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IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 2

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Welcome to the second in this series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

David Kingsley has had a long and interesting career, was present in the early days of CAD adoption, and served as an AUGI board member for years. Here is the second part of David’s interview which covers his involvement in AUGI, the controversy over how it was managed, and how that ended his involvement.

Steve: What was your first involvement with AUGI or NAAUG? At what stage did you get involved?

David: I think it was NAAUG in Philadelphia. Paul Jackson came up to me and said, “We would like you to get involved with the board. He asked me to attend the board meeting right there. So I started hanging out. That may have been the first time I met Lynn Allen. David Harrington was there, Dave Espinosa-Aguilar, Donnia Tabor-Hanson… that was kind of the formation of a very early AUGI Board. They had a board, but they were looking for different people.

I first ran for the AUGI board and was elected in 1996. I was on the Board from 1996 to 2002. We didn’t have a web site in 96, not many small organizations did yet, so I was involved in the first AUGI website ever. It was pretty crude! I remember we just kind of talked about it, Carol Bartz waved her hands, and we had money! She would sit in for a couple of hours every time we met in San Rafael. We would spend three or four days at Autodesk and that’s when we would develop our annual plan and funding requirements.

They were throwing a lot of money at us – $150,000, $200,000 a year just to support the user community. So we had a pretty healthy budget. A lot of people bungled it though. I remember one year we had budgeted $80,000 for something. It was what became the Exchange, where everybody traded their apps. We were supposed to develop that and we completely failed. We directly experienced the wrath of Carol Bartz for that.

The AUGI Board was a really difficult thing to make work because everyone was a volunteer, and they were all over the country, and there were no consequences for failure. People would sometimes just blow stuff off and wouldn’t do things. We were unable to accomplish things. They lacked the skills, or desire, or didn’t have the time, so there were some really rough years there where we were supposed to get things done and we didn’t. We had a couple people who openly stated they were just there to get NFR software.

That was when Rich Uphus and SolidVapor became involved. I believe Carol Bartz set us up with them to give us some kind of essential management. That was when AUGIWorld magazine came out. When we got involved with them, Uphus rebranded his “A” magazine as AUGIWorld and started to plan all of the CAD Camps. At that point, Autodesk ceased funding AUGI directly.

Steve: Is this the quarterly CAD Camps?

David: Yes, but I think there were 40 of them one year. Yoshi Honda and I were kind of the key AUGI people who negotiated that with Rich Uphus. We did most of the conceptual development and business arrangement between AUGI and Uphus. SV put together the first workable AUGI website with our input. All of that happened because of SolidVapor.

The plan was that AUGI provided the technical content and SV built and maintained the infrastructure – the website, the magazine, the organization behind the CAD Camps. When you start to think about the expense of that – If you went up to some hotel and said, “I’d like to have five breakout rooms, I’d like to serve lunch to 200 people, for a day and a half,” they would say, “Well, put down $200,000 and we’ll reserve a spot for you.”

For one or more years, CAD Camps had more attendees per year than Autodesk University. So SolidVapor had to come up with a lot of capital – millions of dollars. SV was going through $2.5 to $3 million a year. I’m sure they were making a profit; that’s what businesses are about. But they were pretty much backed by Autodesk.

AUGI generated no revenue at all. They were actually an expense. Autodesk flew us out to San Rafael for a week twice a year and we just partied! They took us out to nice restaurants. But we also provided a lot of good information from the user community, so we were the mouthpiece of the user community to Autodesk.

Later on there was a faction within the AUGI board that didn’t like the arrangement that we had with SolidVapor. They felt that AUGI was no longer in control – that SolidVapor was doing all the stuff that AUGI should be doing. There was a real split. My position was that it became that way because the model we had earlier didn’t work. Autodesk was giving us money and we were failing, so they put a real organization, an experienced business, in place to accomplish what they wanted. We were in a position where we drove that organization but we didn’t manage the money, we didn’t really manage the projects.

AUGI chose to terminate the contract with SolidVapor. Some may say otherwise, but the fact is they offered SV a deal they could not accept. I tried and tried to make sense with them, tried to tell them early on that… first of all, where is your money going to come from? Autodesk has told us they will not fund AUGI like they did before, they will only be another ad buying customer. All of this cash flow is going to go away when you end this relationship. Don’t tell me that you’re going to come up with $2.5 to $3 million a year, it’s just not going to happen. You guys don’t know how to do it, you’re working full time jobs, and you’re already unable to fulfill many of your responsibilities to AUGI. You expect to, all of a sudden, on a part-time basis, raise $2.5 to $3 million a year and put together a dozen CAD Camps, publish a magazine and keep a website running. It’s just isn’t going to happen.

