Autodesk letter and archicad opportunities

[bouhmidage]

Hi mates, you all here have seen the letter writen by architects to Autodesk, and so more are joining it,
This could be a great opportunity to GRAPHISOFT to catch bew users, and make the community bigger
More focus on agressive marketing,

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Just a little follow-up to this thread.

LaszloNagy wrote:
Two corrections:
..........

The top guy at Autodesk DID NOT respond. The answer was written by a person responsible for Revit development (Amy Bunszel), not the CEO:
https://adsknews.autodesk.com/views/reply-to-open-letter-on-revit

Well, he did respond to their letter, so perhaps I may have jumped the gun, but here we are.

https://adsknews.autodesk.com/views/autodesk-and-the-architecture-industry

And for anyone who doesn't want to wade through the response letter, his stance and response basically boiled down to.....

- acknowledging that yes, Revit (particularly the Architecture-specific version) has been falling short on the innovations front and new features development over the last several years.
- However, that doesn't mean that they are going to revisit their pricing structure or address the high licensing fees any time soon as they've been working on some stuff under the hood and behind the scenes, that they're sure their customers are gonna love (they just haven't seen any evidence of it yet. This sounds familiar)
- That the high cost of their licenses hasn't been impeding any of these firms from making profits in the time period they're complaining about (which, obviously ignores the most likely possibility being that the companies were perhaps making those profts DESPITE their poor or lacking tools (in the form of the software) and not because of it. Or that just because you can overcome the shortcomings of a tool you have to use to still come out and make a profit doesn't mean you shouldn't therefore demand better tools. This was a rather odd rejoinder from the guy; What of the smaller firms that also have issues that are perhaps not making as much profit as they would?)
-That while the customers are seeing cost increases in licensing fees as Autodesk change their licensing model from the perpetual licensing to the subscription-only - particlarly for multi-user practices, which is like, 99% of the firms - that these increases does not mean they're paying more than if Autodesk had stayed with a perpetual licensing model since,....."they are using the software more" with the new licensing model, therefore any price or cost increase is justified (?) (That on was a whopper in terms of the mental gymnastics he used to both come up with it and somehow believe he could use it to justify an argument against a legitimate complaint. I don't even know how they would be able to determine that people are using the software more either as a result or otherwise, of the new payment model.).
At least he acknowledged that for firms with subscription numbers that kept relatively steady for about 10 years, the cost of ownership has been undeniably climbing, even while also aknowledging that the "value" hasn't commensurately kept pace with the cost increase in that same period.

-In conclusion, he claims that they are working on exciting things for the future and as a further affirmation of why they can't reduce the licensing cost, they've been spending more on Research and Development than at any time in their history or all of it combined,so that money is not going to waste, but that they'll be seeing good things really soon.

I feel really bad for them (the customers).
That's total "politician-speak" if ever I saw any.
This guy should seriously run for office.

A few things to note from our end on this.
I read a few of the comments in the comment section of one of the places the response letter was posted to (on Dezeen - https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/20/autodesk-ceo-andrew-anagnost-revit-architecture-software-news/) from some revit users, and they were understandably and justifiably none too pleased with what he put out, with some pragmatically observing that they were able to get away with this because Autodesk and Revit are after all a de facto monopoly in the industry -(at least in the region where they were posting - which would seem to be North America or the USA, from that implication).
And here's where the disturbing part for Graphisoft ought to be.
They felt that the fact that Revit (seemingly) had no competition, no major rival or viable alternative that users could turn to if they felt dissatisfied with what Autodesk were doing meant they were all cursed to this fate and to accept whatever slop Autodesk put out.
Whether they truly believe there's no viable alternative to Revit - as a function of ignorance on their part, which in turn is thanks in part to poor marketing and brand-promotion on GS' part - or whether it was a considered opinion based on the experience of having actually tried (and rejected) ArchiCAD, for example - either of these two scenarios is not very good for Graphisoft, when a large swathe of what could be considered potential future customers don't see you as a viable alternative to what they are currently using that they fully acnowledge is a terrible product that they're forced to use.
I dont' know.
That just seemed tragic on many levels to me.

LaszloNagy wrote:

Bricklyne wrote:
Not even last year's 6-7 month delayed release (depending on your locality).

Archicad 23 INT WAS NOT released 6-7 months delayed.
Previous Archicad versions were usually released in June of their respective year. Archicad 23 was released in September 2019 instead of June, which is 3 months.

