In an earlier time those of us charged with designing or documenting designs used a set of tools that were in the main universal across all disciplines. These were not tools that could easily be replaced and so while we beavered away on our drawing boards creating bigger, better and cheaper items of all types, to dwell in, to move around, to work with or play with, the humble task of drawing documentation stayed much the same.

With the advent of a particular technology, from these very same drawing boards, came a change that many heralded as the demise of the drawing board, old ways and techniques.  ‘Look out baby you are about to follow your bathwater’.

Indeed when I joined in full time, 1983, a very well known builder of specialized trucks and vehicles rang me to complain that I was turning my back on my design profession stating that ‘this CAD stuff would not last’, blink and it will be gone was what he and many others thought at the time.  And you had to admit early CAD was no replacement for a skilled designer and draughter and still is not.

But PC-CAD was going to happen and has and I was intent on being part of it.  Whilst much of it has been for the better there are winds blowing in our industry that have characters that do not bode well for the long term for many of us. Indeed many of the gains of the past will be lost (some already have) if we continue down the path we are treading.

As this and other papers are essentially appendices to my ‘shoot-out’ I am in the main referring to Autodesk's products but many of my opinions are as applicable to the other CAD vendors as they are to Autodesk.  The bad wind(s) I am referring to are such things as the ‘verticalization’ of the CAD market place and products, the reduction of choice from which end users can purchase products, the relentless pressure to upgrade ‘or else’ that we are seeing from some vendors. It continues with some vendors pursuing marketing practices designed to obsolete products, doing presentations that make users feel that if they do not get the latest and “greatest” (big trap) that they will themselves be made obsolete.  To push this along a little faster we find highly developed and widely used existing products prices rising (not falling) compared to highly underdeveloped vertical products (Inventor), if not deliberate then a strange strategy indeed.  Cannot remember the last time GM or Ford pushed the price of last years models up to clear them off the showroom floor and from beside the latest flashier and faster models.  But then they're car salespersons and we are dealing with the IT industry are we not, all Gods gift to we designing folk.

Look familiar? MCAD, AEC, GIS products abound (I am not referring to third party product where we should find these abilities) all accompanied by why you should go this way or that and by the way the latest one cannot……., as you have become used to, and if you do not…. etc.  Look at the price of AutoCAD LT and the price of AutoCAD, 88% of the price of Inventor Series? (ripping money from Peter to intravenously feed Paul or do we just want Peter to go away? eh!).  Speaking of Peter …. R12 bang, R13 bang, R14 bang, all totally unnecessary and the cause of much anger and angst.  I have no doubt that marketers at GM and Ford are wishing they could treat their customer base with this level of contempt and survive to the next model introduction.

Some say CAD has not gone far enough, others say CAD has gone too far and still there are those that are not sure just what has happened or what to do next and or what the future might hold, indeed does CAD feature in our future at all?  The answer has to be yes, but if it's to be profitable for the users of CAD and not just the vendors, the products are going to need to reflect our requirements not just theirs. And its going to be a real challenge to encourage users to do this when in the main the vendor may be asking the user to purchase a product that will not prove to be profitable, and as can be seen in my gallery examples it cannot be taken for granted that upgrading or changing direction will be profitable.

So how have we arrived at this point and why are these winds I refer to ill winds to many not fair.

Let's first look briefly at Autodesk's history relative to AutoCAD.  AutoCAD as a product has progressed quite consistently from a piece of new relatively ineffective software to one that now presents, for designers or draughters, little or nor restrictions to their ability to express their design intent and detail their requirements.

It has achieved this status due to several factors.  1) Good early choices made by its originators. 2) The industry knowledge and skill base of those game enough sell and apply this product in its early stages of development despite industry scepticism and resistance. 3) And FLEXIBILITY, this feature of AutoCAD is a direct result of the astute choices referred to in item 1) and ongoing development that knowingly, to its creators, vendors and users alike was slowly changing our design and draughting environment.

The early choices made for the product that was to become AutoCAD (<1982 MicroCAD) were very important and whilst AutoCAD has its critics the foundations laid down by John Walker and his team created a product that had no equal for a time. Indeed they created a product (far from perfect) but one that could and was used, abused, chopped, channelled and generally modified and added to by all and sundry.  Every user and developer intent on creating for themselves or their customers a set of tools suited to individual requirements could do so. We now have Item 3), FLEXIBILITY .