But they went ahead and did it anyways. That’s when I left AUGI. I didn’t want to be involved with what was going to happen. I don’t have any personal grudges against people but there were a couple of people I really bumped heads with. Let’s just say we didn’t talk to one another after that.

I remember going to Autodesk University after they had terminated the relationship with SolidVapor and I knew they were in serious financial trouble. They had relatively no financial backing or sales, they had no viable plan. That’s when CAD Camps ended, AUGI World magazine ended, and the website stumbled really badly for a couple of years. It was in pretty bad shape. AUGI has pretty much gotten themselves back on track now, but at a much smaller scale than it could have been.

Steve: Wasn’t there some legal wrangle over who had rights to the forums and the contents?

David: Yeah. AUGI didn’t have any direct revenue. They had not invested anything. SolidVapor managed all the money, and the agreement was that SolidVapor would provide the infrastructure. So SV built the website, invested all the time, they were paying for the servers, paying the programmers, all that stuff. I tried to tell the AUGI board that they had no power whatsoever. Sorry, but power is money. You don’t control any money. You haven’t invested in this so you really don’t have a right to it. You provided the content for the forums, yes. The position of SolidVapor was, if you sue us for the forums and win, you’ll take responsibility for the whole thing. You’ll be totally responsible for funding and operating the website, the servers, the programmers.

AUGI was never restricted about what we could publish or what we could do, other than technical limitations. They would do pretty much whatever we wanted to, within reason. But we never paid for anything so we never had any power there.

I was pretty much against the whole AUGI position at that point, I thought they were unrealistic. They all had full time jobs, some of them were highly placed in engineering departments, but no one really had any business experience.

A lot of the things they wanted to do were just not practical or cost-effective. So we had some real head-butting with SolidVapor about what AUGI wanted to do. SV said, “We can’t do that, we can’t afford it,” or “Come up with a budget for it.” AUGI was just kind of waving their hands around and asking for things and they didn’t think about how much it was going to cost or how it was going to get paid for.

So they struggled for a while. I’ve been out of touch – I’ve really not been involved with AUGI since 2008 when they terminated the SV relationship. That’s when I said adios.

Steve: I still have the document that you produced with all your record of that I can now refer to. It’s still on my blog!

David: Oh really? I think it would pretty much corroborate what I just said.

Steve: If you remember, you published that on the AUGI forums and that was removed and so I published it on my blog for people that wanted to read what you had to say. I don’t know if you remember that or not but it’s still there!

David: Yeah, yeah!

Steve: I just downloaded it for my own blog to read it!

David: I think there are a few people who can remember those days. I had very few supporters. I actually got some hate mail. I was amazed at the lack of understanding in the community at what was going on. Nobody got it. I had a few communications with people shortly afterward but not many. It was surprising.

AUGI survived, it just went to a much smaller scale. You’re probably pretty familiar with that whole scenario then?

Steve: Yeah, I came on it fairly late and I didn’t really understand what was going on either, except that there was there was a bit of a constitutional crisis with the board and who was supposed to be on the board, and who gets to say who’s on the board. There was an election and the election was cancelled or postponed or moved and people weren’t allowed to put themselves up for election and all sorts of stuff happened.

David: Yeah. I kind of went over the edge a little bit with some stuff at that point. I did have a really serious discussion with the board, because I’d been off the board for a number of years and I decided to go back and put myself up as a candidate. They wouldn’t even allow me to run as a candidate. It might have been ’08 or ’09. I said I’d like to run and they said no. That didn’t really get any press. That was kind of a private thing between me and…

Mark Kiker and Richard Binning were the two people I really butted heads with. They were the two that really spearheaded this transition, so they told me flat out, you’re not running. You’re not going to get on the board. That was where the noise about who gets to be on the board came from. They were pretty dictatorial. It was pretty interesting to watch.

Steve: Within AUGI, when you were actively involved in it, who are you dealing with at Autodesk? I know you mentioned Carol came to the meetings. Were there other people that you were interacting with?

David: We dealt directly with a lot of the engineering department there. I dealt with Buzz Kross a lot. During the weeks that we spent at Autodesk, we would work directly with the engineering people. It was timed such that they could talk to us directly about what was coming up and we were tasked with thinking about how to introduce that to the user community. We were tasked to provide feedback to them, that’s where the wish list originated. We were tasked to become the mouthpiece of the user community.

