a while ago.

But wait! There’s an answer! While researching something unrelated, I came across a reference to the Autodesk Virtual Agent and had a look at it. Lo and behold, that contains a bunch of straightforward DLM-free links to the Autodesk product range!

Click on Download Links, burrow down to find your product and direct links to the installers are right there! Use your plain browser, a DLM built into your browser, or a DLM of your choice. Easy! Straightforward! Amazing! Unfortunately, this facility only appears to be available in English.

To sum up, if you want to download an English-language Autodesk product in a straightforward manner:

Here’s the link! (link removed as it is now broken)

Dear Autodesk Recap 360 team…

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…your software (3.0.0.52, came with AutoCAD 2017) fails to allow sign-in (a prerequisite to connection to the cloud) in a secure proxy server environment. This happens (see picture):

I am online. I did try to inform you about this problem using the feedback mechanism in the product. This allowed me to type my problem report, but on hitting the send feedback button, I got this (see picture):

I am connected. In fact, I’m so connected I’m typing this post online while reproducing the problem. While this is going on, I’m able to sign in to Autodesk Account, A360 Drive, AutoCAD Beta forums, the Autodesk public forums and so on. What’s happening is your software is trying to do something our firewall doesn’t like. Autodesk has an unfortunate history of doing this sort of thing. Often, things that worked in one release will stop working in the next, and vice-versa, because somebody tinkered under the hood. For example, Application Manager works, desktop app doesn’t. There have been many other examples going back over a decade.

No, please don’t direct me to the knowledgebase article that expects me to drill a bunch of holes in the firewall. That’s not happening. Instead, make your software work nicely, please. Find the bits of code that work, make them standard, and insist your developers use the standards.

Just thought I’d let you know. Other people in the same situation would probably just give up, and you would never know it was happening.

When is a subscription-only update not a subscription-only update?

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Before I get started, I want to clarify the meaning of the word ‘subscription’. For about 15 years, the word Subscription (note the initial capital) meant something specific for Autodesk customers. It meant you had bought a perpetual license and instead of paying for periodical updates, you paid for a year’s Subscription in advance. In allowed access to any new release that appeared during that year plus various other benefits.

That thing that was once called ‘Subscription’ has now been renamed ‘maintenance’ (no initial capital) in Autodeskspeak. So what does ‘subscription’ (no initial capital) mean? Rental. You pay in advance for use of the product for a period and when you stop paying, you stop using the product. This is now the only way to obtain Autodesk software you don’t already own. In addition to access to any new release that appears during the subscription period, it provides other benefits similar to what is now called maintenance.

To confuse matters further, Autodesk briefly called rental ‘Desktop Subscription’ (note the initial capitals) and it’s still possible to find remnants of that terminology in current Autodesk documents. It’s also possible to find ‘Subscription’ and ‘subscription’ used interchangeably on the same Autodesk web page:

Minor quibbles aside, the important thing to note is that the term ‘subscription’ as currently used by Autodesk means something very specific. It means rental. When something is described as ‘subscription-only’ it specifically excludes ‘maintenance’ and other perpetual license customers. And that’s how the AutoCAD 2017.1 update was described:

That subscription-only status of this update is what set me off. Preventing paying customers from accessing something that includes bug fixes is most unpleasant, and I felt obliged to say so. But it doesn’t appear to be the case. That subscription-only status is getting rubberier by the minute.

Autodesk states 2017.1 is “the first subscription-only update”. In addition to using the term ‘subscription’, being the first of something implies that it’s different to what happened before. That can’t mean that it’s available to all customers, because that’s what has happened with updates in the past. It also can’t mean maintenance customers can also access it, because that has happened for years for various enhancements, add-ins, productivity packs, etc.
Somebody as smart as Jimmy Bergmark (and that’s very smart indeed) is convinced that “even security enhancements and bug fixes are only available for subscription customers”.
There is no sign of 2017.1 on the public AutoCAD Downloads page.
As a maintenance customer, I didn’t receive notification of the update. However, I can see it in my Autodesk Account portal. It was apparently released quietly on 15 September 2016 for most languages, with French and German lagging behind for whatever reason.
The download is not restricted; anybody with the URL can download it (e.g. English 64-bit exe). I have no idea how Autodesk intends to restrict this update to certain customers.
I have been informed privately by an Autodesk person who should know that customers on both subscription and maintenance will get the update.

