IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 2

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Welcome to the second in this series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

David Kingsley has had a long and interesting career, was present in the early days of CAD adoption, and served as an AUGI board member for years. Here is the second part of David’s interview which covers his involvement in AUGI, the controversy over how it was managed, and how that ended his involvement.

Steve: What was your first involvement with AUGI or NAAUG? At what stage did you get involved?

David: I think it was NAAUG in Philadelphia. Paul Jackson came up to me and said, “We would like you to get involved with the board. He asked me to attend the board meeting right there. So I started hanging out. That may have been the first time I met Lynn Allen. David Harrington was there, Dave Espinosa-Aguilar, Donnia Tabor-Hanson… that was kind of the formation of a very early AUGI Board. They had a board, but they were looking for different people.

I first ran for the AUGI board and was elected in 1996. I was on the Board from 1996 to 2002. We didn’t have a web site in 96, not many small organizations did yet, so I was involved in the first AUGI website ever. It was pretty crude! I remember we just kind of talked about it, Carol Bartz waved her hands, and we had money! She would sit in for a couple of hours every time we met in San Rafael. We would spend three or four days at Autodesk and that’s when we would develop our annual plan and funding requirements.

They were throwing a lot of money at us – $150,000, $200,000 a year just to support the user community. So we had a pretty healthy budget. A lot of people bungled it though. I remember one year we had budgeted $80,000 for something. It was what became the Exchange, where everybody traded their apps. We were supposed to develop that and we completely failed. We directly experienced the wrath of Carol Bartz for that.

The AUGI Board was a really difficult thing to make work because everyone was a volunteer, and they were all over the country, and there were no consequences for failure. People would sometimes just blow stuff off and wouldn’t do things. We were unable to accomplish things. They lacked the skills, or desire, or didn’t have the time, so there were some really rough years there where we were supposed to get things done and we didn’t. We had a couple people who openly stated they were just there to get NFR software.

That was when Rich Uphus and SolidVapor became involved. I believe Carol Bartz set us up with them to give us some kind of essential management. That was when AUGIWorld magazine came out. When we got involved with them, Uphus rebranded his “A” magazine as AUGIWorld and started to plan all of the CAD Camps. At that point, Autodesk ceased funding AUGI directly.

Steve: Is this the quarterly CAD Camps?

David: Yes, but I think there were 40 of them one year. Yoshi Honda and I were kind of the key AUGI people who negotiated that with Rich Uphus. We did most of the conceptual development and business arrangement between AUGI and Uphus. SV put together the first workable AUGI website with our input. All of that happened because of SolidVapor.

The plan was that AUGI provided the technical content and SV built and maintained the infrastructure – the website, the magazine, the organization behind the CAD Camps. When you start to think about the expense of that – If you went up to some hotel and said, “I’d like to have five breakout rooms, I’d like to serve lunch to 200 people, for a day and a half,” they would say, “Well, put down $200,000 and we’ll reserve a spot for you.”

For one or more years, CAD Camps had more attendees per year than Autodesk University. So SolidVapor had to come up with a lot of capital – millions of dollars. SV was going through $2.5 to $3 million a year. I’m sure they were making a profit; that’s what businesses are about. But they were pretty much backed by Autodesk.

AUGI generated no revenue at all. They were actually an expense. Autodesk flew us out to San Rafael for a week twice a year and we just partied! They took us out to nice restaurants. But we also provided a lot of good information from the user community, so we were the mouthpiece of the user community to Autodesk.

Later on there was a faction within the AUGI board that didn’t like the arrangement that we had with SolidVapor. They felt that AUGI was no longer in control – that SolidVapor was doing all the stuff that AUGI should be doing. There was a real split. My position was that it became that way because the model we had earlier didn’t work. Autodesk was giving us money and we were failing, so they put a real organization, an experienced business, in place to accomplish what they wanted. We were in a position where we drove that organization but we didn’t manage the money, we didn’t really manage the projects.

AUGI chose to terminate the contract with SolidVapor. Some may say otherwise, but the fact is they offered SV a deal they could not accept. I tried and tried to make sense with them, tried to tell them early on that… first of all, where is your money going to come from? Autodesk has told us they will not fund AUGI like they did before, they will only be another ad buying customer. All of this cash flow is going to go away when you end this relationship. Don’t tell me that you’re going to come up with $2.5 to $3 million a year, it’s just not going to happen. You guys don’t know how to do it, you’re working full time jobs, and you’re already unable to fulfill many of your responsibilities to AUGI. You expect to, all of a sudden, on a part-time basis, raise $2.5 to $3 million a year and put together a dozen CAD Camps, publish a magazine and keep a website running. It’s just isn’t going to happen.

But they went ahead and did it anyways. That’s when I left AUGI. I didn’t want to be involved with what was going to happen. I don’t have any personal grudges against people but there were a couple of people I really bumped heads with. Let’s just say we didn’t talk to one another after that.

I remember going to Autodesk University after they had terminated the relationship with SolidVapor and I knew they were in serious financial trouble. They had relatively no financial backing or sales, they had no viable plan. That’s when CAD Camps ended, AUGI World magazine ended, and the website stumbled really badly for a couple of years. It was in pretty bad shape. AUGI has pretty much gotten themselves back on track now, but at a much smaller scale than it could have been.

Steve: Wasn’t there some legal wrangle over who had rights to the forums and the contents?

David: Yeah. AUGI didn’t have any direct revenue. They had not invested anything. SolidVapor managed all the money, and the agreement was that SolidVapor would provide the infrastructure. So SV built the website, invested all the time, they were paying for the servers, paying the programmers, all that stuff. I tried to tell the AUGI board that they had no power whatsoever. Sorry, but power is money. You don’t control any money. You haven’t invested in this so you really don’t have a right to it. You provided the content for the forums, yes. The position of SolidVapor was, if you sue us for the forums and win, you’ll take responsibility for the whole thing. You’ll be totally responsible for funding and operating the website, the servers, the programmers.

AUGI was never restricted about what we could publish or what we could do, other than technical limitations. They would do pretty much whatever we wanted to, within reason. But we never paid for anything so we never had any power there.

I was pretty much against the whole AUGI position at that point, I thought they were unrealistic. They all had full time jobs, some of them were highly placed in engineering departments, but no one really had any business experience.

A lot of the things they wanted to do were just not practical or cost-effective. So we had some real head-butting with SolidVapor about what AUGI wanted to do. SV said, “We can’t do that, we can’t afford it,” or “Come up with a budget for it.” AUGI was just kind of waving their hands around and asking for things and they didn’t think about how much it was going to cost or how it was going to get paid for.

So they struggled for a while. I’ve been out of touch – I’ve really not been involved with AUGI since 2008 when they terminated the SV relationship. That’s when I said adios.

Steve: I still have the document that you produced with all your record of that I can now refer to. It’s still on my blog!

David: Oh really? I think it would pretty much corroborate what I just said.

Steve: If you remember, you published that on the AUGI forums and that was removed and so I published it on my blog for people that wanted to read what you had to say. I don’t know if you remember that or not but it’s still there!

David: Yeah, yeah!

Steve: I just downloaded it for my own blog to read it!

David: I think there are a few people who can remember those days. I had very few supporters. I actually got some hate mail. I was amazed at the lack of understanding in the community at what was going on. Nobody got it. I had a few communications with people shortly afterward but not many. It was surprising.

AUGI survived, it just went to a much smaller scale. You’re probably pretty familiar with that whole scenario then?