Carl Bass was still in engineering management, so we dealt with him a lot. Then there was Lynn. We worked with her a lot. Lynn was the one who worked the internal politics and made things happen for us. We gave her the official title of “AUGI Sweetheart”.

I just thought about this a couple of days ago. I lived in Denver, very close to Columbine High School where there was that big mass shooting where two kids shot up the High School and killed 19 people. A couple of kids on my street went to that school, but we didn’t have any children there. I remember sitting down in Carol Bartz’ office; I’d asked for a private meeting with her. I talked to her about the effects of violent video games and what influence Autodesk might have on that. We actually came to know one another at a more personal level at that point. It was an interesting relationship after that.

We used to sit down with all of the top management people. There would be a formal meeting every time the AUGI board met. All of the big kids would show up and all of the AUGI kids were round the other side of the table. We’d sit there for two, three or four hours and have a really nice long discussion about the product and the future. They’d tell us about future developments, what was coming up and we all had NDAs so we couldn’t talk about anything outside.

IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 1
IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 3

What to do while the forums are down, dear Autodesk?

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In common with most online services, the Autodesk forums are down for maintenance from time to time. That will be happening this weekend:

Announcement: The forums will be unavailable starting 1 p.m. on Friday, April 6 (Pacific time) while we implement the forum redesign. We will be back online at 9 a.m. on Monday, April 9, or sooner.

I really wish Autodesk would act like a company with an international focus and use universally understood time standards for its announcements. Allow me to translate for those people outside North America for whom “Pacific time” means nothing.

Pacific Time (UTC-7) UTC
Off line: 1 PM, 6 April 8 PM (20:00), 6 April
On line (latest): 9 AM, 9 April 4 PM (16:00), 9 April

So, what to do if you have something you want to say when the forums are down? R.K. McSwain has already made some suggestions: CADTutor, AUGI and The Swamp. I have one further suggestion:

dear Autodesk

This new forum is an experiment of mine, aimed at providing a place where people can provide feedback to Autodesk with minimal restrictions. I made an attempt at setting up dear Autodesk nearly a decade ago but the technology (Pligg) I used was not up to handling the vast amount of spam and hacker attempts it attracted, so I closed it in early 2009.

Now I’m trying again using a different format and different technology (a conventional MyBB forum).

Disclaimers:

  • The site is, of course, not owned or operated by Autodesk, a fact which is made clear on the site in several places
  • This experiment might also fail, for the same or different reasons
  • The technology I’m using is new to me and it might break due to my lack of experience with it or reasons beyond my control
  • A couple of days ago, attempts to register were generating database errors; this appears to be fixed now, but it may recur
  • There is no guarantee that Autodesk people will read the forums (although some did last time)
  • There is no guarantee that Autodesk will act on any of the feedback, suggestions or wishes made on the site (or anywhere else)

Last time I tried this, I didn’t let on that I was behind it. This may have been a mistake, but I did this because I didn’t want the site to be seen as mine. The idea was to allow a community to develop which could freely express itself, not one which was led or prompted by any individual, myself included.

This time I’m doing things differently in several ways, and one of those ways is to be completely transparent about who’s behind it. I still don’t want it to be “my site”, though. I’d like it to be a community’s home. If you are interested in trying to help form that community, please register on the site. The front page has instructions.

If you run into trouble registering or using the site and can’t communicate that via the site itself, feel free to let me know here.

Right now, the site is a blank canvas. Paint away.

AUGI Special Election – Candidates

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There are four candidates for two positions on the AUGI Board of Directors. The voting page is now open, although it will not go active until voting commences on 29 June. The candidates are (in alphabetical order):

I encourage you to read their profiles (click on the names above) and examine the PDFs of their answers to a fixed set of questions.  Also, check out the candidates’ responses in the AUGI Board Candidates Discussion forum.

If you have anything to say about the candidates, their suitability for the position or their responses to questions, feel free to add your comments here. Such discussion is banned on the AUGI forums, but you won’t find any such censorship here. As long as your comments are not actually libellous, I won’t be modifying or deleting anything.

In a comment,  R.K. McSwain raises the spectre of people being banned from the AUGI forums for their comments outside it. Having made one Streisand Effect error of judgement on this issue already, I wouldn’t have thought the BoD would be silly enough to immediately repeat that error by getting even more heavy-handed, but you never know. I’m prepared to wear the risk, but if you’re worried about it, you don’t need to use your real name or AUGI forum name here. Even if you did, there’s no way of the BoD proving that the person using that name here is the same person on the AUGI forums. I won’t be handing out any identifying information to anyone, so go for it and say what you like.