This confusion can be traced to Autodesk’s decision to call rental ‘subscription’, a name that already had a significant, long-established and totally different meaning in the Autodesk lexicon. Because I can’t think of a logical reason for Autodesk to do this, I strongly suspect the idea was to obfuscate the changes to licensing by deliberately confusing customers. If so, congratulations, it worked. I’m baffled.

Edit: Heidi Hewett has updated her post:

Although the Preview Guide still only mentions Subscription (which shouldn’t have a capital these days, but does here), I think that’s pretty much cleared up the confusion now.

On a positive note, I’d like to point out that Heidi has done these sorts of guides for years and always does an excellent job. Based on past experience, I would say it would be likely that she was simply passing on in good faith what she had been told, rather than being the origin of the incorrect information.

Props to Autodesk for supporting education

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I have to raise a glass to Autodesk for supporting students and educators by making its software available free. Further props are due for removing the virus-like educational watermark.

A further program that Autodesk supports is the FIRST robotics competition series, helping to develop young people into technology leaders; a member of my family has benefited directly from that.

Credit where credit is due, Autodesk deserves praise for supporting education. Of course, Autodesk will ultimately benefit from this support, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Doing good and being smart are not mutually exclusive.

Autodesk excludes maintenance customers from AutoCAD 2017.1 update (Edit: actually, it doesn’t)

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Edit: it turns out that when Autodesk said this was subscription-only, that wasn’t true. See my later post for details.

A mid-term update containing a bunch of useful stuff, AutoCAD 2017.1 is the first update made available exclusively to subscription customers (renters). I’d love to tell you about how great this update is, but I can’t because I’m not allowed to use it.

If you’ve been a loyal customer of Autodesk for 30 years and have paid countless thousands for your software, upgrades and Subscription (now called maintenance) over those years, even if you are right now still paying maintenance to keep that software up to date, Autodesk is rewarding that loyalty by waving a virtual digit in your general direction. If you’re not a renter, you’re now officially a second class customer.

Autodesk is going to progressively hammer in a wedge to try to separate customers from their perpetual licenses. AutoCAD 2017.1 is the thin end of that wedge. Expect worse to come.

Any BricsCAD users out there? v.2016

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Back in 2010 I asked the question Any BricsCAD users out there? and there were a few of you who had tried to replace AutoCAD with BricsCAD. Most who responded had made the change successfully, others not so much.

Six years on, the situation is different. The fact that you can’t buy a permanent AutoCAD license any more has prompted some Autodesk customers to look more seriously at alternative vendors who do provide that option. Bricsys is one of those vendors, and their DWG-based AutoCAD alternative BricsCAD has improved way more rapidly than AutoCAD over the same time period. No, that isn’t a guess, I’ve been keeping an active eye on things. BricsCAD today is by no means perfect, but it’s impressive in many ways. LISP compatibility and performance are excellent, for example. BricsCAD v16 superior to the also imperfect AutoCAD 2017 in several areas, despite the total cost of ownership being significantly lower.

Here’s the question I asked back then:

I would be very interested to hear from any of you who have adopted BricsCAD (either partially or fully replacing AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT in your organisation), or at least seriously investigated using the product.

Why did you investigate changing over? How far have you gone? What are your experiences? What are the pros and cons? How is performance? Reliability? Bugs? Ease of use? Familiarity? Support and other aspects of customer service? Total cost of ownership? Are you experiencing interoperability problems when exchanging drawings with Autodesk software users? How did you go with incorporating in-house customisation and third party tools?

How would you answer that question today? Would you be interested in me providing more posts about BriscCAD, such as practical experiences with attempting a transition from AutoCAD?