Steve: Yeah, I came on it fairly late and I didn’t really understand what was going on either, except that there was there was a bit of a constitutional crisis with the board and who was supposed to be on the board, and who gets to say who’s on the board. There was an election and the election was cancelled or postponed or moved and people weren’t allowed to put themselves up for election and all sorts of stuff happened.

David: Yeah. I kind of went over the edge a little bit with some stuff at that point. I did have a really serious discussion with the board, because I’d been off the board for a number of years and I decided to go back and put myself up as a candidate. They wouldn’t even allow me to run as a candidate. It might have been ’08 or ’09. I said I’d like to run and they said no. That didn’t really get any press. That was kind of a private thing between me and…

Mark Kiker and Richard Binning were the two people I really butted heads with. They were the two that really spearheaded this transition, so they told me flat out, you’re not running. You’re not going to get on the board. That was where the noise about who gets to be on the board came from. They were pretty dictatorial. It was pretty interesting to watch.

Steve: Within AUGI, when you were actively involved in it, who are you dealing with at Autodesk? I know you mentioned Carol came to the meetings. Were there other people that you were interacting with?

David: We dealt directly with a lot of the engineering department there. I dealt with Buzz Kross a lot. During the weeks that we spent at Autodesk, we would work directly with the engineering people. It was timed such that they could talk to us directly about what was coming up and we were tasked with thinking about how to introduce that to the user community. We were tasked to provide feedback to them, that’s where the wish list originated. We were tasked to become the mouthpiece of the user community.

Carl Bass was still in engineering management, so we dealt with him a lot. Then there was Lynn. We worked with her a lot. Lynn was the one who worked the internal politics and made things happen for us. We gave her the official title of “AUGI Sweetheart”.

I just thought about this a couple of days ago. I lived in Denver, very close to Columbine High School where there was that big mass shooting where two kids shot up the High School and killed 19 people. A couple of kids on my street went to that school, but we didn’t have any children there. I remember sitting down in Carol Bartz’ office; I’d asked for a private meeting with her. I talked to her about the effects of violent video games and what influence Autodesk might have on that. We actually came to know one another at a more personal level at that point. It was an interesting relationship after that.

We used to sit down with all of the top management people. There would be a formal meeting every time the AUGI board met. All of the big kids would show up and all of the AUGI kids were round the other side of the table. We’d sit there for two, three or four hours and have a really nice long discussion about the product and the future. They’d tell us about future developments, what was coming up and we all had NDAs so we couldn’t talk about anything outside.

IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 1
IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 3

IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 1

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Welcome to the second in this series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

David Kingsley has had a long and interesting career, was present in the early days of CAD adoption, and served as an AUGI board member for years. Here is the first part of David’s interview, which covers his career.

It’s a long career, so this is a loooong post! Strap in tight for a candid discussion of solar plants, a couple of US Presidents, primeval Autodesk University, Autodesk before and after Lynn Allen, a personal opinion of the current CEO, sailing on an America’s Cup yacht, the Hubble telescope and an inappropriate discussion of hard nipples.

Steve: You’re retired now, right?

David: I’m 67 soon and pretty much retired, but I’m still keeping up with AutoCAD and Inventor, my two primary things. I use Inventor pretty regularly. We’re going to build an addition on the house and I’m still up to speed on it. I’ve been on ADN (Autodesk Developer Network) for years and years; I’m still doing that. But yeah, I’m retired. I say I’ve become unemployable!

Steve: Can you give me a brief outline of the main things you’ve done during your long career?

David: I started out on a drafting board in 1970 and had 10 or 11 years of experience with that. I grew up West of Detroit; the whole southern part of Michigan is automotive industry. You know, Detroit iron. I worked a lot in automotive tooling, all on paper and pencil.

Then in ’78 I moved from Detroit to Denver, Colorado and was there for 40 years until just last month. In 1976, then-President Carter commissioned a Solar Energy Research Institute and I went around and visited all of the candidate cities for this new Institute and it ended up in Denver. I had visited and interviewed with the company there, and this was even before the Institute had been officially commissioned and opened. So this company called me back and moved me all the way across the country and I went to work for them. They built equipment, so the Institute is like a think-tank and they contracted out to manufacturers around the area. We built a lot of hardware. So I was building solar energy R&D stuff back in 1980/81.

Then Regan got elected and he was anti-solar and he cut all of those programs so I ended up being out of a job after a couple of years. So I ended up in aerospace. There were two or three big aerospace companies in Denver. Long story short, I ended up working on the Hubble telescope. That was still working on paper and pencil!

In ’81 we got CAD training, they brought in a big CAD system. I got pretty adept at that. It was about ’84 or ’85, AutoCAD started to pop up and PCs were just starting to appear. Literally showing up on people’s desks. I immediately took off on that; I could see that was where everything was headed.

I hooked up with my first Autodesk University in, was it 92? One of the really very first AUs, and I remember it was in the parking lot, there on McInnis Street. They had a little tent; there were only a couple of hundred people there.

Steve: Sorry David, which city was this?

David: This is in San Rafael, right at the Autodesk headquarters, there on McInnis Street [Parkway]. Ever been out there?

Steve: Yes.

David: And everybody stays at that Embassy…?

Steve: Embassy Suites, yes. Good breakfasts!

David: Yes, and this was in that parking lot. They had a tent and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and ten classes. I don’t think Lynn Allen worked there yet. I can’t remember her being there.

Steve: Wow!

David: I remember Autodesk before Lynn Allen! Now we’re in a world with an Autodesk without Lynn Allen.

Steve: Yes, it’s bizarre, isn’t it?

David: Yes. It’s like the company’s got a whole different… have you spoken with Lynn? Chatted with Lynn about any of this?

Steve: I’ve been in touch. I haven’t spoken to her personally but we’ve sent messages back and forth.

David: It’s pretty ugly. There are a bunch of people who are pretty pissed off. This Anagnost, the new CEO, a lot of people think there’s a vendetta going on. There’s a lot of people he… I don’t know if you know anything about this Anagnost or have met him before, but I worked with him over the years. He was an OK guy but he was just a real cold… you know, I don’t know how to describe him. But a lot of people think there was a lot of animosity, that he’s kind of venting, getting rid of people he didn’t like. Because he came up through the ranks, he’s been there many years.

So anyway, back about me!

Steve: So you went to the first AU at San Rafael?

David: The very first or one of the first. I also remember going to the one in San Francisco, and Phil Kreiker was the President. I remember him making a bunch of rude remarks: an inappropriate monologue! I guess you had to be there. It was the kind of stuff you wouldn’t have expected to hear from somebody…

Steve: I may have actually been there. I went to the ‘95 one in San Francisco at the Moscone Center.

David: I remember one being at the Bill Graham Center. The one where he said he was so excited his nipples were hard! I always remember that.
Was that the one where they brought him in, in a straitjacket?

Steve: Ah, great. No, I didn’t see that, that sounds fun!

David: So you’ve been around this stuff for a long time too?

Steve: Yeah, Version 1.4 was my first AutoCAD. I worked for an AutoCAD dealer, the first AutoCAD dealer, here in Western Australia as the demo jock and sales support and specialist and so on. Yeah, that was ’85.

David: I bought AutoCAD 11. I’d been working on a big mainframe system. Computervision was the big player at the beginning, and they had a model space/paper space paradigm and that was the first thing I worked on in 3D, and it was model space/paper space and AutoCAD was just a flat 2D tool. When they came out with 11, that was when they first came out with paper space. That was a paradigm I was comfortable with, so I ended up buying 11 and left my cushy aerospace job.