A touch of Tehran taints the AUGI Special Election

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Most of you reading this blog are fortunate enough to live in democracies, and can only look on with sympathy at those who are denied the right to choose who represents them. What must it be like to live under regimes where the people are denied basic rights such as a free choice over who governs them? Or under mock-democratic regimes that hold “elections” where the candidates available from which to choose are strictly limited, or where the ruling regime changes the rules of the game to prevent losing its majority, or where the right to comment on the suitability of candidates is removed?

Well, I guess we AUGI members now have a slight inkling of what that is like.

OK, so that’s over the top. At AUGI, there are no riots in the street, no fires, no guns, no dead protesters. No election fraud, either, and I would hope there never is. An AUGI election is infinitely more trivial than what the Iranian people are struggling with. That said, there are clear failings at AUGI on the democratic side of things. These include:

  1. In recent years, the Board of Directors (BoD) using the Affirmation Ballot style of “election” to appoint itself as half of the BoD is replaced each year. In this method, the BoD selects the people it wants on the BoD and allows the members the formality of voting “Yes” or “No” for each candidate. This has been widely seen as preserving an “old boys’ club”, and was practiced right up to the point where it failed at the end of 2008. It failed because members’ interest in this “electoral” process had dwindled to the point where a few dozen disgruntled “No” voters were enough to ensure that none of the BoD’s choices were accepted (including some very worthy people who have given a lot to AUGI over the years).
  2. The BoD setting up the replacement election such that it reduces the number of Directors being elected from 4 to 2. This ensures that it is not possible for the members to elect enough Directors to make a difference to how the BoD is run. This was done, despite the fact that it ensures that it will be not possible to run an election at the end of 2009 that meets the requirements of the current bylaws.
  3. The BoD putting tight restrictions on who the members are allowed to vote for. At least 7 members put themselves forward as candidates for the 2 available seats, but only 4 were accepted. The 3 rejected candidates all met the minimum qualifications, and included former Presidents and a highly respected long-term AUGI volunteer who was considered worthy enough to put forward at the end of 2008. Two of the candidates were clearly being punished for expressing views contrary to that of the BoD, but the exclusion of one candidate in particular has everyone baffled. No explanation has been forthcoming to justify these exclusions.
  4. Introducing a special forum to allow members to ask questions of the candidates (which is good), but as part of that process, sneaking in a rule that forbids discussion of the candidates or their answers anywhere on the AUGI forums (which is very, very bad). See here, rule 6: “Discussion of specific candidates and their responses in other Forums is prohibited.”

There are other failings I could have mentioned, but the electoral censorship issue is what drove me over the edge. Having remained neutral for a long time (including defending the BoD on occasion), I reached the point where I felt that continuing to remain silent about these abuses would be an insult to the AUGI membership. Such a violation of the right to freedom of speech is not to be tolerated, particularly where it amounts to interference with the electoral process. I do not accept this rule, but as a good AUGI citizen I will abide by it within the AUGI forums. I will not, however, be abiding by it here, where the BoD has no censorship rights.

You can look forward to seeing lots more on this subject in the coming days leading up to the opening of the polls on 29 June. If you are an AUGI member, I encourage you to take an active interest in this and future elections. Please read the Organization Feedback forums, the Candidates’ Forums, and above all, vote!

Autodesk’s Revit rebellion reaction

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It’s time to examine how Autodesk has reacted to the widespread criticism of Revit 2010. Is Autodesk listening? To be more specific, is Autodesk’s Revit team listening?

The Good

It has been good to see extensive public participation by Autodesk people in various discussions in different places. The Revit team isn’t hiding. It is asking for feedback on the Autodesk discussion groups, the AUGI forums and its own blogs, and getting lots of it. Much of it is negative, but it is to Autodesk’s credit that I’m not seeing much in the way of denial, or demands that the criticism must be constructive. I’ve been trying in vain for years to convince some people at Autodesk that denial is counterproductive and that criticism doesn’t have to be constructive to be useful.

The sort of messenger-shooting that I’ve seen some Autodesk people do from time to over the years (*cough* R13, CUI *cough*) is generally absent. I’m not seeing Adeskers arrogantly accusing users of their criticism being based on a failure to understand the product. I’m not seeing asinine comments that infer that the negativity is simply a symptom of the critics’ resistance to change. Actually, I’ve seen one such comment, but it wasn’t from an Autodesk person.

