
The future of AutoCAD - jasoncartwright
http://www.keanw.com/2018/03/the-future-of-autocad.html
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bhouston
Dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17031364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17031364)

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morrbo
CAD stuff is such a nightmare. Attempting to navigate the mixture of
poorly/undocumented file formats (AutoCAD, as a perfect example) is a massive
pain. Attempting to get _any_ form of generic viewer in the browser, or
convert the files from one format to a common format is nearly non existent.
This is just for 2D, don't even get me started on the clusterfuck which is 3D.
AutoCAD have a "solution" which is just to use their cloud platform...because
that's what everyone wants, right? To upload their most sensitive drawings to
a US based company's servers, somewhere.

We've ended up using several hacks around _link removed_ ' C# implementation,
which seems to be one of the few tools in this space which you can
programatically interact with. If i have the opportunity to say one thing
directly to the AutoCAD/AutoDesk guys, please, God, allow some form of offline
SDK, and clarify your incredibly confusing, hard to navigate website, and
expensive and lackluster offerings. All I want is a web based DWG/DXF viewer,
which i can load files into from a (java or C#) stream, no cloud/SaaS
nonsense, and works well. Apologies for the rant.

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gh02t
This is exactly why I warn people about relying on Fusion 360 too heavily.
Fusion 360 is a good piece of software and they let hobby users have it for
free, but Autodesk _loves_ vendor lock-in. If they decide to pull out the rug
or fold you're left in a very bad spot. From what I understand, Adobe does the
same thing with Photoshop's native format.

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justinclift
Re: the lock in aspect, this seems relevant:

[https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/please...](https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/please-
support-quot-local-only-quot-files/idc-p/5831809/highlight/true#M10320)

In short... yeah. :(

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gh02t
Just look at the history of their DXF format, which was hailed as their way of
enabling interchange, but has perpetually been under-specified and lagged way
behind the AutoCAD internal DWG format. It's not like that was an accident,
they don't _want_ you to be able to reliably take your drawings somewhere
else. You need to be sure that any conversions of engineering drawings are
perfect, so they make it 99% compatible to tout interchange, while the
uncertainty from that last 1% of coverage makes it questionably useful in
reality.

The CAD/CAM/engineering simulation industry in general is really bad - full of
extreme vendor lock-in, onerous licenses and draconian DRM.

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andyjohnson0
i have almost zero knowledge of CAD, so can anyone comment on whether being
able to run an industrial-strength CAD application inside a web browser is
something that people want? What use cases are driving this massive effort?

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samwillis
It absolutely is something that companies want (not necessarily individual
people).

After a certain scale the biggest problem in CAD is not the actual 2D or 3D
drawing, its file and data management. Most of the CAD industry is actually
more focused on this as a problem to solve, businesses will spend fortunes on
it. In the product design world its called PLM (Product lifecycle management)
and in the Architectural wold its called BIM (Building information
management). You can think of it as being similar to a combination of software
version control, documentation systems, bug databases, specification systems,
and even continuous integration systems. Almost every CAD package has its own
PLM/BIM system and some are very powerful.

The move to browser-based CAD enables you to build PLM and BIM systems that
aren't file based, but are backed by a database and have versioning inherently
built in. CAD parts or drawings are no longer discreet files but objects in a
DB.

My background is in product design and SolidWorks (dating from the 90's) and
Creo (can be traced back to the 80s as Pro/E). Both of these feel very dated
now. The new kids on the block are AutoDesk Fusion 360 (cloud-based, using a
DB, but with a native front end) and OnShape (Fully Cloud/Browser based,
original Solidworks team,
[https://www.onshape.com/](https://www.onshape.com/)). Take a look at OnShape
if you want to be amazed at what is possible in the browser! The 3D rendering
is all done client side but with a live WebSocket connection to their servers
for the Parametric Kernal and Constraint Solving, it's very clever.

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andyjohnson0
Thanks, thats an aspect that didn't occur to me. I have some experience with
EDA (Electronic Design Automation) systems at the hobbyist level, and
managing/versioning even simple design artefacts can be a pain. I can see how
pro-level CAD would present considerable challenges.