I had been there ten years and I had the same job the day I left as the day I got there. It was a big company and it was really difficult to move forward. At that time the IT guys were managing the CAD system. Because it was a computer, you know? And they weren’t figuring out that a CAD Manager and an IT Manager were not the same thing. There were no CAD Managers, they didn’t understand the whole business yet.

So I proposed that I become the first CAD Manager in the place because I saw the job and everybody else kind of saw it, too. So I had to politic for that job for about three years. We were really struggling, we had these IT guys who didn’t know… they just couldn’t support us. We were just floating around, trying to figure out our methods and operations and the IT guys weren’t any help at all.

So finally after three years, my boss got a promotion and I got a new boss and he immediately said, “I know what you’re talking about and I’m going to go to Human Resources and fight for this position.” So they posted it, interviewed three people and gave the job to somebody else!

So I just threw up my hands, went and bought AutoCAD 11 and struck out on my own. We had some guys who spun off from the company earlier and one of them at the time was… the company I worked for, their speciality was optical sensing. They built a lot of Earth observation satellites. They built (and still) some of the most advanced satellite on the planet. As a matter of fact, right now every instrument on the Hubble telescope was built by this company. So the last four or five contracts they have won every contract to replace every instrument. Ball Aerospace.

Anyway, a couple of people had spun off that company and I went to work for them. Half a dozen consultants, you know, a small company. This one guy won a contract with the Italian America’s Cup sailing team. His specialty was wind shear detection. He developed a system where the vector and velocity of the wind could be mapped up to 2 km ahead of the craft, and he sold it to the Italians. We were trying to build this thing and put it on the Italian boat. This was in San Diego in ’92 or ’93.

Shortly before the race, the sanctioning body ruled it out. We spent all this money and they said, “Nah, you can’t do that.” Apparently the rule was, you couldn’t communicate with the boat. So they couldn’t communicate ship to shore. What I remember is that we were gathering our own data autonomously. But they said, “Nah, you still have such an advantage.” I actually got on the boat for a short time. I learned very quickly that if you’re not part of the racing team you’re just in the way. There’s no place for you to be.

So after that I ended up hooking up with the dealer network in Denver, the Rocky Mountain region. This is in the 90s. I would go around and do training with the dealer network. On several occasions I would go in on a long term contract. They would have a big sale, a big installation of a dozen or so seats, and I would go in and be an employee on a contract basis. I would go in and be there like everybody else for three or four months. I’d get them up to speed.

That was always bizarre. There would be a political nightmare. There would be people who didn’t want to be on CAD, or didn’t like this software, they would rather have SolidWorks or something else, and they fought tooth and nail, and it was crazy. There were people who really didn’t like me, just because I represented, I was trying to teach them this software. I told them, “This is not about me! Your management made this decision. If you want to work here you’re going to have to live with it! I’m not the cause of your problems.”

That’s pretty much how I ended my career. I just got tired of that, I didn’t need to work any more and my wife’s career bloomed later in her life, about 45 or 50 and she had a great career from 45 on, so for about 20 years she was really the breadwinner, so I was really the playboy.

Steve: You were a “kept man”!

David: Yeah, I really said that. But I was still working.

I had a couple of really bad experiences at the end. Just a bad employer. We had a solar company that established their North American engineering center in Denver. They built the world’s biggest solar power plant in Arizona. A Spanish company with a North American engineering office. They built several really big solar power plants, but that was a really horrible place to work. We were micromanaged from Spain and they had some of the worst CAD implementations I’ve ever seen. I tried to turn them around, and it was just unbelievable what they were doing. You’re familiar with the technology. Are you civil, or electrical, or…

Steve: Mostly mechanical. I have worked for an architect but my background is in mechanical engineering. I actually started my career at a drop forging company that made a lot of automotive parts, so fairly similar to your start.

David: In my really early days, I worked in a General Motors plant. It had been a bomber plant during World War II, making bomber aircraft. Right underneath my office was a drop forge. It just sat there all day, just WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! My cup of coffee was always wiggling! It was never still, it always had a wave in it.

Back to this company, they were managing Inventor files like AutoCAD files, with the revision letter changing the file name. That broke the assembly in Inventor, but they couldn’t get that concept. There was this confrontation thing and they quietly walked me out the door. They gave me a really nice letter that basically said, “Just go away.”

I said, “I really don’t want to do this any more” so I stopped working. That was about 2011.

There was one more job I had after that. I worked in a company that was using Inventor and made ambulance helicopters. They would take a standard helicopter, fully fitted, with every component certified, and tear it apart, strip it out. We would build new panels and fit all this medical equipment. That was probably the best paying job I ever had! But that’s when I got tired of it. That was a young man’s job and I was 62 or 63. They wanted me to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week and I just couldn’t do it.

So I gave it up!

IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 2
IPoC interview – David Kingsley – part 3

Steve’s BLADE presentation at the BricsCAD New Zealand and Australia Roadshow

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Sofoco (Australia) and CAD Concepts (New Zealand) recently ran a series of seminars throughout Australasia demonstrating BricsCAD. I attended the last of these in Brisbane on April 19 and gave a presentation about BricsCAD’s LISP, with reference to AutoCAD compatibility and the tools available to CAD Managers and developers, including BLADE. The talk was aimed at anybody who is writing or maintaining LISP code for AutoCAD or BricsCAD.

I had the just-before-lunch slot, which is never desirable for a presenter. People are dozing off and/or bursting to go to the toilet, and time adjustments have to be made if earlier presentations run over. I started 10 minutes late and therefore had to remove the demonstration part of the presentation on the fly, but I had planned to allow for that eventuality. It’s been a while since I have presented like this before an audience so I was a bit rusty and it wasn’t as free-flowing as I would have liked. Too many ‘erms’!

Steve’s invisible accordion is impressively large

I did manage to keep the whole audience in their seats until the end, though, so that’s something. Maybe the fact that I was waving a sword around had something to do with it.

Here’s my video, which is 21 minutes long. The sound is a bit muffled and my accent is Australian, so you might want to turn on subtitles using the CC option in the YouTube player.

Disclosure: the organisers covered part of my expenses.

Autodesk remotely killswitches AutoCAD licenses – again

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Following the AutoCAD 2019 rollout disaster, where subscription users found their AutoCAD 2018s were broken by an Autodesk licensing system meltdown, Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost issued an apology. He also assured customers on Twitter that it wouldn’t happen again:

While I welcomed that, I did have this to say at the time:

I don’t think such a guarantee is realistic, given that the nature of subscription software is to only work when it knows you’ve paid up. At least it demonstrates that the desire is there right at the top to try to prevent such debacles from occurring in future.

Autodesk watchers know that words mean little and actions are everything. I look forward to Andrew sharing news of the actions he’ll be taking to make good on his promise.

Back to the present. Does it come as a surprise to anybody to discover that less than a month later, Autodesk has again accidentally remotely killswitched people’s licenses? Again, not just the new release, but 2018 too. As reported on Twitter and www.asti.com:

After a couple of exchanges, the always-responsive people on the @AutodeskHelp Twitter feed came back with this:

So it’s fixed, but CAD Managers now have a bunch of work to do at their end to deal with a problem created at the Autodesk end. Somebody screwed up, they fixed it, another apology is issued, stuff happens, life goes on.  That’s it for this month, probably. But it doesn’t address a very fundamental problem.

Let’s go back to basics.

The primary function of a licensing system is to allow use of the product by legitimate users.