For all regions?

All I'll point out to this is that you know as well as I do that ArchiCAD is not released at the same time for all regions and that some regions get their localized version as late as 2 or more months AFTER the official "release" date.
But more importantly, quibbling on this point, all seems to me to be more of a "missing the forest of the trees" moment, and in this case, missing the larger picture and the point.

Not to belabor the point, but sure. Okay.
Mea Culpa.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Bricklyne,

You stated 2 falsehoods. I provided true information about both.
So if I do that, I am "quibbling" and "missing the forest for the trees", according to you.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

LaszloNagy wrote:
Bricklyne,

You stated 2 falsehoods. I provided true information about both.
So if I do that, I am "quibbling" and "missing the forest for the trees", according to you.

Yes, and I admitted I was wrong on both points.
But if that's what you want to focus on in my posts then, salud (*hat tip), and there's nothing more I can add to this exchange.

Thanks for providing the true information.
I'll move on now.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Moonlight wrote:
@Bricklyne Clarence

Thank you, and in line of what you were saying read this thread from this point and so on
https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=295001#p295001

Thank you for that link.
That was a great read.
I hope they pay attention at least to some of the things you were proposing - particularly after that point and I would encourage others to read it too.

I'll just post a snippet of one part that I really agreed with (with Joe Putnam's permission)

"I want to put my two cents in here as a long time Rhino user and someone that develops many custom rhino/grasshopper components including a proprietary Grasshopper link to Revit that is exactly what GS is currently doing. As I continue to say I switched to Archicad because I know first hand the internals of Revit what it can and cant do and Archciad is clearly the superior product from a computer science stand point. There are some major issues I see with the GS approach however.

I think McNeel has a different/better sense of who their audience is. They know that the vast majority of those people using their API and documentation are the user base solving small issues to get production done. GS seems to be serving the professional developer base and all documentation and interaction is geared towards this. If you look at those developing for McNeel a great deal of them where in fact users that produced some amazing tool that took off and McNeel took them on where it made sense. Autodesk for all their horrible practices (we paid a major price tag to have developer contact) has also started to recognize this. Their API is pure crap but they seem to be doing a similar outreach to users who are making them look good. Dynamo was started by a graduate student I believe and has taken off as a community lead opensource project. GS appears to me, to be akin to Apple and their walled garden. Something that today is just not going to work."

I couldn't agree more with what he's saying and it's coming from an "outsider's" point of view and perspective, so his opinion should be really instructive.

Thanks again for that.

[jl_lt]

Bricklyne wrote:


A few things to note from our end on this.
I read a few of the comments in the comment section of one of the places the response letter was posted to (on Dezeen - https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/20/autodesk-ceo-andrew-anagnost-revit-architecture-software-news/) from some revit users, and they were understandably and justifiably none too pleased with what he put out, with some pragmatically observing that they were able to get away with this because Autodesk and Revit are after all a de facto monopoly in the industry -(at least in the region where they were posting - which would seem to be North America or the USA, from that implication).
And here's where the disturbing part for Graphisoft ought to be.
They felt that the fact that Revit (seemingly) had no competition, no major rival or viable alternative that users could turn to if they felt dissatisfied with what Autodesk were doing meant they were all cursed to this fate and to accept whatever slop Autodesk put out.
Whether they truly believe there's no viable alternative to Revit - as a function of ignorance on their part, which in turn is thanks in part to poor marketing and brand-promotion on GS' part - or whether it was a considered opinion based on the experience of having actually tried (and rejected) ArchiCAD, for example - either of these two scenarios is not very good for Graphisoft, when a large swathe of what could be considered potential future customers don't see you as a viable alternative to what they are currently using that they fully acnowledge is a terrible product that they're forced to use.
I dont' know.
That just seemed tragic on many levels to me.

This is an interesting take. First, as it was said in another thread, one of the assumptions for this kind of neglect on Autodesk part is that they are actually working on something new (that is, buying out another company). Still, its strange how they are treating one of their flagship products.

I think both of your scenarios are correct Mr. Bricklyne, but with a twist; My bet is that the use and possible rejection of Archicad by these firms ocurred more than 10 years ago, probably more than that, and then they went to bed with Revit, and only now they are waking up and finding out that it turned out to be a big fat lazy mess that just asks for their money.

Meanwhile Graphisoft didnt promote itself too much then. Maybe they are waiting for the right moment, or just letting Revit fail on its own.