Disappointed on Autodesk as owner of NavisWorks

[bcskbge]

We are a company which have used Navisworks for some years. We started using NW some years ahead of Autodesk accuiring Navisworks.

We have (had) 9 lics of the “Roamer” (as it was called then, Review now) one Presenter and one Clash detective module. The Roamers are widely used for its ability to measure in models (this is not possible in Freedom).

After the Autodesk acquisition, the products where renamed and repackaged. OK, this is not a problem. But the annual cost for us to use this functionality increased about 20% overnight… On top of that we lost the major functionality that we consider the strength of NW, namely the native read of SolidWorks files.

Today I got a mail from Autodesk, telling me that the Review product is retired (!). Users of Review are entitled (for free, I don’t know?) for an upgrade to the Simulate product. The outcome of this will (I assume) be that the subscription cost for using basic Review functionality will increase dramatically. (Simulate subscription is 140% higher than Review). My total increase for our office will then rise again with 67%. So, annual cost increase for our office during Autodesk ownership: 102%.

Thanks a lot, Autodesk….

Sure, someone (Autodesk) will probably say: But you will get a lot of new functionality! But we don’t need that… We want to browse models, and measure distances. These people will not create fancy images, create 4D simulations, create animations. They just want to work – do what they need to do in their work.


Autodesk; correct me if I’m wrong. I would be really happy to learn that I have gotten this completely wrong!

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

You are right, patially.

- when we upgraded from Roamer to Review, we got the publisher for free. We save as NWD a lot, at least for every meeting with our customers when we review a design
- now we get the save as jpg (larger than 2048x2048) and the AVI. Allthough not often used now, it will be used a lot more now it is available.

As for the raise of the subscription: once the 2011 licenses have been installed, you can always cancel your contract
and reinstate it in 2015 or so.

[richardparker]

Hi bcskbge,

We are sorry to hear that your experience since Navisworks was acquired by Autodesk has not been satisfactory.

To clarify, these are the changes that have been made for the Navisworks 2011 product release: Review has indeed been retired and Simulate is now the 'entry-level' Navisworks product. Simulate 2011 has dropped in price to $2500 in the US (the same price as Review 2010), and the price of subscription for Simulate 2011 is $375 (a 25% increase in the price of subscription for Review 2010). As a Review subscription customer you will be upgraded to Simulate 2011 as part of your subscription entitlement at no additional cost.

Solidworks withdrew support for Navisworks when it was acquired by Autodesk - this was not an Autodesk decision. The Navisworks team continue to seek to reintroduce support for Solidworks, and our policy is still to support the broadest range of file formats, including those of organizations that are considered competitors.

Many thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated. I hope this answers some of the issues you raise.

Regards,
Richard

[marcdebruyne6466]

Hi Richard,

I must agree with bcskbge for most of the raised issues.
I can imagine, customers with only 2 or 3 licenses and only a few users will be quite happy with the evolution, you get a lot more for a small price increase.
But I for larger organizations, I really don't see the benefit in skipping the review now.
I also have my concerns related to Subscription; we now have 27 Reviews, 2 Simulates, and 1 Manage.
And I really don’t like the idea to give a Simulate now to all designers...their core job is not to experiment with Renderings and simulations.
For that reason not a single Simulate or Manage is accessible for the designers right now, only the 3D Coordinators do have access.
So yes, more to "play with" for each designer, and this for an extra yearly cost of $2500.

The next thing is the gap that is getting bigger between Freedom and the next module, Simulate.
I had hoped that the freedom would move up in functionality (e.g. measurements, slicing), as Review is moving to Simulate now.

So yes, in this case, for me… more is less...

Concerning Solidworks.
I was also there from the born of Navisworks, and one of the great thing I always liked on Navisworks was their independency.
Now the forces are a bit more in unbalance, and that slows down core functionalities we really need, such as readers for Solidworks, Autoplant (finaly works fine now in 2010, didn’t for almost 2 years!), SP3D, decent Laser scanning integration, etc...
I don't have a problem with it that there's a lot of effort done in NW2011 in relation to "autodesk GUI", but what with the basic stuff we really need?