Everything else is secondary. If a system relies on phoning home and getting the required response from a remote system before you’re permitted to use the software you paid for, not just after installation but on an ongoing basis, then it’s fundamentally flawed from the user’s point of view. Yet that is the system that Autodesk has chosen to base its business on.

No amount of sincere, deeply felt apologies or it’ll-never-happen-again promises will alter the fact that Autodesk has put its own convenience ahead of the ability of paying customers to use what they have paid for. Will Autodesk change that state of affairs? I very much doubt it, in which case it’s inevitable that this kind of thing will happen again, whatever anyone might promise.

The game has changed – Robert Green migrates to BricsCAD

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Is anybody left who still thinks BricsCAD isn’t a serious replacement for AutoCAD? If that’s you, perhaps the latest news might make you take it seriously. No, not the Heidi Hewett news. Even more recent news than that!

Robert Green, CAD Management guru, Cadalyst writer and consultant (not to mention a rather good guitarist) has been announced as the first Bricsys Certified Migration Consultant.

Image courtesy of Bricsys

Read all about what Robert has to say on this Bricsys blog post.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for the last few years will be surprised by none of what Robert has to say in that blog post. It’s not merely a repeat of what I’ve been saying for some time now, it’s all factually correct and easily verifiable by any competent CAD Manager.

I’ve been there and done that. I’ve gone through the process of taking a very complex custom AutoCAD environment, applying it to BricsCAD and giving it to my users. They loved it. No training was required to work as usual. Most things happened quicker, more conveniently, or both, starting right from the speedy installation. Once the product is in place and established, training can then be applied to take advantage of the places where BricsCAD is ahead of AutoCAD.

If you’re a CAD Manager where AutoCAD is used and you haven’t checked out BricsCAD yet, it’s about time you did.

This might come as a shock to those who see Autodesk domination of DWG CAD as a permanent fact of life, but the game has changed. AutoCAD’s stagnation and comments by senior figures show that the former flagship is clearly unloved by the powers within Autodesk. AutoCAD LT, even more so. An unimpressive AutoCAD 2019 shows that major improvements can no longer be expected in exchange for your ever-increasing annual payments, and with large numbers of people having been offloaded from the research and development teams, who would do it anyway? Meanwhile, BricsCAD development shoots ahead.

Thanks to decades of hostility towards customers that has only accelerated in recent years, Autodesk can’t even rely on customer loyalty for survival. When there’s a serious competitor that offers an easy migration path, the inertia that has kept Autodesk alive so far in the DWG space is no longer enough. The feeling among industry observers I meet is that Autodesk is in a decline of its own making. The only debate is whether that decline is temporary or terminal.

Back to Robert et al. Autodesk has lost many good people, and Bricsys is gaining them. The momentum is clearly with the Belgian company. Anybody want to run bets on who the next big name defector will be?

BricsCAD Shape for Mac

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BricsCAD Shape, the free DWG-based 3D direct modeling application from Bricsys, has now been released for macOS (formerly OS X). See my previous post on Shape for details of what it’s all about.

This is the same, just on a different OS. That’s because unlike Autodesk’s versions of its DWG products, the Bricsys versions are not cynically watered down for Apple users. Those users can now do full 3D conceptual modeling as part of a workflow that leads to full BIM (or simply view and edit DWG files if you’re not that ambitious), and without paying for the privilege.

It’s a proper free perpetual licence without usage restrictions, not a demo. You can’t get a perpetual license of DWG-editing software from Autodesk for any money, so by any measure Shape is a bargain.

The Bricsys blog post can be found here. The download page is here.

A Linux version of Shape is expected later.

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 3

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Welcome to the first in this new series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

First up, Heidi Hewett. Heidi has a long CAD history and is well known for being outstandingly good at her job. She made big news recently by shifting camps from Autodesk to Bricsys. Here is the third and final part of Heidi’s interview.

Steve: Did you go to Gent? What were your impressions of the people at Bricsys?

Heidi: Yes. After my initial discussion with Don Strimbu, he invited me to Gent to visit Bricsys headquarters and meet the team. While I wasn’t yet ready to give up my newly earned real estate license, who can turn down a trip to Europe? Don met me at Heathrow airport and accompanied me to Gent from there.

As soon as we arrived at the office, Don introduced me to Erik, Bricsys CEO, and other executive staff including Patrick, Mark, and Sander. I went into the office with Don every day that week as he arranged for me to meet and get product demonstrations from people across the organization. They were all incredibly welcoming and treated me as if I was already part of their team.

Several things about the office environment got my attention. The first was that nearly all the conference rooms were empty. And it was very quiet. People were sitting at their computers working, not sitting in meetings! They’re a team of dedicated people that know what they need to do and how to get it done. But they also know how to have fun.

A chiming sound ringing through the quiet office indicates an important event. One afternoon it signalled everyone to meet in the kitchen for Portuguese wine and cheese tasting hosted by Carlos, who was visiting from his office in Portugal. Each Friday at lunch the chime reminds everyone to head to Pinocchio’s for weekly pizza and wine. And I heard rumor that company hardware policy enables employees to keep their old computers when it’s time to upgrade. In exchange, the employee leaves a few bottles of wine in the community kitchen, which, coincidentally is right next to the rec room with ping pong table.

Steve: How about Gent itself?

Heidi: When I wasn’t in the office, I was exploring Gent and nearby Bruges, with my gracious hosts from Bricsys. It’s a beautiful city with so much to see. I look forward to the opportunity to return!

Steve: How have your former colleagues reacted to your move? Have they been supportive? How about the reaction form the CAD community in general?

When I decided to join Bricsys after all my years of working on and promoting AutoCAD, I was a little concerned about the reaction I’d get from the AutoCAD community, whether internal or external to Autodesk. But my concerns were unfounded. Immediately following the announcement that I joined Bricsys and for at least a week following it, I was bombarded with responses through social media and direct messaging. Names were scrolling by so fast that I couldn’t keep up. Former colleagues and customers that I haven’t talked to in decades as well as those I worked with just a few months ago. Many names I’ve never seen but suspect they belong to AutoCAD users somewhere around the world that have attended my presentations or read my posts.

I was truly touched by the kind words of respect for my past achievements and the enthusiastic support for my new endeavors. It made me realize this global CAD community is incredibly small and tight. And, even if we’re developing or using different CAD software, we have the same goal… to design amazing things. I’m proud to be part of it.

Steve: I’m sure you’re deeply immersed in learning everything you can about BricsCAD and related products. What has surprised you most so far about the software?

Heidi: It’s a little surprising how much there is to learn about a product that feels so familiar to me. I’m confident that I can jump in and immediately start using BricsCAD the same way I use AutoCAD. That’s reassuring but it’s not enough. The challenge for me, as it is for most CAD users, is to push beyond the old and familiar ways of doing things to take advantage of the software’s most powerful functionality. What I found most surprising about BricsCAD, is that it allows me to create 3D solid models in a way that’s intuitive and familiar yet with more intelligence than I thought possible in a DWG-based drawing.

Steve: What are you most looking forward to in your new role?

Heidi: When I met with Erik and team at the end of my week in Gent, he asked if/how I wanted to work with Bricsys. He knew that my career had been headed in a different direction, away from CAD, so he left it up to me to decide if I wanted to work part-time, full-time, consulting, whatever. After what I’d seen and experienced at Bricsys, I knew I couldn’t be any less than fully committed! There’s just too much to show and talk about and demo and teach.

I can’t come up with a single thing that I’m most looking forward to. That’s what attracted me to this role. What I’m most looking forward to are the Endless Possibilities.

