"Thousands of leading architects signed open letters to Autodesk ADSK+0.2% complaining about escalating software costs and lackluster development. This is a warning to all industrial software providers: Customers are fed up with being locked in and are demanding open platforms with rapid innovation."
You can bet there are plenty of others feeling the pain of being locked into Subscriptions, the problem is surely not isolated to Revit at AD, Iâm pretty sure this letter will spur others to get their pens out.
Many are finding out what many of us already know, that OSS is the answer to greedy CEOs picking the pockets of those theyâve managed to lock in to Subs.
Itâll be interesting to watch this play out and see whether there is sufficient push back from customers that will alter the behaviour of companies. The problem is once youâve surrendered yourself to their Subscription plans your bargaining rights are out the window and OSS equivalents cannot spring up overnight.
I do not know if Blender will be able to step up to the plate here, as CAD software has a lot of specialized design that might not integrate well with a general DCC environment (due to reasons of performance or simply due to how specific everything is).
There is OpenCAD, but the only way it becomes a heavyweight is if these firms hire developers for it.
I wasnât suggesting Blender be able to fill the boots of a specialised BIM application like Revit. I was picking up on the sentiment, if architects are feeling the Autodesk Subscription pain then who else is? I bet thereâs plenty of Maya and Max based studios who might now be feeling the pinch.
Weâve seen a couple of high profile Japanese Anime studios switch to Blender citing the ability to control the cost of software and to be able to contribute to the direction of the software.
My business partner who kept a C4D license up to date decided enough was enough when Maxon switched to Subscriptions. Companies donât switch to subscriptions for the benefit of the users, anyone who thinks different is an idiot, subscriptions are to exert control and manage the amount of value the customer receives. Importantly the customer can no longer vote with their wallets and skip an update if it doesnât offer good value for money.
The big problem is once you go down the path of subscriptions and lock your business in to proprietary software your bargaining position is out the window. Autodesk knows these thousands of leading architects have very little choice than to keep paying their subscriptions. It looks like none of these people had a plan B, maybe there isnât a plan B available for whatever reason, I donât know that market.
An OSS solution that does what Revit does could be years away so these architects are going to have throwing coin at AD until that happens.
I think you are right.
It is often stated as a fact that companies of a certain size do not care about the cost of software but in my experince this is not true at all.
I was just thinking aloud to be honest⌠I probably shouldnât be taking this âoff topic.â
What grabbed my attention initially was Blender going down the BIM route. I was surprised at that as I had never considered Blender to be an âengineering tool.â Certainly in my industry, as good as Blender is, I donât thing it could ever be developed to output the deliverables I would expect from it.
I wouldnât say Blender itself is going down the BIM route but the strength of Open Source is that a motivated person has decided to take Blender down the BIM route and seems to have done a lot of work, at least to an untrained eye.
If those leading architects are serious about âOpen Sourceâ then something like BlenderBIM seems a good place to start the conversation.
BIM is not my field of expertise and I have no idea whether BlenderBIM meets a single requirement of BIM professionals but nothing changes if a few people write a letter to Autodesk, it gets ignored, they do nothing.
What will probably happen is Autodesk PR will come out and say âWe hear ya, donât worry big updates coming blah blah blahâ and in 4-5 years time a thousand leading architects will be writing another letter asking where the updates are having failed to take the opportunity to invest in open source alternatives in the intervening yearsâŚ
Yeah, Iâve used AutoCAD professionally for over thirty years and Autodesk rarely listens to its users. And itâs why, in the last couple of years, for the odd project I have done at home, I have used BricsCAD, which is a perpetual license, just like the good old days.
As for BIM, I have never had to deal with it in my game and Iâm now in the twilight of my years so I am hoping I never will. From what I have heard, BIM is great in principle but in practice can be a nightmare. But you know how it is⌠Someone comes up with a bright idea and then not enough people down the line get it to function properly.
On topic, though, it certainly is great to see open source stuff being developed like this.
BIM is pretty good but like with all automated systems it also has its limits like when you need to custom adjust something.
I find this cry out by the architects quite amusing. They knew what they went into. They all decided to use Revit. I teach Revit - it is fine but man convoluted.
There is also Archicad BriskCad and other options.
Even one of my new clients who does pool design wants to use REVIT know.
I donât think the architects had much choice. In the UK BIM was top down driven by the government, if you wanted to build a government funded project it had to be designed using BIM. I have not used any BIM cad packages, but was involved with the HVAC industry trying to set common BIM attributes and templates for their products.
I think revit was the first major program to run with BIM which is why it has the dominant position. The openBIM might be at an early stage, but lets hope it can grow and become an industry viable solution over time.