Overall, the Revit team’s responsiveness, openness and level of public availability is impressive. It’s so good that it puts other Autodesk teams to shame. When was the last time you saw an Autodesk person respond to criticism of AutoCAD in the Autodesk discussion groups or AUGI forums? Revit people are doing quite a bit of it, and by looking back I can see that they have been doing it for a while.

There was one attempt at a traditional corporate “the product is great, we just need to review our communications” message. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work (read the comments). Denial, spin, obfuscation; these things never convince the people who need to be convinced, so why bother? While it’s good to see a reaction from somebody pretty high up in the chain of command, the people lower down have been doing a much better job of communicating with their customers.

The Bad

The trouble with all this communication is that it’s a couple of years too late. It’s no good putting a huge amount of effort into something, introducing it to users, then discovering too late that the users hate it. No amount of communication after the fact can make up for that kind of blunder. Exposing an early design to a handful of people in restricted circumstances can be useful, but it’s nowhere near enough. Lots of people need to be exposed to a product for a long time (as the Revit team now acknowledges – see an interesting Autodesk blog post here). The earlier it’s done, the better the product will be. As a bonus in these difficult times, this will lower the overall cost of development, because problems get exponentially more expensive to correct as the development cycle progresses.

From the public comments I’ve read, the Revit Ribbon was presented to beta testers as late as January, and by then it was very much a fait accompli. There was little chance of making it work significantly better, and none whatsoever of removing a bad design from the product before shipping. This scenario is, unfortunately, confined to neither Revit nor this particular instance. Although I can’t comment on my own Autodesk pre-release experiences, if you have read enough public discussions over the years you will undoubtedly have seen this kind of conversation a few times:

Angry user: “This feature is useless! The beta testers must have been blind to miss this!”
Beta tester: “Actually, we did see it and reported it right away. Autodesk just didn’t fix it.”

I would like to expand on this, but I am somewhat restricted by NDA. I’m not complaining about that (it’s a voluntary agreement), just stating the position I’m in.

Another thing that belongs in this category is the Revit team’s apparent disdain for its users’ wishlists. AUGI Revit people are convinced that their wishlists are being ignored, and I can see for myself that Autodesk’s own Revit wishlist discussion group is hardly a hive of activity.

The Ugly

Autodesk showed the cloven hoof with its exclusion of Phil Read from Autodesk University.* This reflects extremely badly on Autodesk. See here, here, here and here. Almost everybody seems to think this crude and futile attempt at censorship was a deplorable move, and I agree. Besides this being an example of messenger-shooting at its worst, it’s not a good look for the AU event itself. When you pay your AU fees, are you hoping to see the most knowledgeable, enthusiastic, passionate and inspiring speakers available? Or just the ones with opinions that align with Autodesk?

* My reaction is based on the assumption that this exclusion did take place. It has been widely reported and condemned, but not denied by Autodesk, so I think it’s a pretty safe bet. The only comment from AU management is, “Speakers for AU 2009 will be announced around June 15 – I cannot comment before.”

AUGI World’s missing column

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Despite living in troubled times, AUGI is managing to keep its AUGI World publication going, at least in electronic form. The printed edition, which was previously available only in North America, is no longer with us due to printing costs and/or green intentions. It may or may not not return at some later date.

AUGI World current and past issues

I was happy to note that not only is the current copy available in PDF format, but that previous issues have also been made available in that format. The unpopular NXTBook experiment is over, it seems.

Another change you may notice this year is that David Kingsley’s On The Back Page column is no longer with us. David, a former AUGI Director, is a very vocal critic of the current AUGI Board of Directors. The Board decided that the column he submitted was not deemed suitable for publication. With David’s permission, here it is.

Rejected On The Back Page column

I should point out that the views expressed in this document are entirely David’s, and do not necessarily reflect my own. Several of the points he makes are disputed by the Board of Directors. In fact, AUGI President Mark Kiker has responded directly to David’s points with a PDF of his own. Mark didn’t want to make that response available to the public, but AUGI members can find it here.

AUGI Board of Directors – election process starts

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The long-awaited election of members of the 2009 AUGI Board of Directors has finally got under way. Nominations are now open and will be until 24 May 2009. To nominate yourself or others, see this page for details. Various announcements have been made about the timing and format of the election events, see the Announcement forum (AUGI members only) for details. It is likely that two positions will be filled by this election and one by Presidential appointment to replace one Board member who resigned, taking the Board to the 6-member minimum.

