What 2019's looking like for Autodesk

Issue #1,006

 

Opinion by Ralph Grabowski It seems Autodesk cannot decide if it wants to be a compact software company or a huge one. Last year, it laid off 23% of its employees; on the other hand, its roster of software programs now tops 175, the largest ever in its 30-year history, and I think more than any other software vendor in the history of the world. Many of the programs are more like applets (partial programs): if you want to do something, you'll probably need something else, too.  Here's a for-instance. To get Inventor involved in generative design, a very hot topic these days, you need to Install Autodesk's other MCAD program, Fusion 360 Get access to Fusion Team online Install Desktop Connector And then ??? The step-by-step instructions on the official Inventor Blog, written mid-November, halt there. The accompanying video notes that Inventor and Fusion 360 are incompatible, and so you'll need a fourth app, AnyCAD. When most other MCAD programs offer generative design, it's just another button on their ribbon. But, insists Autodesk, our Collections approach means you get all that extra software for free! Well, not all. Generative design is not included with your annual subscription payment; you also need to purchase "cloud credits" for generative design runs. A credit costs US$1 and "may be purchased [in lots of 100] via the Autodesk Account of a contract manager. If you are not a contract manager, then you will need to be given access to a credit pool by your contract manager." The complexity, I find, is eye-watering.   Automation, Automation, Automation I find that the second-best way to understand Autodesk's near and far-off plans is to take in the keynote speeches at its annual Autodesk Universityconference. (The best way to learn of its plans is to listen to its quarterly conference calls with financial analysts. Here, executives tend to be more candid about their intentions for software, customers, and dealers. Hint: it's all about increasing revenues from all three.) The future of Autodesk, according to CEO Andrew Anagnost's keynote at last fall's AU, is all about automation, automation, automation -- mostly enabled by its Forge API [applications programming interface]. Mr Anagonost describes a bright future in which architects, designers, and manufacturers work in tandem through automation, with on-demand products being manufactured just-in-time. (See figure 1.) He speculated that Los Angeles might feed the crowds at the 2028 olympics with roving food trucks, which would be manufactured on demand. Were the mechanical engineer to make a significant change, like specify a stronger engine for the truck, then... Well, he never did explain what would occur next.  Figure 1: Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost at Autodesk University 2018 Automation will make things better. We don't need to fear it, he asserts, as automation will create better jobs in the future and cheaper housing for all.  Here is one example of the automation possible with Autodesk software. Atkins, an engineering consulting firm, described a new app named Caterpillar that transforms (get it?) hand sketches in real-time to massing studies backed by analytics. (See figure 2.) "Anyone who knows how to handle a pen can use the app." The program is not yet finished, but when it is, Atkins says it will arbitrate decision-making between designers, contractors, and owners. It could replace the thousands of spreadsheets that were needed to plan the London Olympics. For instance, a future stadium could be moved to another location, with planners seeing in real-time the impact on cost, land, and any other data that's plugged in -- no need to estimate the impact, but actually simulate it. Figure 2: Atkins developed the Caterpillar app using Autodesk's Forge API The big news for manufacturing (the new name for 'mechanical') at AU 2018 was generative design, the same big news at the same conference a year earlier. During the manufacturing keynote, we learned that Inventor is getting 243 improvements, including doing complex tolerance analyses, performing NASTRAN runs, and generating G-code directly from inside Inventor. (See figure 3.) External to Inventor is a new sheet metal nesting routine and group viewing of Vault data. Autodesk vp of design and manufacturing business strategy Greg Fallon said that CAD, CAM, and CAE can no longer be separate functions, because when companies put data at the center of their processes, Autodesk figures automating the processes saves them 20% on semi-custom designs. Figure 3: Autodesk's Inventor getting 243 improvements   Fusion 360 C-c-changes Fusion 360 gets updated every 4-6 weeks. Some updates are bug fixes, other are minor enhancements, like adding some more keyboard shortcuts, but occasionally there is a big change. For instance, fillets can now be generated from a table of rules. If Fusion cannot connect to Autodesk's severs, then it goes into offline mode automatically. The bulk of the updates over the last half-year seem to involve machining, the way in which tools interact -- or fail to interact -- with materials.  