And finally,
We are capable of dynamically (nwf) stay connected with all our 3D design systems, such as Autoplant, PDS, Cadduct, Prosteel, etc.
This still is really great, no other package can do what Navisworks can...Everything is automated, so the published NWD is refreshed every 10 minutes, a live view on a 3D project with 10 or 20 designers from all disciplines together.
But Revit as exception still needs a manual interaction, before we can merge it into our "live" model….
This is something I don't understand; especially knowing that Revit is an Autodesk product.

But again, Navisworks for me is and stays superior. If I compare this with eg Smartplant Review, really no doubt about it.
So my conclusion is for the moment: No migration from NW2010 to NW2011, I don't see any benefit for our organization in it.
But I'm really looking forward to the 2012, and really hope I'll find some exiting new enhancements in there that deserve the ROI-label for us.

Kind regards,
Marc

[bcskbge]

Thanks richardparker, for your reply.

Regarding Solidworks: Yes, I know that it was SW:s decision... and I can promise you that I have "kicked them" as hard as I can do in this matter! 🙂 But nevertheless - the fact that Autodesk aquired NW was that lead to this outcome - that SW support were lost.

My question to you (Autodesk) is: Did you KNOW that SW would withdraw their support at time of the aquisition? Or where you informed of that AFTER the aqusition? I guess that we (customers) will never get the full answer of that. But independently on the answer - it can not be considered as "good customer service" to aquire a company and the result ends up with (for us dramatically) reduced functionality for the existing users.

I agree with marcdebruyne6466 in that previously NW stood for the "neutral part player" in this very complex CAD business. Every year that passes we (CAD customers) face even more complex situations in making our "production" work smoothly. And here I have a general complaint to all CAD-business: We pay a fair bit of money to you (all CAD-companies) in fees to be able to use your tools. But the development does seldom go in the direction to make it EASIER for us to handle our CAD environments... Rather the opposite - we have to deal with dousins of CAD-formats, incompabilities upgrades, non-existent backward compability etc. I would rather see my money go to a stable, longterm environment, compared to super-fancy new functionality that never/seldom gets used. I use to say: Compare our business with a mechanical workshop - when they buy a new welding machine, it will weld steel for many years. Sure, there will be better welding machines next year. But still the old one will work. In our business (CAD) we are quite much in the hands of CAD software suppliers for the "tomorrow" production.

Puh, got a bit off the matter... :-) Edited by: bcskbge on Apr 21, 2010 1:11 PM

[TonyDDao]

I don't participate on online forums very often but felt compelled to add my views to this thread.

I have the same view and agreed with bckbge.

AutoDesk have done nothing to Naviworks that enhances the core functionalities. Too much focus has been on re-branding the product.

The purpose of Naviswork is a tool to amalgamate and read all sorts of 2D-CAD, 3D-CAD model to the same space. The moment it fail to do this then we'll be looking at another software that does. (Solidwork reader must be way-up there on the need-to-do-list.)

All you need to do is look at Navisworks "Global Options" to see any real changes or improvements. Frankly speaking there isn’t much different from Naviswork V5 to Naviswork 2011 apart from the visual presentation.

What's even more disappointing is AutoDesk is trying to manipulate Naviswork usage behavior and trying to force people upgrading. (Ref: Batch export do not export to NW5. While manual save-as NW5 is possible.)

We are professionals. Not kids so stop stuff us around!
Give us a real reason to upgrade and for a fair price.

As a CAD administrator, there no compelling case to recommend for an upgrade from our enormous numbers of Naviswork V5 licence for no functional gains.

I don't care or want Ribbons, 5 different navigation options e.t.c. frankly it confuse me and I am sure many of my user will also be confused.