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 1
IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 2

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 2

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Welcome to the first in this new series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

First up, Heidi Hewett. Heidi has a long CAD history and is well known for being outstandingly good at her job. She made big news recently by shifting camps from Autodesk to Bricsys. Here is the second part of Heidi’s interview.

Steve: Did you have much involvement with AUGI?

Heidi: I haven’t had a lot of involvement with AUGI aside from presenting at CAD Camps they hosted almost a decade ago. I thought they were great events and was sorry to see them fade away.

Steve: What do you think the benefits have been for Autodesk in helping to support AUGI over the years?

Heidi: While I haven’t had a lot of experience working with AUGI, I think any opportunity a company has to get closer to their customers is worth pursuing.

Steve: How much presenting did you do at events like AU and others? Did you enjoy that?

Heidi: During the first half of my career at Autodesk I did a lot presenting at AU, CAD Camps and many other events. My kids were young then. As they got older, I didn’t want to miss all the big things in their lives. So, while I was always willing to travel to events, I didn’t seek them out. Instead, I did more webcasts and limited most of my travel to train-the-trainer events. I especially enjoyed the train-the-trainer events because I felt like I was sharing my knowledge globally without spending all my time on airplanes. Instead, I traveled to a few Autodesk sites in Europe or Asia to train a group of employees and partners from various countries in that region. Then, they would take what they learned, and the materials I provided, back to their countries where they could present it to customers in their local languages.

Steve: You and Lynn Allen worked closely together for many years, right?

Heidi: Yes, I met Lynn soon after she started at Autodesk. She was in the Training department and I wanted to join their team. That’s where we first worked together and became friends almost a quarter of a century ago. I think she’ll back me up when I say we were both 5 years old at the time!

Since then our paths have crossed many times. Each year when I was ready to present the newest AutoCAD functionality, first to employees, I reached out to Lynn so that I could schedule my training session around her busy travel schedule. And, as she was traveling the world, receiving more presentation requests than she could schedule, she referred the AutoCAD ones she couldn’t cover to me. On more than one occasion I’d be at some international event and a customer would bring Lynn’s Tips and Tricks book to me for an autograph, thinking I was her. Or they’d insist that they met me at that same event several years before even though I’d never been there before. Being mistaken as Lynn Allen is certainly flattering!
 
Steve: It’s kind of bizarre that such a successful team was thought to be no longer required. Do you have any idea what was behind that?

Heidi: I don’t have any insight on the thinking behind it. But, I try to believe things happen for a reason. I wasn’t sure what that reason was, until now… and I’m thrilled!

Steve: You’ve now joined Autodesk competitor Bricsys, which is something of a coup for them. Who contacted you initially? Was it Erik [De Keyser, Bricsys CEO]?

Heidi: Ironically, the first contact I had about Bricsys was from Lynn Allen. Not because she was working for them. But because Vince Aman (formerly from Autodesk, now working for Bricsys) had been trying to reach me through LinkedIn. I was attending a real estate class at the time, in preparation for what I thought was my next career. I received a text from Lynn telling me to check my LinkedIn messages. After speaking to Vince, briefly, I reached out to Don Strimbu, VP of Communications at Bricsys. I’ve known Don since my first years at Autodesk and wanted to hear about his experience at Bricsys.

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 1
IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 3

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 1

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Welcome to the first in this new series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

First up, Heidi Hewett. Heidi has a long CAD history and is well known for being outstandingly good at her job. She made big news recently by shifting camps from Autodesk to Bricsys. Here is the first part of Heidi’s interview.

Steve: You’ve been doing this a long time, but was there a pre-CAD part of your career? What did you do before Autodesk?

Heidi: I didn’t have much of a pre-CAD career. I started college at Colorado State University as a Computer Science major. One day I stopped by the Industrial Design lab to meet one of my friends. He was taking a drafting class and had just been introduced to AutoCAD. He wanted me to see it. Using a stylus, he drew an ellipse on the tablet (not today’s kind of tablet, of course). The ellipse appeared in green on the monochrome monitor… like magic! That’s all it took. I was hooked! I realized I didn’t want to program computers, I wanted to draw with them. So, I checked around to see what majors would best let me combine my interest in math with my interest in AutoCAD. The next semester I transferred to the University of Colorado for Architectural Engineering.

After graduating, I moved from Colorado to California to take an engineering position with an MEP firm in San Francisco. They worked exclusively on drafting boards and I soon realized that what I enjoyed most about my engineering education wasn’t engineering, it was using AutoCAD! Within the first year I managed to convince my boss that we needed AutoCAD (I was a horrible manual drafter)! While working with a local reseller to set up our new CAD lab, I learned that the company that makes AutoCAD was located right across the Golden Gate Bridge, in Sausalito. Less than a year later, I was walking down the hall at Marinship Way, passing people like John Walker and Amar Hanspal (my hiring manager). I was in awe that I actually worked there.

Steve: You were with Autodesk for 26 years, right? Were you a Technical Marketing Manager all that time, or did you start at Autodesk with something else?

Heidi: I started in Product Support, as a support technician answering calls from resellers. It wasn’t a good fit for me. Nobody ever calls product support (at any company) to talk about how much they love their product. They only call when there’s a problem and they need help. And, most of the questions weren’t about how to use the software. They were about how to configure plotters and digitizers. I loved AutoCAD and wanted to share my knowledge about how cool it was. So, aside from my first few years in Product Support, my career at Autodesk was focused on educating users on what they could do with AutoCAD. My titles included Illustrator (back when we had printed manuals), Training Specialist, Marketing Support Engineer, Senior Applications Engineer, and Technical Marketing Manager.

Steve: What did a Technical Marketing Manager do, exactly?

Heidi: It’s kind of funny, Technical Marketing Manager was my title for more than half my career, but it was probably the least descriptive of what I did. I was technical and worked under the Marketing organization. But I did the same thing in that role that I did in all my previous roles aside from Product Support. I was a Learner and a Trainer. I worked with the AutoCAD development team to learn what was coming in the next release of AutoCAD. Then I created documents and videos such as the Preview Guides and Launch Demo Videos to help educate Autodesk employees, partners, and customers on the new functionality. Regardless of my official title, it was the perfect job for me because I got show people how cool the software was.

Steve: What did you enjoy most about that job?

Heidi: There were many things I enjoyed about the job so it’s hard to narrow down. I enjoyed working directly with the development team to be one of the first people on the planet to understand and use the newest AutoCAD functionality. And I enjoyed travelling around the world to share what I learned with our partners and customers.

Steve: I’ve noticed that your written materials always show a very high standard of clarity and correctness. What would you put that down to?

Heidi: That’s quite a compliment and I appreciate the acknowledgement.

I graduated from college without having taken a single English class. Back then it wasn’t required for Engineering majors and I was thrilled because I hated to write. As I got further into my career, I realized how crucial writing skills were, even for a math-minded person. That was around the same time I realized my true passions were around training and education. So, after a little research I found two relevant graduate programs at the University of Colorado, Denver. One was a Master in Technical Communication (so I could finally learn to write) and the other was a Master in Information and Learning Technologies. I couldn’t decide between them, so I did both! Having two young children and a full-time job with a lot of travel, it took me almost 7 years to graduate but it was worth it! The technical communication skills that I learned gave me the confidence to write publicly and I launched my original AutoCAD Insider blog, as one of my class assignments.

Steve: Would you say you’re obsessive about the quality of what you put out?

