The thought of Autodesk abandoning DWG never really occurred to me until I read Ralph Grabowski’s interview with Neil Peterson – President of the ODA (Open Design Alliance). The ODA is an organization of 1280 firms that support the development of the Teigha toolkit to allow members to read and write DWG files amongst others.
Q: Autodesk is pinning their future on running all their software on the cloud and licensing only by subscriptions. Will this affect you?
A: Autodesk is leaving a void by doing this. They do not have a cloud offering compatible with their desktop software. We are different in that we are providing a technology, while they are providing a service. People can build on our system; they cannot build on Autodesk’s [cloud services].
In our view, the cloud has to be compatible with the desktop, and so we can reuse all our desktop stuff on the cloud [like civil or architectural custom object support on servers], instead of making an incompatible leap to something else. For some reason, Autodesk is unable to use its own DWG library for [Web and mobile-based] AutoCAD 360, and so has to rewrite it. For us, all that needs to change is the user interface; everything else of ours should work on both the client and the server sides.
We are fortunate to have organizations such as ODA and firms such as Bricsys and Civil Survey Solutions that provide real, cost effective alternatives.
It will be interesting to see when engineering firms begin to break the handcuffs that Autodesk has traditionally used to keep the design industry in check.
Is Autodesk FUD the reason many firms are ignoring BricsCAD – an effective AutoCAD alternative at 15% of the cost or Civil Site Design – a civil site design add on to Civil 3D, AutoCAD and BricsCAD?
Read the full interview here.