Some of Northern Europe’s leading architecture firms have signed an open letter lamenting the lack of “serious development” laden in Autodesk’s proprietary design software, an aging suite of tools the authors claim is asking usurious prices despite neglecting years of industry-wide complaints.
The letter addressed to Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost was written by the Association of Consulting Architects in Norway (AiN), the Association of Finnish Architects’ Offices (ATL), the Association of Architectural Firms in Iceland (SAMARK), and the Danish Association of Architectural Firms — each the largest professional architectural bodies in their respective Nordic home countries and representing more than 14,000 architects combined. Its contents included pointed criticisms of the multi-user license system, the incompatibility and lagging interoperability of Autodesk products to each other and to modern computing systems, and continual price gouging.
Their invective offers an update to a 2020 letter penned on the behalf of UK architects that outlined many of the same concerns which the Nordic signatories (among them BIG, Snøhetta, Schmidt Hammer Lassen, and 3XN) are once again reviving.
“Almost two years on from the first Open Letter, we see no substantial progress or development of Autodesk’s core products,” the concerning portion of the letter reads. “The updates that have been delivered have not been deep or consequential. Even decades old requests for simple fixes remain unsolved. Autodesk’s policy seems to be providing basic tools and let third party developers supplement needed functionality through add-ins. This creates a highly fragmented software landscape with a lot of overlapping functionality and multiple approaches to licensing, making software administration unnecessarily complex.”
The text then goes on to call for a series of proactive changes, including a total overhaul of Revit “from the ground up” in order to enable “tools that much more efficiently adapt to the industry’s constantly evolving digital workflows.” Other recommendations floated by the groups are:
“We need to secure a common understanding for the needs that our design software can efficiently utilise modern hardware resources, dramatically improve data management and handling to comply with diverse international requirements, as well as better design tools,” the letter concludes in summary.
A spokesperson for Autodesk responded by saying they “look forward to continued conversations with our customers about the future of Revit,” repeating the claim that the 40-year-old company has “made numerous enhancements — many of which were inspired directly by customer requests.”
7 Comments
Autodesk knows it can f*ck over its customers with complete impunity and will continue to do so.
That's a nice building industry you got there. It'd be a real shame if something were to happen to it.
Customer service is the worst phone experience ever.
A tool is something that is supposed to make life easier, not harder. The computerization of the profession has become a prison. Time for a riot in Cell Block #9.
Software has made CDs take far less time, with fewer errors. The problem is that those gains are squandered elsewhere. This is completely irrespective of the complete suck that is Autodesk.
So glad they've "“made numerous enhancements — many of which were inspired directly by customer requests" < How do we tell them to focus on the big ongoing requests made by the community via the Autodesk forum, instead of redoing the logo and opening screen for the millionth time??
The forum which is specifically for sending in requests for changes, is the BIGGEST shot in the dark. Its more of a place to journal and leave your frustrations to go unanswered.
Autodesk has even pressured institutions in my region to buy Revit licenses for students, just because there was a commercial department within the same building. The rot comes from the top
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