Scott wrote:
It rang a bell 3 and a half years ago when they bought Revit Technology Corporation.
This is not only a different bell, it is a
different church...
When Autodesk bought Revit, it was to get into the BIM business. They had ADT, which was/is really a lame way of doing 3D architecture. They maintained it, for all their Autocad users, and bought a whole new software
The equivalent would be buying Max to get into the general purpose modeling and animation.
So:
Lightscape they bought to have a high end rendering engine.
Revit they bought to have a BIM solution.
Maya they bought to crush competition, as they already had an equivalent (Max).
The same bell would be buying a foreign BIM software (Maya is/was canadian) to have as close to a Monopoly as they can.
I do not consider myself a prophet of doom (even changed the avatar, Dwight told me the last one was to serious) but consider:
How are Maya users feeling, now they are being pushed into AutoDesk?
http://keithlango.blogspot.com/2005/10/autodesk-buys-alias.html
http://www.3d-studio-max.com-forum.info/a-164534-Autodesk_Buys_Alias.html
And how would ArchiCAD users feel, in the same situation?