cad nauseam

Search Results for: listening

Autodesk, Customer Service, Fail, Microsoft, Navel Gazing, Rant, Tip, Web Stuff

Microsoft demonstrates why automatic updates are a terrible idea. Listening, Autodesk?

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"1

I like Windows 10. After some investigation and with some trepidation, I have upgraded two Windows 7 computers and one Windows 8 (ugh) computer to Windows 10. In use, I’m generally very happy with it. It boots fast, works well and most of the more ridiculous aspects of the Windows 8 “let’s assume your computer is a phone” interface are gone. The fact that I can scroll windows using my mouse wheel without first clicking on those windows to obtain focus is a real productivity plus. I would be happy to recommend Windows 10 to all Windows 8 users and …

AutoCAD 2010, Autodesk, Customer Service, Interview, Video

Autodesk not listening? The response, part 1.

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

While attending the AutoCAD 2010 launch today, I took the opportunity to interview three Autodesk people: Eric Stover, Jon Page and Shaan Hurley. I raised the issue of Autodesk being seen as not listening to its customers, and was given a very comprehensive response. Here is the first of two parts of that interview. YouTube link. Disclosure: Transport, accommodation and some meals were provided by Autodesk.

Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service

Why do you think Autodesk isn’t listening?

 , , itemprop="discussionURL"8

I frequently see people remark that Autodesk doesn’t listen to its customers. I’ve made that remark myself in relation to certain specific items, most recently the botched discussion group update. Of the six Rate Autodesk polls, the Listening to its customers poll shows easily the biggest bias towards the wrong end of the graph. Now I happen to know that Autodesk goes to some lengths to find out what its customers are thinking (more on that later), but still this feeling of being ignored persists among its customers. Why is this so? Why do so many of you hold this …

Autodesk, Autodesk University, Interview, IPoC

IPoC interview – Lynn Allen – part 3

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

This is the third in a series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC). Lynn Allen is a legendary figure in the CAD world and really needs no introduction. I’m very happy that she agreed to be interviewed for this series. Here is the third and final part of Lynn’s interview. Learn about Lynn’s departure from Autodesk, people’s reactions to the news, and what Lynn thinks about Heidi Hewett going to Bricsys. Also, Miss Tiffany. Steve: So after all these years, you’re no longer with Autodesk. Was that a shock to the system? Lynn: After 24 years, it is …

Announcement, Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Fail, Maintenance, Other Autodesk Products, Rental, Spin, Subscription

Too soon? Autodesk cancels 30% subscription price increase

 , , , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"29

Autodesk had announced plans to increase some subscription prices by 30% on 7 November 2017. Resellers have already passed that information on to customers. Here’s the detail of what was going to happen: Three Important Changes to Subscriptions with Multi-User Access Autodesk is increasing prices on subscriptions with multi-user access to reflect the value and flexibility that sharing licenses provides our customers. As part of this change, we will stop selling new subscriptions with multi-user access for select products. Beginning November 7, 2017: Prices for new and renewing subscriptions with multi-user access for most individual products are increasing by ~17-19%. …

About

blog nauseam is the blog of Steve Johnson, owner of cad nauseam. Steve Johnson has been an AutoCAD specialist since 1985. He originally became well known around the world for his infamously large AutoCAD Release 13 Bug List, which he maintained as part of his duties as the Bug Threadmaster of the long-defunct CompuServe ACAD forum. Steve is also a past President of the Western Australian AutoCAD User Group (WAAUG). As a former committee member on the Applications Programming Special Interest Group of the North American Autodesk User Group (NAAUG APPROG SIG), he also contributed to the NAAUG Newsletter. NAAUG …

Announcement, Autodesk, Video

Autodesk now has only one CEO

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"9

The speculation is over. Autodesk no longer has Schrödinger’s CEO. Elon Musk has missed out, the winner is… Andrew “Baked Beans” Anagnost!   Here’s the press release and here’s a letter from Andrew. The other obvious internal candidate, Amar Hanspal, has decided to leave the company. Resigned on the spot, so I’m told. As the financial rewards for winning the CEO race are akin to winning the lottery, coming second must have been a major disappointment to product guy Amar, who I first met when he was helping to drive the hugely successful Release 14 program. Best wishes to Amar …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Bentley, BricsCAD, Rental, Subscription