How Fusion is licensed underwent a big change in October. Autodesk now offers just one "Fusion 360" by eliminating the low-cost version and renaming it Fusion 360 Ultimate. Autodesk is honoring the prices of the lower-cost versions as long as annual subscribers don't allow their plans to lapse. Those who paid more all along for Ultimate were in effect,overpaying and so Autodesk is giving them two years free; those on monthly plans now have to pay the full price. Using Fusion's generative design add-on requires payment by cloud credits and has a steep learning curve. A number of Fusion fixes involve reducing the accidental overspending of credits. So this last January Autodesk added controls on how cloud credits are spent, as well as previews of the outcome before the job is submitted. See figure 4.   Figure 4: Fusion 360's generative modeling add-on previewing the outcome   The Headwinds Autodesk Faces At AU, Autodesk puts on a strong show of force in what it offers and plans to offer, yet going into 2019 it faces headwinds arriving in many directions.  Cash-rich vs Cash-poor. The automation-automation-automation message is a high-level marketing statement directed at large corporations, to whom Autodesk would rather sell, than onsie, twosie copies of software to small shops. Large corporations love subscriptions, and that's the only way Autodesk licenses its software. Indeed, at the previous AU, Mr Anagnost bluntly told customers unhappy with subscriptions that he would rather not have them as customers. But the switch from making big bucks upfront with permanent licenses, to earning a smaller stream from subscription revenues has not been kind to Autodesk. True, the company is cash-rich (which it can touch only in small amounts, according to strict accounting rules), but the company has been operating in the red for an unprecedented three years in a row now -- hence last year's massive layoffs. The next financial results will be reported in late February, and they will tell us if the losses continue their marathon run. Construction, Construction, Construction. CAD vendors admit to financial analysts that the CAD market is stagnant, and so new customers come from competitors or from new realms. Many CAD vendors now depend on future profits from non-CAD areas, acquiring firms in areas like augmented reality and the Internet of things. For its part, Autodesk is taking a deep dive into construction software. In the last six months it spent US$1.25 billion -- half its annual revenues! -- acquiring several construction management software firms. It isn't, however, spending on acquisitions in any other areas of CAD, such as mechanical, except for subsidies it pays to third-parties to develop software with its Forge API. Which OS? In its early days, Autodesk rightfully boasted that AutoCAD ran on every viable engineering platform, even Macintoshes for a brief time. Then with AutoCAD 2000, it all collapsed into Windows-only, with the code written using libraries from Microsoft. This may  explain why, after nine years of development, the resurrected AutoCAD for MacOS has only about 80% (roughly) of the functions of the Windows version. Porting is hard, when a company like Autodesk can't work from a common code base. As Web browsers and mobile devices became viable engineering platforms, Autodesk took the lead (initially with AutoCAD WS), and then it faltered. It turns out that getting actual CAD to run on these CAD-unfriendly platforms is more difficult than it would seem. In the multi-OS, multi-platform world of 2019, Autodesk offers full CAD on Windows, partial CAD on MacOS, and elementary editing on Android, iOS, and Web browsers. Perhaps that's why at the start of the year Autodesk sent staff out to reassure customers it would "continue to design AutoCAD for leading hardware on the market across multiple platforms." The announcement was met almost immediately by skepticism, as Linux was left off the list.  Competition from Without. Historically, AutoCAD was the company's flagship software, but Autodesk lately seems to have lost interest. The last half-dozen annual releases have suffered from a dearth of new functions. The lethargy shows up elsewhere.  The company in November, 2017 announced that it would enable DWG viewing within Dropbox, but then took a year to deliver. Only this year is Autodesk getting around to porting the AutoCAD core engine to the iPad tablet. The promise to dramatically change the DWG format only once every three years has stretched to five, which actually is a good thing for users and competitors. The software-as-a-sloth development pace allows competitors to pull ahead, even if only in mindshare. OnShape is the star shining brightly in the MCAD-on-a-Web-browser firmament. German software developer Graebert beat (by several years) Autodesk in putting their core CAD engine onto iPads, as well as on Androids and in Web browsers. Graebert and Belgium-based developer Bricsys have their AutoCAD-compatible systems running on all desktop OSes -- Windows, macOS, and Linux -- and are feature-complete, because their developers a decade ago switched to a platform-neutral API. Elsewhere, the Open Design Alliance is pushing Autodesk's DWG format in directions Autodesk never dreamt of. (The ODA independently produces APIs for reading, editing, and writing DWG, Revit, PDF, and other formats.) As a result, DWG is getting functions as advanced as an OnShape-like change manager, entity-level backups, and neutral data exchange. Autodesk isn't a member and so can't access these functions; rumor has it that this is the year they sign up.   