Warning: Solidworks puts DWG data at risk

This is the subject line of an email someone just forwarded me from Autodesk. It goes on to say “protect the investment in your valuable design data with Autodesk Inventor.”

This tactic of using fear of data loss to attempt to scare Autodesk customers from switching to another product is just one more example of the kind of behavior that hurts customers, the CAD industry and manufacturing at large.

This follows on the heels of my post on Autodesk’s forced retirements, “Thank You Sir May I Have Another,” in which some accused me of being a little harsh, even crude. I am probably guilty of worse, but in the words of Barry Goldwater, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

I personally feel that one of the biggest issues in manufacturing as it relates to the use of CAD software is interoperability. I don’t know if it has been quantified, surely someone has analyzed it, but the cost of poor interoperability between CAD systems is a huge drain on global productivity. It must change; a new breed of CAD vendors ARE going to change it.

CAD vendors have a terrible record of holding customers’ data hostage to increase the cost of switching. Usually you would think a company that receives your business would go out of their way to treat you with respect, making it easy on you to get your work done. They would earn your continued business by building better products, giving you better service and generally bending over backwards to earn your trust.

And here is Autodesk with this sleazy tactic of trying to scare its customers from switching to the product of their choosing by warning them that their data is at risk. How many Autodesk customers turned over any rights to their data to Autodesk? Over the years Autodesk has been notorious about making it difficult on others to read the DWG file format. So much so that an entire industry organization “Open Design Alliance” was created to facilitate it. According to the Open Design web site, their “most basic statement of philosophy is this: It is users who own their design data, and it is users who should control that data.”

In what other industry does this sort of hidden lien on your property go along with your purchase? Apple has been doing it with their iPod and iTunes, making it extremely difficult to move a song from the iPod to another music player, but hopefully they won’t get away with it for too much longer. But a song is one thing; yes, the song was purchased but usually the person listening to it did not create it, they just purchased the right to listen to it. Creating a design in CAD software is quite different. Everything about the design is the customer’s and nothing about it is the CAD vendor’s. CAD is simply a tool to create the design. Imagine when you purchased tools or paint, without you knowing it a lien was placed on whatever it was you built or painted. Or the paint was designed to cause any other brand of paint not to adhere so you were forced to always keep buying the same brand of paint even if it sucked. Who would buy those products? If you were the vendor, wouldn’t it be a better business strategy to just make better paint, or sell your paint at a lower price, or give better service? Not so with your typical CAD vendor.

Consider the worldwide loss in manufacturing productivity associated with all the hassles of exchanging data from one system to another. All the wasted time, increased cost, scrapped parts, missed opportunities because resources were recreating data, and so on. It’s bad enough when it is unintentional, it is hard work to make interoperability a priority, but when it is intentional it is almost criminal.

The subject of that email could just as easily, and probably more correctly, have read, “Warning: Autodesk puts DWG data at risk.”

Comments

[R. Paul Waddington]

Greg,

Again you have touched on a very significant point - Interoperability - and it is important to note that Autodesk have no better handle on this than others. Autodesk users cannot share many of their files, created in vertical products - like ADT, Inventor - with other Autodesk products. This is a big ask but they cannot achieve what they say they can. But then again you are, with your comments, setting the bar for Alibre very high.

Your statement;"Consider the worldwide loss in manufacturing productivity associated with all the hassles of exchanging data from one system to another. All the wasted time, increased cost, scrapped parts, missed opportunities because resources were recreating data, and so on."

This is, of course, exactly what is going on now, companies are losing extremely large amounts of productivity and money. If the choice you allude to existed there would be many Autodesk users who would consider switching because of the way they percieve they are being treated.

In my view it is better for many Autodesk users to simply learn to stand up for themselves, as your earlier post insinuated, and in doing so some of the issues of interoperabilty would be addressed automatically.

R.Paul Waddington
Proprietor
cadWest

[Rob M]

I think that this is the Autodesk Marketing department getting a little out of control. But I suppose that is the culture there given their historical record.

In fact the the example they use in that email is not even entirely true. If you want to bring in a fully parameterized sketch from DWG into a part in SolidWorks you just need to use a different process than the command they used.

CAD systems won't be perfectly interoperable anytime soon but they definately should use the philosophy that data is easy to get in, and easy to get out. Customers shouldn't stand for anything else. The same holds true for PDM and PLM systems...

[M.DeBruce]

I emphatically agree that I do not want my data held hostage to software and await a company that becomes the P.C. of CAD in a Mac world. Of the major software SolidWorks presently is the closest to this realization and is my #1 pick for many applications, AutoDESK is the worst of my experience.
During a recent workshop for Inventor I was told that M.S. was including a .dwf viewer in the next O.S. release? Nothing else was said, even under prodding, about new operability. Was the unspoken strategy that if we are not the best but we are the most prevalent we can force everyone to use AutoDESK? Does AutoDESK allow .PDF without add-ons? PDF is a FREE reader that everyone I know has on his or her computer and I use 3rd party add-ons to make a .PDF on AutoDESK products.

Thanks for the great article and keep it up.

[Barry Watson]

I own two (2) licences for AutoCAD, but WILL NOT be renewing them. I now use a 3D 'modelling as you go in 2D' package (ArchiCAD) that more than competes on price with AutoCAD and is a complete package out of the box. Every new version of AutoCAD (now at minimum every two years) meant new versions (2) of my third party applications at my expense, and as mentioned in your article, the data was only useable in AutoCAD. And ArchiCAD runs on Mac, so I am free of MS as well!!