Heidi: Yes, I’m definitely obsessive about what I produce. There are many times I wish I wasn’t because it can be time-consuming. But, if I make a statement (written or oral) I want to know that what I’m saying is accurate to the absolute best of my ability. A perfect example is one of my first blog posts for Bricsys. It started as a quick and simple post about installing the trial version. How complicated could that be, right? But for me it’s not just writing about what I see, it’s understanding it. Writing that simple little blog post produced a string of emails between myself and the BricsCAD development team. Most of the information I learned didn’t make it into the blog post but it helped me fully understand and believe what I was writing.

The greatest value I get from writing is learning. If I want to learn something, I write about it. Because, until I can clearly explain it to someone else, I probably don’t really understand it myself. My first and best experience with the value of writing was when I wrote about sheet sets for AutoCAD. It was such a new, big, and overwhelming topic that I just couldn’t grasp it. Not after discussing with members of the development team and not after trying it for myself. The only way I could fully understand and communicate sheet set functionality was to write about it step-by-step. And so, Sheets Happened!

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 2
IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 3

Steve at the BricsCAD New Zealand and Australia Roadshow

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Sofoco (Australia) and CAD Concepts (New Zealand) are currently running a series of seminars throughout Australasia demonstrating BricsCAD.

Here are the dates and locations:

Auckland – 9 April 2018, Jet Park Hotel and Conference Centre
Christchurch – 11 April 2018, Christchurch Community House
Melbourne – 17 April 2018, Airport Motel and Convention Centre
Sydney – 18 April 2018, Stamford Plaza Sydney Airport
Brisbane – 19 April 2018, Royal on the Park

Each seminar is in two parts. The morning session is for leaders and decision makers and the the afternoon is less structured and goes into more details, with informal discussions, questions and answers and one-on-one sessions. There will be many short presentations from various presenters to demonstrate the different things that BricsCAD is capable of, with or without third party add-ons.

I’ll be travelling to the Brisbane show. I’ll be there for the whole day but will be doing a brief presentation about BricsCAD’s LISP, with reference to AutoCAD compatibility and the tools available to CAD Managers and developers, including BLADE.

I have experience not only in developing using LISP in AutoCAD and BricsCAD, but also in transitioning from one to the other in a comprehensively modified custom environment. I hope to be of some assistance to CAD Managers and users who are considering such a move. I believe there are still seats available.

Disclosure: the organisers will be covering part of my expenses.

Interesting People of CAD interviews (IPoC)

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A new series is going to be introduced to this blog very soon: Interesting People of CAD, or IPoC for short. I have interviewed two very interesting people already, with another big name in the pipeline and more to come later.

The first instalment will be published within hours. This person has a long CAD history, is outstandingly good at the job they do and has made big news recently. Want to take a guess who it might be?

If you want to suggest other IPoC to interview, please add your comments to this post. If you think you have an interesting story to tell and want to volunteer to be interviewed, feel free to comment here or contact me privately.

Autodesk removes ability to control products and updates by device

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If you’re a CAD Manager controlling Autodesk software through Autodesk Account, make sure you don’t ignore this little notice near the top:

Full details can be found on the page Device Management Discontinued in Autodesk Account, but in short another level of control and flexibility will be removed from you in a month or so.

I hope you’re sincerely grateful for Autodesk improving and simplifying the user management experience.

This only applies if you allow Autodesk desktop app to be installed, which I’ve always advised against. Of course, if you’re in a secure proxy environment there’s a good chance that Autodesk desktop app doesn’t work anyway, so the point is moot.

Autodesk forums return – what do you think?

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Congratulations to the tech team behind the Autodesk forum software for getting the redesigned forums back up well ahead of schedule!

The new forums look very different. My first impression is that it is a standard-issue Autodesk “progression” – it looks prettier but doesn’t work nearly as well. Huge swathes of screen space are wasted for graphic impact (no, I don’t mean the long-dead Autodesk attempt at PowerPoint). Big fonts, huge header, even bigger footer, lots of pretty white space. Yet what is there contains less useful information. On a 1920 x 1200 monitor, I can only see four threads within a forum before I need to start scrolling:

What I can’t see is if there have been any new posts since my last visit. To do that, I have to enter each thread and do a lot of scrolling (again, because of the highly inefficient information-to-screen-space ratio) to get to the end, then try to remember whether or not I had already read the last few posts. I can’t even just hit [End] because that gives me this:

How efficient is that? Signal to noise ratio: 0%. Compared with the old forum where I could see the headers for a whole bunch of threads and scan the number-of-new-posts column in a second or so, I now have many minutes of clicking, scrolling and frustration ahead of me. Like I have nothing better to do. Every click counts, remember.

Typical Autodesk. Marketing appeal over user efficiency, every time. All sizzle, no steak.

What do you think? Have your say here, on the Community Feedback forum, and/or even on dear Autodesk.

What to do while the forums are down, dear Autodesk?

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In common with most online services, the Autodesk forums are down for maintenance from time to time. That will be happening this weekend:

Announcement: The forums will be unavailable starting 1 p.m. on Friday, April 6 (Pacific time) while we implement the forum redesign. We will be back online at 9 a.m. on Monday, April 9, or sooner.

I really wish Autodesk would act like a company with an international focus and use universally understood time standards for its announcements. Allow me to translate for those people outside North America for whom “Pacific time” means nothing.

Pacific Time (UTC-7) UTC
Off line: 1 PM, 6 April 8 PM (20:00), 6 April
On line (latest): 9 AM, 9 April 4 PM (16:00), 9 April

So, what to do if you have something you want to say when the forums are down? R.K. McSwain has already made some suggestions: CADTutor, AUGI and The Swamp. I have one further suggestion:

dear Autodesk

This new forum is an experiment of mine, aimed at providing a place where people can provide feedback to Autodesk with minimal restrictions. I made an attempt at setting up dear Autodesk nearly a decade ago but the technology (Pligg) I used was not up to handling the vast amount of spam and hacker attempts it attracted, so I closed it in early 2009.

Now I’m trying again using a different format and different technology (a conventional MyBB forum).

Disclaimers:

  • The site is, of course, not owned or operated by Autodesk, a fact which is made clear on the site in several places
  • This experiment might also fail, for the same or different reasons
  • The technology I’m using is new to me and it might break due to my lack of experience with it or reasons beyond my control
  • A couple of days ago, attempts to register were generating database errors; this appears to be fixed now, but it may recur
  • There is no guarantee that Autodesk people will read the forums (although some did last time)
  • There is no guarantee that Autodesk will act on any of the feedback, suggestions or wishes made on the site (or anywhere else)

Last time I tried this, I didn’t let on that I was behind it. This may have been a mistake, but I did this because I didn’t want the site to be seen as mine. The idea was to allow a community to develop which could freely express itself, not one which was led or prompted by any individual, myself included.

This time I’m doing things differently in several ways, and one of those ways is to be completely transparent about who’s behind it. I still don’t want it to be “my site”, though. I’d like it to be a community’s home. If you are interested in trying to help form that community, please register on the site. The front page has instructions.

If you run into trouble registering or using the site and can’t communicate that via the site itself, feel free to let me know here.

Right now, the site is a blank canvas. Paint away.

The great Autodesk Collections rip-off has ended

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I reported in January that, “The way Autodesk Collection licensing works, you can’t use more than two of the products in a Collection at once.”

