owen wrote:
AC13 and now 14 have focused on collaboration, and as these videos show AC14 is particularly focused on improving collaboration with consultants - i.e Revit Structure/MEP.
They
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If they do not do this then ArchiCAD will not be around for much longer, so all those fancy new tools we want/need will be pointless.
I can understand many people will see absolutely nothing for them in AC14, but these things are critical for larger customers. As we have seen in recent posts - and from personal experiences for many of us - there are big ArchiCAD users seriously considering moving to Revit because of collaboration issues.
That is the real threat to ArchiCAD's future ... not a better stair tool (as much as I want it).
So if they're not going to improve or enhance the core tool-set of AC (core tools, not "fancy", as you put it), at the expense of improving collaborative capabilities with their rival software's complementary tools, then why, pray tell, should an ArchiCAD user bother spending more money on them when those tools are not only available in their rival's software ( which have no collaboration issues), but are also superior in many cases, and are perpetually improving with each release.
If GS are not going to bother giving their customers a more intuitive way of making parametric doors and windows, for example (nothing fancy about that), without having to write hundreds of lines of GDL code, because they (GS) have to make sure that users will be able to export their models to Revit Structure or Revit MEP, why not just switch to Revit Architecture which already has a (more or less,) intuitive and graphical parametric object maker, already?
You argument is basically this, in a nutshell,
"I know, as a manufacturer, I provide an inferior car, or product, but rather than improving it, I think it's better to ensure that my customers are able to get their cars to my rival's garage to get it fixed or to buy missing parts and get better service, that they can't get from me, but which they really should by all rights be expecting from my shop, out of the box."
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In most other cases in the business world, that would be considered a ludicrous business model, and just plain crazy.
I dare say, that GS wouldn't find themselves in this position of having to 'fight for their survival' had they been actually listening (and responding) to their day-to-day users, for the last 4 or 5 versions. Their biggest marketing asset has always been the users who not only recommend the product to other prospective buyers and colleagues but also through their works and designs. Not the re-sellers, and certainly not the marketing department at GSHQ. The users.
Instead they have spent the better part of the last couple of versions demonstrating exactly why investing in this software or hoping for better improvements are a bad baaaad investment, and ushering legions of users to Autodesk faster that Autodesk's own marketing department can.
I understand the point you're trying to make, and in better circumstances, I would probably also be trying to defend GS's decisions here as well. But given what has been their apparent tone-deaf approach to dealing with their (small) customers, who, at this point are nothing better than reliable cash-cows for them, it all just seems rather unpalatable.
