
The future of AutoCAD - sergioramos
http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/through_the_interface/2018/03/the-future-of-autocad.html
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cpeterso
AutoCAD "Web" is Chrome-only:

"Unsupported Browser. The AutoCAD web app is currently only supported by an
up-to-date version of 64-bit Google Chrome on Windows or Mac."

[https://web.autocad.com/](https://web.autocad.com/)

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kalleboo
Chrome is the new IE

~~~
arbie
If IE received monthly updates and had one of the fastest JavaScript engines
around, it would still be the dominant browser.

~~~
npowooaii
IE/edge does recieve monthly updates every patch tuesday for the last several
years

~~~
russh
Yes, monthly updates every patch Tuesday, but sadly no fixes.

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mathnode
Something similar existed years ago with ME10 running on HPUX. Many similar
things existed. Workflows centrally hosted, on site, with terminals or
workstation clients. Literally many engineers could work on a single drawing
or design and individually created or updated. And of course the updates would
synchronise between clients.

Nix hosted, colloborative workflows. What is old is new again.

Personal Computer software like Solidworks or Maya might seem "cool" or
cheaper; I once made money as a contractor recreating what companies lost from
older solutions and refused to pay for from platforms like Catia. These
frustrating paradigms are not excuslive to CAD or DCC.

So many designers and architects I know still use pen and paper more than
software, I am not sure if the tooling advancements in PC hosted software has
outweighed what was lost in centralised, transaction backed, collaborative
workflows.

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haberman
SketchUp has been running in the brower for the better part of a year (or at
least their free version does):
[https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/3000315](https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/3000315)

I wasn't able to find any technical information about whether SketchUp takes
the same approach of compiling their desktop code to Emscripten.

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phkahler
SketchUp is very cool, but it does not have a constraint solver. If you want
to know what that means, try SolveSpace for an easy-to-use CAD program that
has one. When you reach its limits switch to FreeCAD which is far more feature
complete but harder to learn and use (IMHO).

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bitL
Why can't they just wrap it into Electron or Meteor and go full circle
desktop-web-desktop, all in C++, just eating a few more gigabytes for V8? It's
so super enjoyable to see Chrome header, buttons etc. on top of any desktop
app, really!

Something in our industry went horribly wrong, investments going to self-
serving "innovations" instead of needed areas.

This is probably an attempt to turn a full-blown desktop app into a SaaS-
bound, remotely-delivered app without much concern for users. I guess we will
have to get used to it; next is likely going to be Photoshop & co.

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rurban
The future of AutoCAD is certainly not web, but BIM. Their biggest problem is
that BIM standards are national, so have to be provided by third party devs.
Which does not allow coming up with proper general solutions for the more
technical challenges of working with large BIM projects. Web is only a toy,
like the first internet connected AutoCAD versions 2000.

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zmix
I hate webapps. What will happen to scripting, application automation? Just
have a look, how dumbed down most webapps are when compared to their desktop
parts or similare programs as desktop version.

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godzillabrennus
I hate desktop applications. They take a long time to install, they have local
file storage that requires me to spend time backing the data up, they eat up
disk space on my computer system, they aren't accessible to me if I need to
use another computer system, they need to be manually patched and updated, and
if I am dependent on them they could restrict my choice of operating system on
my desktop.

Web apps aren't perfect either but they have a lot of value to offer users.

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pjmlp
The cloud is someone's else computer.

I like to have _my stuff_ on _my computer_.

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frou_dh
This probably doesn't count as full-blown CAD, but there exists a cool and
mature desktop 3D modelling application written in _ERLANG_! How can you
resist at least trying that? It's called Wings3D:

[http://www.wings3d.com/wp-
content/uploads//SS01.png](http://www.wings3d.com/wp-
content/uploads//SS01.png)

[http://www.wings3d.com/wp-
content/uploads//Amx141prscr.jpg](http://www.wings3d.com/wp-
content/uploads//Amx141prscr.jpg)

[http://www.wings3d.com/?page_id=84](http://www.wings3d.com/?page_id=84)

~~~
fsloth
3D programs target different domains.

Wings is mainly for creating renderable meshes.

A CAD software's main usage is in modeling physical structures.

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convolvatron
another major point of distinction is free form sculpture vs engineering
parts. the tools made for either of these domains is largely useless in the
other.

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bluedino
You would think, if you wrote a hosted CAD program that ran on large compute
instances in AWS, you'd really lock the market down. No more buying expensive
CAD workstations, way less graphics drivers, just fire it up. Need more power?
Just pay more each month/day/hour. Plus you could host all your giant CAD
files in the cloud, no more buying storage and easier to share across remote
teams.

~~~
fsloth
The hardware is cheap nowadays compared to the software. Any sub-1k
dollar/euro PC will handle most things one would use Autocad for. It's the
software that is expensive.

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bluedino
Not if you’re doing 3D. ISV certified laptop with GPU and enough RAM is going
to be $2,000

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myegorov
The price you quote is the cost of yearly subscription for just a single
program (per station). An architect or engineer will use ~5 such programs on a
daily basis for various modeling/analysis tasks.

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f2n
The owner of this website (through-the-interface.typepad.com) has banned your
IP address

Whelp, I guess I didn't care that much.

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IloveHN84
Gdpr-shield?

~~~
f2n
My traffic is coming from a Digital Ocean NYC, in the US

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bluedino
SolidWorks, you're next!

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jack_h
That already kind of happened. A couple former SolidWorks CEOs started OnShape
which is a CAD webapp. It's not as mature as SolidWorks which has been around
for 20+ years of course, but it's a very capable CAD application.

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Jamerson
AutoCAD is vast, recursive, and bloated. I really hope someone comes out with
a lightweight version that does less, better.

~~~
specialist
The road to Sausalito is littered with the corpses of AutoCAD challengers.

Generic CADD was pretty good. Bought and shut down.

I also remember Visual CAD (which I don't think is the same Visual CAD a quick
google search is turning up). I forget who bought them.

There's a zillion others I no longer remember.

Unbelievably, as bad as AutoCAD is/was, Bentley Systems' MicroStation was a
hellspawn of turrible.

I've never really understood how AutoCAD and Office maintained their
dominance. Conventional wisdom is control the file format. There were so many
efforts to open up DWG/DXF. But I don't know that interop ever mattered.

I think it's just been inertia. Nothing since Generic CADD has been enough
better to warrant the switchover costs.

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fsloth
"MicroStation was a hellspawn"

I think you mean _is_ a hellspawn. I think they still have a solid foothold in
some sectors.

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takk309
Sadly I have to work in one of the sectors. It is very common for geometric
design of roadways. I think it is a result of State Departments of
Transportation buying into the system and never wanting to change.

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LifeLiverTransp
The only way to change that- is to actually pretend alternatives are not used-
meaning they have to mimick the output exactly- even the flaws. Then after 5
years or so- the department anounces- oh- and by the way, we completely
replaced xyz.

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microcolonel
Maybe some day you'll be able to set FACETRES above 10, or export your NURBS
to something other than ACIS.

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fsloth
"export your NURBS to something other"

NURBS does not define a single mathematical entity, like a Bezier curve for
example does. You can't convert NURBS trivially from one kernel to another. If
the implementation is not _exactly_ the same, the transform is unlikely to be
mathematically exactly equivalent.

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microcolonel
I confess, I left that partially as bait, because I know it's hard (I'm
currently trying). It's infuriating to have so much ACIS geometry that is so
far away from being available on the well documented kernels without licensing
it from Spatial.

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21
Now they are ready to port the WebAssembly to run in Electron.