Thanks to a policy reversal from Autodesk, this is no longer true. Felice on the Autodesk forums shared the good news:

Hi all, I have an update to share on this topic… we are removing the Industry Collection concurrent usage policy limitation. Here are some more details/background:

Overview:
Currently, the Industry Collection concurrent usage policy limits the number of collection products that can be used at the same time to two. The terms and conditions related to Industry Collection concurrent title access stated:

2.1.1 Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in the applicable Autodesk License and Services Agreement relating to any Industry Collection software program Benefit, the maximum number of Concurrent Access Titles that You or Your Named User may Access concurrently shall not exceed two (2) Concurrent Access Titles, at any one time.

Effective immediately we are removing this restriction and allowing customers to use as many products concurrently within the collection as they need to support their workflows.

Why we have removed this restriction:
The Industry Collections continue to evolve and are increasingly focused on the support of multi-product workflows. The restrictive nature of the concurrent usage policy does not support this progression.

The Autodesk Knowledge Network page on this has been updated accordingly:

This also applies for license borrowing, but only for 2019 products and later.

While this restriction should never have existed in the first place, it’s good to see it gone now.

Moving when prodded is alive at Autodesk.

Heidi Hewett – Autodesk loses, Bricsys gains

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The most excellent Heidi Hewett was, bafflingly, one of the big-name casualties in Autodesk’s latest experience cull. What was already a big loss to Autodesk has been compounded by her arrival at Autodesk’s most significant AutoCAD competitor, Bricsys.

Heidi has accepted a position as User Success Manager with the Belgian company. I don’t blame her. Bricsys is where the action is. Here’s her opening salvo:

For well over a decade, the world was told that the .dwg file format is not suitable for advanced design workflows. It can’t be used for mechanical design, and it certainly can’t be used for BIM. Bricsys has shown that this old belief is simply not true. The .dwg file format is alive and well and kicking serious butt. I am looking forward to helping Bricsys take .dwg to new, previously unimagined levels, and I’m excited to be part of the team that is doing this for our users.

Is it just me, or does Heidi look more relaxed in her Bricsys photo than she ever did in her Autodesk ones?

Photo credit: Bricsys

Here’s Heidi’s first Bricsys blog post. Can you feel her genuine excitement? Maybe she’s just happy that she’s going to have masses of real improvements to write about, rather than having to stretch out an ever-shrinking set of new AutoCAD features each year.

Given Heidi’s outstanding contribution to assisting CAD users over many years, I’m very happy that she is now going to be able to continue that work. I suspect she’s going to be very busy!

Autodesk loses, Bricsys gains. Big time. What on earth was Autodesk thinking?

Still can’t download AutoCAD 2019? Read this

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Timeline of AutoCAD 2019 events to date

    • 20 March 2018 – Somebody (a reseller?) posts a video on YouTube with a collection of Autodesk video materials describing AutoCAD 2019; this is quickly removed
    • 22 March 2018 – AutoCAD 2019 Released
    • 22 March 2018 – Reports surface of AutoCAD 2019 activation acting as a killswitch for AutoCAD 2018
    • 23 March 2018 – Attempts by myself and others to download AutocAD 2019 are thwarted by the non-availability of links and other issues
    • 24 March 2018 – AVA, Autodesk Account and Autodesk desktop app all know nothing about AutoCAD 2019
    • 24 March 2018 – I report on the various problems including the killswitch issue and lack of download availability
    • 25 March 2018 – subscription customers report up to 2.5 days of AutoCAD 2018 downtime
    • 27 March 2018 – Andrew Anagnost’s apology assures customers the issue is resolved (which of the issues he means is not specified but the context might imply it’s the killswitch one)
    • 29 March 2018 – The Autodesk forums still contain the warning that disruptions to managing users, assigning permissions and downloading software are ongoing
    • 3 April 2018 – Autodesk Account still fails to report availability of AutoCAD 2019 for multiple customers under active maintenance, subscription and enterprise agreement contracts


What to do if you want to get hold of AutoCAD 2019? Well, you can download the free trial version here. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, because that forces you to install and use the nasty Autodesk/Akamai download manager. Kill it with fire. This unpleasant fact now applies to all of Autodesk’s trial downloads, cutting off that formerly useful workaround for Autodesk’s download issues.

To get a straightforward malware-free browser download, you’re going to have to say hello to AVA (Autodesk Virtual Assistant). Yes, AVA is utterly useless at answering support questions and until very recently had no clue about the existence of AutoCAD 2019, but the latter issue is now resolved and you can use AVA as your workaround.

Steps to downloading with AVA

  1. Click this link to get to AVA.
  2. Log on with your Autodesk sign-in if you’re not already signed in.
  3. Type AutoCAD 2019 download [Enter].
  4. Pick Yes.
  5. On the right, pick Next.
  6. Select your operating system and language, then pick Next.
  7. Pick the link under Browser Download.

The download should then start. The AutoCAD 2019 Windows 64 download is 1.7 GB but this will expand to more than another 5 GB before the installation proper takes place, after which the installed software will take up about another 2 GB. If you’re using a low-capacity SSD as your primary drive you might want to check you have enough space before you start.

Why One AutoCAD is smart strategy

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OK, so Autodesk may have blown the AutoCAD 2019 rollout, triggering an apology from CEO Andrew Anagnost.

OK, AutoCAD 2019 may have the smallest set of significant advances in the history of AutoCAD releases. If you’re wondering, I give it 1/10. The “there can be only one” hype could easily refer to meaningful improvements to the product per year. This year’s improvement is… drawing compare!

Still, AutoCAD 2019 is a significant release for reasons beyond the content of the core product. An examination of the One AutoCAD strategy reveals a collective corporate mind that’s smarter than it’s being given credit for.

In case you’ve missed it, the idea behind One AutoCAD is that if you subscribe to AutoCAD, you can now also get a bunch of vertical variants of AutoCAD thrown in, renamed as “Toolsets”. You need to ask for it, and it’s for renters only, no perpetual license owners need apply. Oh, and Civil 3D isn’t part of the deal.

This concept has been received less than enthusiastically among respected independent observers such as Ralph Grabowski and Robert Green. I’m going to go against the trend a little and point out several ways in which this is a smart move for Autodesk.

  • It represents the first time Autodesk has had anything of substance to positively differentiate between maintenance and subscription. Until now, it’s all been negative: give away your perpetual licenses to avoid forthcoming maintenance price increases.
  • It provides some substance to Dr Anagnost’s “give us a year to show the value of subscription” request to customers. OK, it may have taken a lot more than a year, but at least it’s now possible to point to something that customers can gain by subscribing, rather than having the embarrassment of an empty promise hanging around.
  • It acts as an effective distraction from yet another price rise (7% on top of Autodesk’s already sky-high subscription costs). Yes, this new price still applies even if you don’t use the toolsets. Yes, it still applies even if you’re a Mac user who doesn’t have these toolsets available.
  • It will almost certainly be used as justification for future subscription price rises. How can you complain about a few more dollars when you get all those products included in the price?
  • This stuff has already been developed to a point that Autodesk considers mature (web apps excluded), and it isn’t costing Autodesk anything to “give it away”.
  • It means that the glacial or non-existent rate of improvement of AutoCAD and its variants suddenly appears less important. How can you complain that nothing worthwhile has been added to your AutoCAD variant this year when you now have access to hundreds more commands than you used to have? This line has already been tried with me on Twitter.
  • It provides a marketing counter-argument against competitors who sell DWG-based AutoCAD-compatible products that provide above-AutoCAD standards of functionality (e.g. BricsCAD).
  • If an increased number of users start using the vertical variants, there will be increased pressure on those competitors to handle the custom objects created using those variants. This will act as a distraction and reduce the ability of those competitors to out-develop Autodesk at the rate that has been occurring for the past few years.