That said, there is obvious scope for vendor lock-in when designs are cloud
hosted.

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samwillis
There is unfortunatly vendor lock in with all “pro” cad. It’s a bit like
Photoshop, you can take the output jpeg or bmp, even the layers and use it
else where but no other software has full comparability with the psd format.

Vendor lock-in is just the cost of doing business.

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Alyosha_
Great, one more app that we can rent forever.

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tempodox
This is so sad. Everything gets transformed into gigabytes of steaming
JavaScript. Soon our computers won't have a CPU because it's being remotely
emulated in JS.

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sirjaz
JavaScript is taking over because that is all they teach now a days at these
code bootcamps. Once webassembly gets off the ground javascript will die, but
we need to get back to native client software. The web was never meant to
handle this.

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camwest
Hi! I’m the tech lead on AutoCAD web. The engine is C++ which is compiled to
Web Assembly, our core team doesn’t actually work in JavaScript day to day.

The browsers are doing a really good job making this a possibility today.

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sirjaz
The problem is the reliance on the browser. If we look at the mobile market
for one, you could do the same thing, but people still want native apps since
they are more responsive, lower memory and cpu usage etc …. With web assembly
all you are doing is adding more complexity. Keeping things native is
preferred.

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lghh
I would argue that the web is _less_ complex than native, and by quite a bit.
You need a client that runs on Windows, Linux (distributed through multiple
package managers), and MacOS. Possibly iOS if you want to support the iPad,
and particularly the iPad Pro, in any sort of capacity. And if you want to
reliably touch Chrome OS, you're looking at web either way. Not everyone
computes the same way they did 10 years ago and we have to start accepting
that.

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crististm
You imply that computing of ten years ago was arguably worse than what we have
today. In what way?

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lghh
If I did, I didn't mean to.

Though, using Waze to find the quickest way to work this morning really make
my commute much nicer. There was also a new album I'd been meaning to listen
to and streaming it on spotify was nice.

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imgabe
Wow, hopefully if it becomes a webapp they can charge less than $5k - $10k per
seat.

Haha, probably not.

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baybal2
>There are still significant gaps between the browser-based version of AutoCAD
and its desktop-based sibling – 3D being a prime example – but these gaps will
reduce, over time. It will also be much easier for the AutoCAD team to build
new features that work across the range of AutoCAD’s platforms.

They are heading into the abyss. They will never ever reach a feature and
experience parity as JS and Web platform was and is perpetually flawed. And
those flaws are barely of technical nature. The root cause are the people who
define the "Web platform" and who they are.

Apple's former CEO was smart enough to see that through and do a hard U-turn
while the company was still able to do so.

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thanatropism
We never reached feature parity with Lisp machines either. Worse is better.

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pjmlp
I look at ChromeOS as the lost opportunity to have created something similar
to a Smalltalk-like environment, using Dartium.

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mkirklions
IMO that sounds like one of the worst management decisions Ive ever heard.

You know what AutoCAD needs? It needs to work on Apple.

I have never seen an Apple computer at any company Ive worked at.

Have a team spend multiple years working on cross compatibility instead of
automation in 2018? This sounds like someone in management saw that 10% of
computers are apple and wants that market share. Whoever made this decision
was not a designer.

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bryanlarsen
According to the article it was the port to Mac that made the web port
possible. Once they had nice portable code paid for by the Apple porting
effort they then used it for web assembly too. I really doubt that creating
the portable code just for web assembly would ever have been justified.

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mkirklions
This seems like its going to be more limiting than anything.

For basic apps, cross platform is needed. For AutoCAD you dont casually buy
it. You probably knew weeks or months in advanced you would need AutoCAD. You
have the infrastructure or are planning to buy it.

What designers need is features and automation, not web/apple access.

I only imagine that having a web app and cross platform capabilities is going
to mean updates/new features take more manpower, more time, and are limited by
conflicts.

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bryanlarsen
They appear to be using the new code in Windows too.

I suspect that it's now a _lot_ faster to do updates and new features because
they've rewritten using modern techniques rather than a mish-mash of code
accumulated over the last 35! years.

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mkirklions
fair point :)