I will be covering the background to this election in future posts, but for now I just want to get the word out and encourage people to participate.

Revolt of the Revit Ribbon Renegades

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I hesitate to cover this subject because my understanding of Revit is very close to nil. I’m going to cover it anyway, because it relates to the Does Autodesk Listen? theme that I’ve discussed here in the past.

Revit 2010 has appeared with a Ribbon interface, and many users don’t like it. Some well-known Revit users, including bloggers, former Autodesk employees and Revit founders, have railed against the new release. Autodesk has been accused of ignoring long-standing wishlists and pre-release feedback. Autodesk has (it is said) wasted precious development resources by introducing a badly-designed and poorly-performing pretty new face at the expense of solving long-standing and much-requested improvements to the core product. The main complaint appears to be that Autodesk didn’t do much with this release, other than introducing an interface that doesn’t work as well as the one it replaced.

All this will sound very familiar to AutoCAD users, but there are some significant differences between the AutoCAD 2009 situation and the Revit 2010 one. First, I think it’s fair to say (even based on my limited knowledge) that the old Revit interface was in some need of attention. It was basically an old NT-style interface that had been left neglected for some years. Revit users may have been mostly happy with the way the interface worked, but the way it looked must have been a bit embarrasing, especially for Autodesk. Second, AutoCAD 2009 left the old interface in place for those people who wanted or needed to use it; with Revit 2010 it’s Ribbon or nothing. There is no transition strategy.

I’m not qualified to make a judgement on whether the complaints about the usability of the new interface are justified. I should also mention that not every Revit user hates everything about Revit 2010, and there are positive comments from some about the new interface. However, I can say that the anti-Ribbon arguments have been expressed not only passionately, but also intelligently and persuasively. It’s not so much a matter of “change is bad”, but more “this change is bad, and here’s why”. Here are some examples:

One More Thing…
One More One More Thing…
A Well-Intentioned Road Paving
Don’t Confuse Change with Progress
Autodesk Bob
Humpty Dumpty Sat On a A Wall…
Dear Autodesk
Revit 2011 – the most significant release EVER

Some of the threads from the AUGI Revit – Out There forum (requires free AUGI membership sign-up to view):

Revit 2010 – New Ribbon UI
1st impression from Revit 2010…
What is your official opinion of 2010?
Who do we complain to?
2009 vs. 2010
Revit evangelist fatigue

Finally, here’s a Dilbert cartoon that was somebody else thought was a relevant comment on this situation.

In a future post, I’ll discuss how Autodesk’s Revit people have reacted to this criticism. Is Autodesk listening? Is it issuing corporate feelgood drivel? Is it circling the wagons and shooting the messengers as they ride by? Or is it doing all of the above?

Autodesk discussion group alternatives

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As I’m typing this, the Autodesk discussion groups are down for maintenance again. Let’s hope that when they come back up, some of the problems are fixed.

In the meantime, if you’re an AutoCAD user and have something to ask or say, where can you go? Here are a few suggestions.

  • I like the AUGI forums. It’s an even more modern, more graphical and less space-efficient web interface than the new Autodesk one, but there’s a good community there and, hey, the search feature works. Mike Perry and colleagues run a tight ship, so please read the rules and be good.
  • If you have something to tell Autodesk and want practically no restrictions in the way you say it, submit a new message on dear Autodesk, or vote for the existing messages you like. It’s looking a bit bare and empty at the moment, so go fill it up.
  • As a Cadalyst person, it would be remiss of me to avoid mentioning the Cadalyst forums.
  • The Swamp is biased heavily toward CAD programming, so if you have a LISP question then head there, but it also hosts general CAD discussion. In this community, you are expected to be courteous and professional.
  • Old-timers like myself will remember that the CompuServe ACAD forum’s Take 5 section was carried over into the AutoCAD discussion groups. It was kept going for a few years before Autodesk felt it was getting out of hand and killed it. That community refused to be killed, and actually still flourishes for newsgroup (NNTP) users at the t5 dot dynip dot com server.
  • R. K. McSwain suggests the CADTutor forums.

If you wish to point out any other sites I’ve missed, please let me know and if they’re relevant I’ll edit this post to include them.

While I was typing this, the Autodesk discussion groups came back up, but who knows how long that’s going to last?

Also while typing this I also received a phone call from a helpful Indian gentleman at Subscription Support (which was working fine as of yesterday). He asked for details about the broken search (it doesn’t find anything posted prior to the update), confirmed that it’s broken, and promised to inform the relevant department. That’s a much better response than the email I mentioned in my last post.