FLEXIBILITY, I labour the importance of this for good reasons and for CAD to have a long term future and play a profitable role in our businesses this feature above all others must be preserved and developed.  ‘Verticalisation’ by its very definition and execution degrades the Flexibility of a good piece of CAD software like AutoCAD.  Now before you all pile heaps of scorn on me via email or missiles remember this document is an appendix to my ‘shoot-out’ in which I have determined that AutoCAD and Mechanical Desktop are my products of choice.  Inventor loses out because it is so ‘vertical’ it's useful to only those designers for whom the mould fits and for those of us who use our skills in varying ways and apply them to various industries simultaneously it is all but a self item.  For example; I have recently produced a model and detail drawings for a new product. If this product goes into production, new plant and machinery will be necessary, drawings for new machinery and buildings will be required, lifting equipment, materials handling, electrical, plumbing, pneumatic and many other drawings may also be necessary and they may be done by us or in conjunction with contractors.

For this project if we were to follow the Autodesk vertical (yellow brick) road were would we lead our business and our customer?  More dollars spent on software (fine for the vendors and don't talk rental I'll scream!) that will barely be used and in any case AutoCAD does the lot, and yes it did the 3d model that has started it all.  That's Flexibility in action.  It may not be the quickest, but I can tell you from experience in the end it will not be that far behind. And for those who want to talk about the productivity advantages of using vertical products, this is the reality of project work for many designers and draughters using CAD in a jobbing, low production/volume or specialists contracting world.  To complicate this with someone out there using Inventor (for the machine and maybe some tooling) and a building being drawn in ADT or Revit or for a person to know and use all these packages just simply complicates the process, increases the work load and reduces productivity and profitability.

So here is one of the ‘ill winds’.  ‘Verticalisation’ could and maybe should also be called ‘fragmentation’ for that is exactly the effect it already has had and will continue to have on the CAD market and its users.  Vendors like Autodesk who have management with absolutely no idea of how to apply their products profitably will take a long while to realise the danger of ‘fragmentation’ but for those of us who work at the coal face it is very, very obvious.

‘Divide and conquer’, a strategy of war but hardly an appropriate strategy for a CAD vendor wanting to increase its market share as a result of improving their customers profitability and maintaining their loyalty over a long period.

Another ‘ill wind’ that blew in unison with ‘verticalisation’ was the reduction of dealerships.  Autodesk believed that the skill set needed to sell and support products like AutoCAD Mechanical to a mechanical draughtsperson are much greater than for AutoCAD (simply rubbish) and used this thinking to reduce dealerships.  They talked about the advantages to the end-users all of which rotated around the fact that the ‘higher dollar’ return to these ‘vertical dealers’ would increase the quality of technical support. And how did they choose who was to be a ‘vertical dealer’, no prize for calling out SALES, not existing technical capability or existing market focus just who was the biggest, highest volume seller of software.  Was this a correct strategy and did it work out?  No, and has fallen short by a long way, as my experience has proven beyond any doubt, technical capability of the vertical channel is no (over four years after the reduction process started) better now than it was before these favoured dealers were licensed to monopolize Autodesk's selected markets by forcing customers to use and purchase from this smaller so called specialist dealer base.

‘We are not holding a gun to your head to buy new product or upgrades’.  This quote from an Autodesk senior staffer.  No they don’t or at least that’s what our countries trading laws say and Autodesk’s staff really believe in what they say don’t they?  No you are not forced to buy their product, but they are going to make darn sure that you and your compatriots understand in no uncertain way that you have made a wrong decision in not upgrading or moving across to their new product. They will cut off a product – R14 bang gone.  No you’re not being forced but the ‘ill marketers wind’ blowing on your back sure looks like pressure to me, ‘want this job, what version of …….. can or do you use?’, ‘we use this …….. software and if you want to be a supplier of ours you must use it also’, and oh! by the way for those of you that have continued to remain loyal but still use R14 and now , for reasons of a change in circumstance (increased cash flow, have just won the contract you’ve been working towards or pier group requirements etc), need to upgrade we will charge you the full licence price. No not forced but punished none the less! What did you do wrong, is this a good way to treat a loyal customer you ask?  (Take note! This situation is not just confined to Autodesk other vendors have some interesting techniques of their own to lighten you bottom line and profitability, whilst maintaining your software, all with very plausible justifications.)

A small part of the past, a portion of the present, what of the future market place?

CAD users take control!  I have said many times to customers in various conversations on these subjects the CAD market belongs to the end-users not the CAD vendors and or their dealers.  CAD vendors are tool suppliers, merchants with products to sell not that much different to your local trade tool supplier or paint shop and it is about time users re-educated the vendors of this fact thus re-installing these companies to there correct station in life and edit their registries to treat you as an important customers regardless of your discipline and relative size.