Bentley marketers love Autodesk

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

Bentley Systems marketers are currently taking advantage of Autodesk customers’ distaste for the Big A’s rent-or-GTFO business model. For any Autodesk competitor, this is a fairly smart move. Autodesk has offered a free kick to its competitors and is betting on them all kicking the ball wide of the net. How accurate is Bentley’s shooting? In this case, AutoCAD customers are being encouraged to take up MicroStation. Via the Cadalyst Direct opt-in advertising list, I received an email entitled AutoCAD Users, you need options. We listened: Talk about feeling trapped (which has many Autodesk customers angry), options and flexibility (which …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Bug

AutoCAD 2018 – there’s already an update

 , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"3

If you downloaded and installed AutoCAD 2018 yesterday and don’t/won’t/can’t have Autodesk desktop app running on your systems, you may already have another download to do, because AutoCAD 2018.0.1 is out. At the time of writing there is no sign of this update on Autodesk’s main site, but you can get at it using Autodesk Account. Go to Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons. All that’s downloaded is an executable. No readme, nothing. There is currently no official information about the reasons behind this update, what it includes, what it might affect, how to include it in …

Autodesk, Cloud, Customisation, Fail, Other Blogs, Rant, Rental, Spin, Subscription, Thoughts

Return of the bullshit – baked beans edition

 , , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

In an October 2015 post I’ve only just noticed, snappily titled No More Software Like a Can of Baked Beans: Why Software Subscription Serves It Up Fresh, Autodesk VP (edit – now CEO) Andrew Anagnost bravely attempts to sell Autodesk’s move to all-rental software. This is a rather belated response, but fortunately there is no statute of limitations on skewering spin so let’s get started. How does he go? On a positive note, top marks for creative writing! The general theme is a strained and somewhat Californian analogy in which perpetual licenses are like canned goods (bad), and rental is …

Autodesk, Bentley, Bricsys, Customer Service, Fail, Other Blogs, Rant, Rental, Spin, Subscription, Thoughts

Battle of the Bullshit part 2 – Autodesk’s sophistry

 , , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"5

In my last post, I gave Bentley a well-deserved slap for, er, saying things that perhaps weren’t entirely factual. Now it’s Autodesk’s turn. What’s this about? Carl White, Senior Director of Business Models at Autodesk, wrote a blog post Not so fast Bentley: Separating fact from fiction responding to statements made by Bentley in its press release Bentley Announces Autodesk License Upgrade Program. Some of Carl’s observations on Bentley’s claims were perfectly valid, but unfortunately he went beyond that and wrote a few more things – “facts” – where he’s on shakier ground. Let’s examine Carl’s interpretation of reality, shall we? …

AutoCAD 2017, Bug, CAD Management, Customer Service, Customisation, Development, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs

Hotfix for AutoCAD 2017 SP1 Autoloader bug

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"2

As reported earlier, AutoCAD 2017 SP1 breaks third-party add-ins that use the officially approved Autoloader mechanism. Autodesk is to be commended for acting quickly to produce a hotfix for this. In order to make this hotfix available quickly, Autodesk has taken the very unusual step of allowing a third party to distribute it. See this post from Jimmy Bergmark, who pointed out the bug in the first place. Kudos to whoever at Autodesk made the call to think outside the box to do this. It’s a very un-Autodesk Corporate thing to do, and particularly commendable for that very reason. It’s …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2017, Autodesk, CAD Management, Customer Service, Development, Fail, Nostalgia, Other Blogs, Rant

AutoCAD 2017 Service Pack 1 is out but you probably don’t want to install it

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

As reported by Jimmy Bergmark, AutoCAD 2017 SP1 will break add-ins that use Autodesk’s built-in autoloader mechanism. It looks like it’s a problem caused by third party applications, but it’s not. It’s entirely Autodesk’s fault. The only fix at this stage is to uninstall SP1. It’s astonishing that Autodesk would release a service pack like this, introducing a nasty bug that will break customers’ existing functionality. This reminds me of the comedy of errors that was AutoCAD Release 13 with its multitude of updates, many of which introduced new bugs as well as fixing others. AutoCAD 2017c4a, anyone? If you needed …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD WS, Cloud, Customisation, Development, LISP, Thoughts