Battle of the Bullshit part 4 – Bentley tells the truth

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Behold, the latest episode in the Autodesk versus Bentley PR battle over perpetual licenses versus rental!

Bentley has issued a response to Autodesk’s response to Bentley’s response to Autodesk’s move to all-rental software. This is entitled Bentley Responds to Autodesk – You Have a Choice. I have already dissected Bentley’s and Autodesk’s previous responses and found neither of them entirely truthful.

So, how does the latest effort from Bentley shape up? Very well. It’s pretty much spot-on for accuracy. There’s nothing that could be described as disingenuous, misleading, or even exaggerated. I encourage you to read it and make up your own mind.

Bentley PR also invited me in on a press conference call, having first invited my questions. Although I was unable to take part in that call, I have listened to a recording of the event and that was similarly free of issues. The Bentley executives were understandably presenting Autodesk’s licensing strategy in a negative way and their own in a positive way, but didn’t have to resort to anything underhand in order to do so. The facts were enough.

Here’s 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 happy to report that Bentley has raised its game and in my view it is winning this PR battle because it can support its argument with the truth. It will be interesting to see if Autodesk is capable of the same.

When is a global offer not a global offer?

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Confusion reigned yesterday when my post on Autodesk’s “FY17 Q3 Global Field Promotion” assumed that Global meant what it said, and the offer made to me in Australia was the same as in other countries. That was a mistaken assumption, and I have updated the post to reflect that; my apologies for the confusion.

That said, it was a not entirely unreasonable assumption given the superficial similarity between offers worldwide and the following in Autodesk’s fine print in multiple global Autodesk sites:

Offer available from 7 August 2016 through 21 October 2016 worldwide with the exception of the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria

The situation is not that simple. There are two very different offers that look the same at first glance. People in some countries get a much better offer than others. The offer I discussed in yesterday’s post allows you to continue your ownership and use of the old perpetual license serial number you submit:

Can customers continue to use the perpetual license after they purchase the discounted 3-year subscription?
Yes, customers may continue to use the license they have submitted, however they may not submit the license a second time to receive a promotional discount.

Let’s call this offer A. From the Q&A section of the Australian offer page:
The offer available to most of the world is much weaker. You must trade in your old perpetual license serial number and not use the software any more, even after the rental period is over:

Can customers continue to use the perpetual license after they purchase the discounted 3-year subscription?
No. As part of the terms and conditions of this offer, the customer agrees to trade-in the eligible perpetual license serial number(s) and no longer use any seats associated with that serial number(s).

Let’s call this offer B. From the Q&A section of the Americian offer page:
Who gets which offer?

Australia and New Zealand gets offer A. Hong Kong, offer A. The Singapore offer is confusing because the expected “You get to keep your perpetual license” dot point is missing from the top of the page, but if you burrow down a little you will discover it is also offer A.
The Americas and Europe (mostly) get offer B.
The Russian, South African and Turkish sites have no apparent sign of either offer. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough.

So it looks as if only the Asia Pacific region currently gets offer A. I use the disclaimer “currently” because the Internet is not a fixed resource and things change. If you’re reading this post after October 21, you’ll probably find my links point to some completely different offers and things will get even more confusing.

Why do things differently in different places? In the past, Autodesk has used the Asia Pacific market experimentally for possible new marketing strategies, and I suspect that’s what’s going on here. My guess is that Autodesk is testing the waters in one major market to see if slashing prices and letting people keep their perpetual licenses is enough to win significant numbers of customers over to rental.

Autodesk is entitled to make whatever offers it likes, wherever it likes. However, two different region-limited offers that look the same, both called a global promotion, and both carrying fine print saying they are available worldwide? That’s going to confuse people, even without my help.

Autodesk’s mixed rental and perpetual license offer

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If you’re on Autodesk’s mailing list you have no doubt been receiving increasingly desperate offers aimed at tempting you into renting your software. None of those have really been worth a mention, but the latest Autodesk FY17 Q3 Global Field Promotion for Asia Pacific contains something noteworthy. It acknowledges the value of perpetual licenses and allows you to retain yours. Don’t get too excited though, it does not apply in other regions and only allows you to retain your old license. Anything new is still rental-only.