The alternative to taking back this control will ultimately mean a further reduction in dealerships and competition in general, higher costs across the board and more restrictive trade practices will then follow very quickly.  ‘Verticalisation’ will consolidate and it will be only a relatively short period of time before we see companies like Autodesk totally lose interest in products like AutoCAD and do even more than they have thus far to wean us of these products to their verticals.  And the rational for this is that ‘Flexible’ products (like AutoCAD) can reach a level of development and functionality (AutoCAD has, some time ago) that satisfies many of those who currently use it and may move to it in the future.  For a CAD vendor developing this package this presents a number of problems that don’t need detailing here.  Suffice to say for many of these vendors, who have been ‘living to high on the hog’, disaster threatens as cash flows reduce. Up to now the vendors response has been to use marketing clout and the various tools discussed above and for the end-users we have for the most part fallen into line.

The problem is for those of us that have stayed ‘up there with it’, when we examine critically, the vertical products we find they do not yield the productivity increases that are necessary to lift profits to a level that can be used to justify the increased ownership and implementation costs of those products.  This is just the situation we and some of our customers are finding out the hard way.  Hopefully some of you will not have to do likewise.

Now we have a real conundrum and the question revolves around my argument for ‘FLEXIBILITY’.  Advocates of ‘verticalisation’ will dismiss software like AutoCAD as being inappropriate for the future. Autodesk by it actions and in statements like, ‘2D CAD has gone about as far as it can go’, show a level of exasperation with its user base and will use this ‘can’t go forward argument’ to justify their position and push for continued change, vertical product of course. I say that software’s ‘FLEXIBILITY’ is more important than being able to do specific tasks and support this argument with the simple statement that when I cannot achieve a task in Mechanical Desktop I can always document it in AutoCAD.  A similar situation in Inventor or similar design packages mean that the job either does not get done at all or the designer must turn to another package to complete the task (probably AutoCAD or similar).  And clearly we have on many occasions found Inventor has left us or had the potential to leave us in this position.

My belief is that as an end-user my requirements for ‘Flexibility’ trumps Autodesk’s desire to ‘Verticalise’ our market place. So which way forward? One solution that would suit many if not most will come as no surprise.  In essence AutoCAD needs to remain a core product and any Autodesk vertical must have this as its base to ensure that when the verticals feature's fail to service; AutoCAD can be used to close the breach.

So where does this leave products like Inventor? It is not a better modelling product because it does not improve productivity sufficiently to justify its implementation costs, its documentation capabilities should be an embarrassment even to an inexperienced draughty, it is far to inflexible and constrictive for a mechanical engineering designer working in diverse fields and the list goes on.  Well I think Autodesk has an answer to this last question and it ain’t one many of us are going to like.  Buz Kross recently stated MDT would stay around for a couple more releases, (dealers have been telling us that IF we got MDT 7 that would definitely be the last, a slight but important difference this!), but wait for it, ‘it would be until Inventor got the functionality of MDT’.

To those of you who applauded Buz Kross when he reportedly** made this statement, give yourselves an uppercut, you and every body else should have ‘booed’ him off the podium.

What sort of sick practical joke would this be?  Autodesk is RE-CREATING (YET AGAIN) a product that several releases from now (maybe) will have what we already have and are going to CHARGE US, US for the privilege.  Maybe we draughties have missed the point of CAD software altogether.  We thought CAD was to be used to improve productivity, shorten the product cycle and improve profitability but looking at this comment of Buz Kross’s obviously not, it’s to allow us to re-draw our drawings more quickly (or slowing if your using Inventor) than we did before and each time we need them!

We have helped create what we have and we have paid for these functions once and in some cases, for those of us with MDT and Inventor, at least twice or more* and that’s enough.  As long standing, long suffering customers we cannot let this fungus of an idea grow to a point where it will bear spores and reproduces itself.

Many things go in cycles and the IT industry is no exception.  Main frames and terminals to PCs to Servers with thin clients. Done in an orderly and controlled manner a cycle such as this can have a positive and profitable outcome. (However software development should be linear, each successive version, or replacement product, an improvement on the last. This ensures we end users can implement ongoing profitable systems.)

Not quite the future I would like to see and have to pay AGAIN* for, but it will happen if as CAD users we leave the decisions to the CAD vendors either by choice (because that’s what you want and you don’t agree with me) or simply by not speaking out when it is not what you want at all.

As I have done in the prologue and other documents, I issue an invitation to any person who may wish to respond to this document, supporting comments or dissenting no matter, your views will be respected as I trust mine will be also.
 

R. Paul Waddington.
Proprietor – cadWest.

P.S.
*Autodesk has been trying to make a 3D modelling software for over fifteen (15) years (and still struggling?) so for some modelling features have been paid for as many as seven (7) times.  I think it’s time Autodesk got its act together don’t you?  I have covered this in more detail in another document to be found in the gallery.

**Cad Digest, a report from the Autodesk University 2002.