What Ralph Grabowski Thinks I'd met Mr Anognost while he was with Autodesk's Mechanical division, and know him to be a high-energy, highly-focused man. So, it comes as no surprise to see him directing all of Autodesk in the same way; another CEO might have taken on a caretaker role, given the maturity of the market. Insiders tell me he wants to hold his CEO position for five years; he has three left to implement his vision of automation, automation, automation, as well as overcome the headwinds the company faces. [This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine and is reprinted with permission.] And In Other News Here are some of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog: Alexander Yampolsky: A Third-generation 2D Editor Hardware Upgrade: Why my mother-in-law's new laptop is a desktop - - - Altium makes software for electrical and PCB (printed circuit board) design, and this year launched Altium Designer 19 with new 3D modeling features based on C3D Toolkit components from C3D Labs: C3D Modeler lets Designer design rigid-flex PCBs through a sheet metal modeling module; 3D Solver mates objects on surface locations; C3D Converter converts models to STEP and Parasolid X_T formats. www.altium.com and c3dlabs.com/en  - - - Roopinder Tara (@rtara): Bernard Charles, CEO of Dassault Systèmes, again takes the stage to explain the 3DEXPERIENCE to SOLIDWORKS users at #sww19 Ralph Grabowski (@upfrontezine): Not for the first time. I think that if Solidworks users wanted 3dexperience from Dassault, they would have bought into 3dexperience by now. Nine years after Solidworks "V6" was introduced, users still preferring Solidworks for the desktop by the boatload. In other news, Dassault is renaming Solidworks World as "3dexperience.World" for next year. I expect attendance to fall. - - - AMD releases update to its AMD Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise driver. Version 19.Q1 offers: Up to 33% faster than with the previous release Up to 46% faster than competitors  Up to 40% more certifications than competitors Ready for VR 6DoF headsets community.amd.com/community   Letters to the Editor Re: Epson SureColor T3170 Large-format Printer I operate a small land surveying firm, and for almost 30 years I've used HP printers. However, my old HP-450C is near death, and in looking at potential replacements, I came across your review of the Epson T3170. HP doesn't seem to offer anything very innovative for the low-volume/small-shop market these days, and reports from my colleagues on their current line of lower-end large-format printers aren't encouraging.  I'm wondering if the Epson T3170 might be a better option.  Do you know if it plays well with BricsCAD, and if it will print reliably on mylar film?  Any thoughts on reliability?     - J.F     USA The editor replies: Yes, it works with BricsCAD, as I used the CAD program for my test prints. I don't know about mylar film; I used heavyweight paper provided by Epson. As for reliability, I have no idea as this is a new printer line.  Mr J.F. responds:  I just got a response from Epson:  "The T3170 is not suggested for film, we would suggest the T3270 printer." I used to be a faithful reader of a couple of CAD-centric magazines back in the '90s and early '00s, and always appreciated your work.  At some point I guess the technology matured enough and/or I got my workflows stabilized enough not to feel the need to keep up with the bleeding edge, so it had been awhile since I'd run across your name. When I googled "Epson T3170" and saw your article come up, I was struck by the way I instantly accorded that link a high degree of trust. The editor replies: I know what you mean. While I kept up to date with CAD over the decades, I dropped out of technology for a few years, and so missed the transition from stereo to 5.1, and other tech we now take for granted.   Re: Highlights from PTC's Q4 Conference Call Nicely done Ralph. The ceo won't realize he's been skewered until he sneezes.     - Steve Wolfe, pioneer recruitment     GAIL Earth, USA - - - You wrote, "CAD vendors moved away from trying to lock in customers through proprietary formats to luck-ins through subscriptions and central file formats (like V6)." Well that has a certain amusing connotation.     - Lewis Balentine The editor replies: The type was due to as last-minute addition that our copy editor didn't get to see.   Re: History of CAD I am surprised at how many documents about the history of CAD are instead "history of Internet-published information about CAD," which, by the way, mostly comes from the USA. (It is our fault, we Europeans were reluctant to give away our "valuable" data.)   Years ago, you were so kind to publish the link to a Web page with paper-based historic documents about CAD from the old pre-Internet years, gathered by me and designed by a colleague, architect Alfredo Calosci. Perhaps now is a good moment to refresh: www.arcadecad.es/cad2/index.php The interface is Spanish, but the user will find easy the navigation through the documents. Best regards, thank you for your always useful information.     - Fernando G. Valderrama     RIB Spain = iTWO + Presto Thank You, Readers Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/175 $950 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/950 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "Oh no… you got one of these annoying out-of-office auto responses, sorry about that. Or maybe not, you see I'm likely in Honolulu sipping on some fancy drinks on the beach and in no state of mind that's conducive to the response you deserve. If you can't wait until my return on 1/28, Please email Alex and she will track down someone way more suitable. She's fantastic at this sort of thing, and if you're really in a bind, she'll chase me down. Cheers."     - M.S.

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