There are a couple of flies in Autodesk’s One AutoCAD ointment:

  • Critical mass – it has yet to be seen how many customers are so won over by this concept that they sign up for it. Remember that it’s only available to a minority of customers anyway, and if the bulk of customers remain reluctant to give up their perpetual licenses then all this is moot. If the move-to-rental numbers are small, then the anti-competitive nature of this move is negated. The marketing gains still apply, though.
  • Interoperability – traditionally, the AutoCAD-based verticals add custom objects to the core AutoCAD objects, which when opened in vanilla AutoCAD or another vertical, appear as proxy objects that either don’t appear or will provide very limited access. Improved but still limited access can be provided if Object Enablers are installed. Object Enablers are not always available for the AutoCAD variant you want to use. LT? Mac? Old releases? Forget it.This has always been a highly unsatisfactory arrangement. I have worked for a company that explicitly prohibits drawings containing proxy objects and rejects any it receives, and that has proven to be a smart policy. Also, the vertical variants of AutoCAD have always had hidden DWG incompatibilities built in. AutoCAD 2015 user? Try to use a DWG file that has been created in a 2017 vertical variant. Good luck with that, even though all those releases supposedly use 2013 format DWG. Paradoxically, you can expect to experience much better DWG interoperability with non-Autodesk products and their add-ons than you will with AutoCAD and its verticals, because the non-Autodesk products are forced to work with AutoCAD native objects. It remains to be seen how, when, or even if Autodesk addresses these issues.

In summary, this strategy has potential to significantly benefit Autodesk. Will it work? That will largely depend on how many customers are prepared to put aside their mistrust enough to hand over their perpetual licenses to Autodesk. That mistrust is mighty large (Autodesk’s been working hard for years on building it up) and recent sorry-we-broke-your-rental-software events have reiterated just how valuable those perpetual licenses are.

Autodesk has produced what it considers to be a very attractive carrot. Is it big and juicy enough to attract you?

Andrew Anagnost apology for AutoCAD 2019 rollout disaster

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Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost has sent an email to customers affected by the AutoCAD 2019 rollout disaster that acted as a remote kill-switch for users of earlier releases of subscription software. The email’s subject is We Missed the Mark:

Image credit: R.K. McSwain

Readers of this blog will be aware that Andrew and I have fundamental disagreements on where he has taken the company, but credit where credit is due. An apology was appropriate in this case, and Andrew stepped up and made one.

He has also stated on Twitter that it won’t happen again. I don’t think such a guarantee is realistic, given that the nature of subscription software is to only work when it knows you’ve paid up. At least it demonstrates that the desire is there right at the top to try to prevent such debacles from occurring in future.

Autodesk watchers know that words mean little and actions are everything. I look forward to Andrew sharing news of the actions he’ll be taking to make good on his promise.

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) awareness

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This post has nothing to do with the usual subjects covered by this blog. It’s more personal than that. My niece Carrie and her two daughters have suffered, and continue to suffer, from a rare, painful and debilitating condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). That suffering could have been reduced if there had been more knowledge of the condition among the medical profession.

I’m somewhat cynical about “awareness campaigns”, but this is different. This awareness can have a major beneficial impact on real people, if the awareness is among the people who can make a difference: medical professionals.

I’m asking you, kind reader of my blog, to forward this link to anybody you know in the medical profession. One day, they might come across somebody with this condition and have something lodged at the back of their minds; something to make them think, “Maybe it could be EDS? I’ll look that up.”

Here is Carrie’s story. This is a reprint of an article on page 22 of Arthritis Today magazine, Autumn 2018 edition.

EHLERS DANLOS SYNDROME – Diagnosis makes a difference

by Carrie Johnson

Some of us are naturally more flexible than others, or hypermobile as the medical people describe it. For many, being hypermobile is not a big deal and may even offer advantages in certain sports and careers. For others, these stretchy tissues can cause serious ongoing health challenges which are painful, unpredictable and sometimes disabling.
My younger daughter Cate hurts her joints very easily doing things other 6-year-olds take for granted. She’s dislocated her shoulder three times at rest. Her jaw is so loose that she struggles to speak clearly, and has been in speech therapy for years. Chewing a steak is out of the question!

My older daughter Lucy is fourteen and has spent the past year dealing with severe nerve pain triggered by a dislocation which tore her hip. She was sitting at the dinner table when it happened. Lucy was bedridden for more than four traumatic months before learning how to function with persistent and often intense pain. She missed nearly two-thirds of school last year.

I’ve always been bendy myself and had my fair share of painful joints and other problems. However, towards the end of my last pregnancy, I suddenly couldn’t weight bear because my hips were dislocating with every step. I’ve had several surgeries, but the repairs didn’t last. The pain and restrictions persist nearly seven years later, and now many other joints have joined the party.

Despite years of unexplained symptoms and endless medical appointments, it wasn’t until Cate was nearly five that we were all diagnosed with the hypermobile type of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS).

EDS is the name given to a group of genetic or inherited disorders which affect collagen, a vital building block in the connective tissue or “glue” which holds our bodies together. Although EDS is increasingly recognized as causing musculoskeletal pain, collagen is the most abundant protein in the body, meaning there is almost no limit to the places where issues can arise.

Poor eyesight, dental crowding, soft and fragile skin, excessive bleeding, digestive system issues, and autonomic dysfunction are just some of the problems my daughters and I deal with every day. Cate’s skin splits open easily, so a simple scratch will heal slowly and often leave a scar. Lucy recently had a spontaneous nosebleed so severe that blood streamed from her eyes and she bleed through a bath towel in fifteen minutes. In hot weather, if I stand up quickly I lose my vision, get very dizzy, and sometimes faint. To combat this, I am supposed to drink lots of water but I also have gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) and often can’t drink anything at all.

Many health professionals appear reluctant to formally diagnose EDS, perhaps because it is considered rare and has no cure. Since hypermobility occurs on a spectrum, it can also be difficult to distinguish a flexible but otherwise healthy person from someone with EDS or a related disorder.

For my family though, our EDS diagnosis was the first positive step towards us taking back some control over our lives. Not only do we finally have an answer for all the things that were going wrong, but we are also able to meet others in the community with the same condition, and to seek treatments which have the best chance of improving our quality of life.

We see occupational therapists, pain specialists, and have a phenomenal physiotherapy team to help us build strength using techniques appropriate for our hypermobile joints. Now we know about EDS we avoid certain activities, and my daughters are very fortunate to have a wonderful paediatric rheumatologist to coordinate their care. Because of our diagnosis, we’ve been able to access some sources of assistance to help a little with the significant financial strain on our family.

Although it’s considered rare, some experts believe EDS and related hypermobility disorders may be underdiagnosed. Symptoms can vary dramatically, even within the same family.

“Carrie’s story is all too familiar to me as a specialist clinician in this area of Medicine, but I suspect on reflection, colleagues will realize they too have patients with similar histories in whom the diagnosis has not been considered.” said Dr Alan Hakim, Consultant Rheumatologist and Clinical Lead of the Hypermobility Unit at London’s St John and St Elizabeth Hospital.

“The value to individuals and families of a diagnosis, and our then ability to adapt and better treat them should not be underestimated. The challenge internationally is to both help non-specialists recognize these conditions, and to develop more multi-disciplinary teams with resources to support people like Carrie and her family.”

For more information about hypermobility disorders and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, visit the websites Hypermobility.org or www.ehlers-danlos.com.

Original article: https://www.arthritiswa.org.au/useruploads/files/arf5527-arthritistodaymagazineautumn2018.web.pdf