Here’s how the offer works. Let’s say you have an old copy of AutoCAD lying around. This acts as a magic token allowing you access to cheaper rental. Autodesk halves the cost of a 3-year subscription (rental) of pretty much anything (doesn’t have to be AutoCAD, it could be something much bigger) and your old AutoCAD perpetual license remains unaffected. You can keep using Release 14 during and after the 3 year period. The offer applies to existing licenses of a wide range of products from Release 14 to 2017 (see here for details).

Why you might take up this offer

It’s cheaper than full price rental
At the end of 3 years you still have your old release and can continue using it
The usual subscription/maintenance benefits apply (e.g. home use, access to 3 releases back, etc.), but this is only a factor if you’re not currently on maintenance

Why you might decline this offer

You have to pay up front for 3 years (not too terrible)
You have no idea what’s going to happen to the software in the next 3 years
At the end of 3 years, if you want to keep renting, your annual software cost is likely to take a minimum 100% price hike
At the end of 3 years you will have no software to show for your investment (other than your old release which you already had anyway)
Although it’s cheaper than full-price rental, it’s still more expensive than maintenance (formerly called Subscription) on an existing perpetual license
It’s obviously substantially more expensive than just using your old release without maintenance, which costs you nothing
There are likely to be compatibility issues between the old release and any drawings you create with the new release, particularly with the vertical products
You have to be connected to the Internet to let your product phone home at install and every 30 days thereafter
There are competing products that allow you to buy a perpetual license and maintain it for 3 years for substantially less than this half-price offer

The idea is for Autodesk to get you all aboard the gravy train and carry you off to destination rental. You will be so excited by the ride that you will leave your old software behind, and the fact that you can still go back there if you want will be irrelevant. Why would you want to? Your new destination will be so much better.

The problem with this scenario is that Autodesk has added precious little in the way of genuinely useful, productive, complete features to AutoCAD in the last few years, while making some things worse. For example, any AutoCAD 2017 user who fires up an old release (the older the better) is likely to be hugely impressed by how quickly they can start drawing with that rusty old thing. The comparison isn’t nearly as impressive going the other way. I suspect the new destination isn’t going to be quite as irresistible to customers as Autodesk would like to think it is.

Is anybody out there tempted by this offer?

How do I know most Autodesk customers don’t want rental?

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In a recent comment, I was asked how I know Autodesk’s move to all-rental is the opposite of what customers want. Have I conducted research? This is an excellent question and deserves a proper answer.

So how do I know this? Why am I so convinced? There are several independent sources of evidence, one bit of critical thinking and one undeniable proof. They all point in the same direction. First, a bit of evidence.

There are many public places on the Internet where this issue has been discussed, including Autodesk’s own discussion groups. The viewpoints expressed everywhere are overwhelmingly against Autodesk’s all-rental plans.
There are private places Autodesk customers hang out where I have access, and I receive private emails. Again, the overwhelmingly majority of the viewpoints I see expressed are very strongly against Autodesk’s strategy.
There’s a poll right here. How’s it going?
Autodesk is ending the sale of perpetual licenses. This is:
- Good (10%, 75 Votes)
- Bad (90%, 644 Votes)
Total Voters: 719
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None of that is very scientific, but Autodesk has conducted proper research. Among other things, it gathered customer focus groups at AU to determine the mood regarding going all-rental. I know somebody who went to one of those. The customers present at that particular gathering were 100% against.

OK, so you don’t want to accept any of that? Can’t trust the sources? It’s all a bit anecdotal? Fine. How about a bit of critical thinking?

Most customers of major Autodesk products are long-term users who would undeniably pay more via rental than perpetual and then have nothing to show for it when they stop paying. What are the chances of most of them wanting that outcome?

Still not convinced? OK. The most concrete way in which it could be determined whether customers prefer rental would be an experiment in which both options were made available and the market were allowed to decide. An expensive experiment, sure, but impossible to argue with the result.

