
Autodesk Graphic - davidbarker
http://graphic.autodesk.com/
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brudgers
AutoDesk has purchased most every potential competitor since they bought
Generic CADD in the late 1980's. Except Sketchup. Google bought them just as
they released professional tools. Then stopped development, cut features such
as DXF import/export from the bottom tier and eventually spun off the dead
hulk. In the interim, Autodesk created "TrueDWG" to spread FUD.

Anyway buying competitors has allowed Autodesk to shape the US AEC industry
toward proprietary file formats such as Revit, while their low end product
AutoCad Lite insures that small shops never automate and the construction
design industry buys subscriptions in the hope that this year's features will
actually effect the bottom line. They won't.

It's a great example of how to run a startup that creates a monopoly. They
beat Adobe to the subscription model by more than a decade.

The _Autodesk File_ is an excellent look inside its early days:
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html)

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zokier
What about SolidWorks, NX, CATIA, Solid Edge, Creo and other big players in
the field? Autodesk hardly has monopoly on the CAD market.

~~~
brudgers
I agree that those are products which to varying degrees compete with parts of
AutoDesk's product line. To me, Desault Group and Siemens aren't really
competing as companies with AutoDesk, their core business lies elsewhere, i.e.
manufacturing, and their interest in design software seems more of a byproduct
of their core interest...e.g. Siemens licenses its parametric modeling
technology to other Cad vendors (e.g. Nemetschek).

On the other hand PTC is a similarly sized company with a similar strategy of
acquisition. It predates Autodesk's acquisition strategy and appears to target
a different set of customers...hence no webstore. I suppose the analogy I'd
draw is that AutoDesk has products that dominate their market segments in the
way PhotoShop dominates its segment. There are competitors for profitable
corner cases (in PTC's case product life-cycle management solutions), but
those aren't in the just whip out a credit card and wait for the UPS truck
sweet spot.

As an aside, my comment mentioned AEC and that's a market that Autodesk has
clearly shaped and dominated.

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ghshephard
I've got iDraw (Now Autodesk Graphic) on OS X. It's okay - but I still long
for something that can go head-head with Visio. Omnigraffle is sort of in that
space - but at the end of the day, there is a reason why 99%+ of network
diagrams are done in Visio - just seems to fit in better when you are trying
to line up routers, draw connections between them and network segments.

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mathnode
A reminder than Affinity Designer exists,

[https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-
gb/designer/)

And it's just swell.

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razster
I use this when I'm travelling because I've had so many issues with
Illustrator requiring me to login, not even allowing me to do free trial
option. I work in remote locations now and then and this becomes an issue.

It is fast and easy to use, would recommend if you're a Adobe Illustrator user
looking to switch.

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pavlov
It's a rebranding of iDraw:

[http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/mac.html](http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/mac.html)

I guess Autodesk bought Indeeo?

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guidefreitas
Looks like a Bohemian Sketch alternative. A Windows version would be nice.

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Animats
This may provide some insight for the Inkscape developers on how they can add
accurate dimensions to their draw program. Autodesk understands dimensioning
and precision. Most draw programs have poor or nonexistent tools for dealing
with units and dimensions.

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minority-one
That's because vectors are unitless. I've had to constantly explain this to
graphic designers I've worked with...

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Animats
SVG can represent vectors with units of "in", "mm", or "px". Inkscape only
does "px", which means it's for drawing pretty pictures. There's no
fundamental reason it couldn't support real units, but it doesn't.

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zyxley
It looks like Autodesk Graphic is to Adobe Illustrator as Pixelmator is to
Adobe Photoshop.

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mike_ivanov
Their screenshots (and tutorials) are not convincing. Looks like they've got
no freehand tool. It'd be nice to try a demo before buying this thing.

~~~
jamessb
"Pencil and brush tools for sketching - quickly create custom shapes and
paths." ([http://graphic.autodesk.com/mac/](http://graphic.autodesk.com/mac/))

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'freehand tool': do you mean something
other than the pencil tool?

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grogenaut
Looks like none of autodesk's cloud or appstore apps are supported by their
awesome student program or have free trials.

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niels_olson
Shout out to InkPad, Steve Sprang's wonderous original vector drawing app for
ipad.