LISP programmers, have your say again

 , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"4

Autodesk wants your input again in its annual API survey. This used to be a closed survey for Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) members, but has been open to all for the last few years. If you do any AutoCAD-based development at all, I encourage you to take part. That includes those of us who do most of our development in LISP. Here’s the direct link to the survey. As you can see if you click the link, there’s a lot of stuff in there that assumes you’re keen to get developing for AutoCAD WS. If you’re not quite so filled …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2013, Autodesk, Comments, Customer Service

AutoCAD 2013 – An Autodesk Help writer responds

 , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"164

Following some email discussions, I am happy to present a response from a relevant Autodesk person to the posts and comments here about AutoCAD 2013’s Help. Thanks for the opportunity to respond to your readers, Steve. First, I want to assure you that we’re listening to your comments about AutoCAD 2013 Help. We are adding it to the valuable feedback we’ve already received from users who participated in our Beta program. I responded promptly to every comment from each Beta user and will now address a wider audience. Here are some of the trends we’ve seen so far in the …

Autodesk, Interview, Other Blogs, Subscription

Callan Carpenter interview 1 – Autodesk and social media

 , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"0

A couple of weeks ago, Angela Simoes from the Autodesk Corporate PR team invited me to interview Callan Carpenter, Autodesk’s Vice President of Global Subscription and Support. Callan is responsible for the sales, marketing operations and product support associated with Subscription. He is also Vice President in charge of Jim Quanci’s Autodesk Developer Network. This morning, we had a very extensive discussion about Subscription and other topics that I intend to publish in several parts over the next few days. Deelip has already published a Callan interview, but mine is quite different. In this post, I will let Callan introduce …

Announcement, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2011, Autodesk, Other Blogs

AutoCAD 2011 launch on 25 March

 , itemprop="discussionURL"7

Just announced by Shaan Hurley via Twitter and Facebook: Busy on the final details for a special Autodesk event next week in San Francisco with some bloggers. http://www.autodesk.com/webcast Follow the link and you will find this: Autodesk Webcast Date: 3/25/10 Start Time: 9:00 SF/12:00 New York/16:00 UK/17:00 CET Register today to join Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Senior Vice President Amar Hanspal for an exclusive live webcast to learn about updates to Autodesk’s portfolio of design software for the AEC, manufacturing and general design industries. In Autodeskspeak, “general design” means AutoCAD (AEC = Revit, manufacturing = Inventor), so you can …

Announcement, Autodesk, Other Blogs

Send your screen to Autodesk

 , , , itemprop="discussionURL"1

No, I don’t mean Autodesk is now so impoverished that it is running short of monitors for its staff, I mean send a capture of your screen to Autodesk. Guillermo Melantoni, one of AutoCAD’s Product Managers, would like to see how you arrange your user interface for production use. As I’ve mentioned before, Guillermo is a very smart guy who is responsible for recent 3D enhancements to AutoCAD. He is open to listening to customers and trying to accommodate their needs. Here’s what he has to say: I would like to ask all of you to send me screen capture …

AU2009, Autodesk, Autodesk University, Customer Service, Fail, Other Autodesk Products, Other Blogs, Rant, Thoughts

Autodesk’s Revit rebellion reaction

 , , , , , , , , itemprop="discussionURL"11

It’s time to examine how Autodesk has reacted to the widespread criticism of Revit 2010. Is Autodesk listening? To be more specific, is Autodesk’s Revit team listening? The Good It has been good to see extensive public participation by Autodesk people in various discussions in different places. The Revit team isn’t hiding. It is asking for feedback on the Autodesk discussion groups, the AUGI forums and its own blogs, and getting lots of it. Much of it is negative, but it is to Autodesk’s credit that I’m not seeing much in the way of denial, or demands that the criticism …