Autodesk conducted that experiment. Twice. Once quite a few years ago, and again in 2013. Rental was offered alongside perpetual licensing. Rental lost. Twice. It was abandoned as a choice. Twice. The market has spoken. Twice.

Rental for Autodesk products is a handy option for a minority of customers but a non-starter for the majority, given the choice. Autodesk knows the only chance of making rental work in its marketplace is to remove that choice.

Disaster in progress – Getting it wrong

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No, not Autodesk getting it wrong, me getting it wrong. In recent posts, I supported my arguments against Autodesk’s move to all-rental software with faulty evidence. As pointed out to me by several commenters, I completely failed to take deferred revenue into account. I would like to sincerely thank those who pointed out my error.* Although I included a disclaimer about not being a financial analyst, I should have gone further and simply not ventured into areas I am ill-qualified to cover. I got it wrong. I therefore offer unreserved apologies to Autodesk and my readers.

What now?

I have done myself a bunch of graphs that I think paints a fairer picture of Autodesk’s position, but there’s a reasonable chance I’m wrong about that too so I won’t be publishing them. Instead, In a day or two, I will remove the content of the offending posts (but leave the shell of the posts there to preserve the comments). I do this not to hide my embarrassment, but to limit the degree of undeserved damage to Autodesk. Feel free to copy/paste, take screenshots, etc. of the posts until then. Of course, it’s not really possible to delete things from the Internet, so if you ever want to relive the joy of seeing me get things spectacularly wrong, feel free to use the Internet Archive to do so.

What this doesn’t mean

This doesn’t mean Autodesk is off the hook with the rental thing. It may not yet be a financial disaster of the magnitude I argued, but the jury is still very much out on whether it will eventually succeed. Even if it does (and I still have very strong doubts – doing the opposite of what your customers want is rarely a winning long-term strategy), it’s still a grotesquely anti-customer move which deserves to be vigorously opposed. I will continue to oppose it. I will continue to point out any faulty arguments that are used to support it. However, I will be much more careful to avoid using faulty arguments of my own.

* Autodesk could have also pointed out my error, but didn’t. Before I started commenting on rental I emailed Autodesk PR specifically encouraged them to point out any factual errors and/or seek a right of reply, but I want to make clear that isn’t what happened here. I have not backed off due to pressure or threats from Autodesk. Indeed, I have had no contact from Autodesk whatsoever in relation to my blog since it re-started. I continue to encourage such contact, but of course Autodesk is under no obligation to take up my offer.

Disaster in progress – Autodesk continues to lose heavily

11 Replies

This post originally contained assertions about Autodesk’s financials that were based on flawed understanding, and has been removed. It’s not really possible to delete things from the Internet, so if you ever want to relive the joy of seeing me get things spectacularly wrong, feel free to use the Internet Archive to do so.

cad nauseam

Mostly AutoCAD, BricsCAD and related subjects

Category Archives: Autodesk

Huge PDFs? AutoCAD 2017.1.1 could be to blame

Return of the bullshit – baked beans edition

BricsCAD startup LISP bug fixed

Autodesk perpetual license owners to get screwed big-time

Autodesk has some great documentation people

BricsCAD V17 – the best AutoCAD upgrade in years?

How to download Autodesk software without the Akamai download manager

Here’s the link! (link removed as it is now broken)

When is a subscription-only update not a subscription-only update?

Props to Autodesk for supporting education

Autodesk excludes maintenance customers from AutoCAD 2017.1 update (Edit: actually, it doesn’t)

Any BricsCAD users out there? v.2016

Battle of the Bullshit part 4 – Bentley tells the truth

When is a global offer not a global offer?

Autodesk’s mixed rental and perpetual license offer

Why you might take up this offer

Why you might decline this offer

How do I know most Autodesk customers don’t want rental?

Disaster in progress – Getting it wrong

What now?

What this doesn’t mean

Disaster in progress – Autodesk continues to lose heavily