@Jp1138 wrote:
Removing MEP from Studio is clearly a horrible move from GS to their customers. But it´s the way they´ve been taking for some years now, no surprises 😐
Controversial hot take here.
MEP never should have been part of the core program to begin with.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have developed it if that was the strategy they opted to pursue.
I just happen to think that developing as part of the main program (or a third party addon on at first which was still treated as a core tool and then a fully intergrated tool that was even used to market new versions in the last several years) - all ostensibly while they were using development resources (funded and paid for by license fees by users who by and large don't use the MEP tool and also,....) taken from other tools and areas that needed attention but were lacking it (and which WERE used by the core base of users (read : Architectural designers)), ......was a cynical strategy on their part that unfairly penalized users, who deserved better.
(...by ignoring the tools that those users were clamoring for improvement, as GS developed and focused on this tool (among others like SAM etc))
Of course, with them now cleaving it off the main program and making it it's own independent thing (...of sorts), while seeming to right that wrong (as it's development going forward will presumably be facilitated by the fees of those who buy it as a seperate program and who ACTUALLY will use),....also seems to now punish the people who did use it as well, instead.
It should have been developed as an independent tool from the get-go.
But of course the reason they didn't do it that way, was that it would mean that THEY (Graphisoft) take the hit ($$$$) of its development rather than we the users, - during a period when they were hoping users would adopt it and buy into it in large enough numbers to justify its continued development.
Unfortunately Grpahisoft's strategy in recent years has been seemingly a "marketing/PR first" approach that comes at the expense of what works best for users. And that's why we find ourselves where we are today with decisions like this.
(....and in light of this, I feel exactly the same way about their recent dabbling with AI and the AI visualizer and assistant, which come off more as bandwagon gimmicks and fads, with the way they're implementing them, rather than an approach to implement a new tool in a way that can actually improve how we work. Also just how ham-handedly they jammed it into the Roadmap (...at the expense of actual Wishlist items) and pretended like this was something 'we' wanted all along as opposed to just being something they saw that would help them sell more licenses and make for a great marketing tagline)
I'm assuming it's still part of the 'Collaborate' tier, which means that if you're a 'Collaborate' licensee and don't use it, then you're taking the hit,...or 'a' hit.
I suppose you could look at doing it this way as being somewhat Progressive on GS's part, .....as Collaborate users are more likely to be more deep-pocketed companies that can afford to take that hit.
Which I suppose is a good thing in a way.
But that doesn't serve as solace of any sort for those users who were never in the market for the MEP tool in the first place and never would be, but who've seen something close to 10 years worth of the cost of sunk-in fees/development resources over at GS go down the drain (...that they've paid for) - with an even bigger laundry list of actual tools to be fixed and improved still lacking - and no idea or hope that they'll ever get addressed before another bright, shiny jangly tech fad comes along and monopolizes and takes their attention away again.
And after all that, can anyone actually claim with a straight face that at the end of the day, despite all the grousing from folks like myself, that it was actually all worth it because it did indeed result in 'x' number of new users of the program who came to start using Archicad (and thus add to the license fee resource pool) because of these new non-Archi tools like MEP and SAM?