[dgorsman]

Lots of improvements reasons to upgrade:

- FlexNET licensing is much easier than the licensing used in V5 and earlier
- deployment installs make rolling out new versions a snap
- export/import of global options makes updating workstations a snap
- export/import of smart tag settings!
- consolidation of Publisher with Review, Simulate and Manage allows individual users to publish to NWD without needing to manage a separate floating Publisher license
- incorporation of Timeliner and Presenter with the higher product levels is a similar improvement
- support for newer file formats
- improved graphics capability - never would have tried opening some of our newer, larger projects with v5
- MAJOR improvements in Freedom
- improved API
- export NWC from other programs e.g. Revit without needing a NavisWorks license

Now, I'm not very keen on being sandbagged with the push from Review to Simulate, and the ribbon will take some getting used to (has anybody tried using the new ribbon on a touch screen?). But overall AutoDesk has made a lot of improvements.

[TonyDDao]

dgorsman.

1) FlexNet... Did you know that in V5 licence manager you can transfer a network licence to a laptop, while under FlexNet you cannot! Even in Naviswork 11 AutoDesk have not introduce a "Check-out" system. This is not an improvement!

2) What new file format are you referring to? Every file format supported by Naviswork has been there since V5 please don't count new version of the same apps such as "it now support AutoCAD DWG 2010 file format!" if you read the post above you have in-fact lost support for Solidworks.

99% of our user do not NEED to used or interested in the new functions. They are bussy doing real work. like checking mesurements, clearances, oprability review, resolve clash e.t.c.

My views and recomendations remains un-changed.

Having said that. I must give Autodesk credit for bring it Naviswork to 64-bit computing neverless remain disapointed as it's still a single core application. :(. Then again 99% of our user won't be using it.

TD.

[andycap911]

We use Navisworks to aggregate our projects mainly from PDS, Microstation, PDMS, AutoCAD

The breakdown is 22 Review/Simulate and 3 Manage

I would like to agree with all of the above.......and add.
The Designers preparing Review Sessions need only to create Saved Views, Measure and Redline while Hiding
and adjusting display properties as required. Any more is really going to waste.

I have not really noticed any new functionality that would make anyone warrant an upgrade.

Rendering has always been my main frustration for presentation. With all the might of Autodesk and there experience
with tools like Max Maya Xsi why is the rendering engine not been upgraded to at least multicore functionality.

I suppose AutoDesk think they might sell a Engineering Design Company MAX or Maya, which I find the Idea off pretty silly.
We are not making Avitar we just want a reasonable quality presentation output that wont crash when "antialias shadows" is
switched on.

I tried the .fbx export and have not managed to find an example of this working anywhere.

I also agree there should be a product between Freedom and Simulate. (Whoops that used to be Review)

On the plus side I suppose simulate does allow us more flexibility, in that we do not require a mange to do our rendering.

Regards ( Frustrated CAD Admin )

[dgorsman]

You might want to read up on FlexNET. Its called "license borrowing" - we use it frequently when laptops go into the field or on presentation at client officies. They automatically expire after a preset time limit, so no worries about them going missing either. FlexNET also has a lot more options for license control than the V5 licensing.

[markusvikström]

AutoDesk want profit, oh, this was probobly new info for you.

They noticed too many users went with alot Review and some Manage licenses, Simulate was probobly very seldom used. The option is to remove Review and have everybody use Simulate. Do we need it, probobly not, do AutoDesk get more money, yes! That is buisness...

During acquiring of a company the license price is increased, this happens all the time. Mostly it is due to the fact that the purchasing partner want to get back the investment and this is done by raising the license cost. That is called buisness...

So your complaining that AutoDesk is doing buisness.

The only thing you can do is cancel the products if you think you have too many and try to usilise Freedom to a greater amount.

Even though you are totally right that there is very little improvements in the product over the years it is anyway a good product, in my opinion AutoDesk have failed to market the product to any good extent and if they marketed it better they would get more investments in the product and that would lead to more improvements.

What I hated about the product is that you needed Review, Simulate and Manage installed (3 software of the same) to be able to utilise all the licenses, this was just sick, now it is Simulate and Manage, but it is the same product so it is really CRAP that you need different installations to use it. Maybe that could be improved.

I asume that people are most interested in the measure stick and to buy Simulate for that is a bit of overkill, might have been better for customers if Simulate and Manage went into 1 product but then the Simulate users would have the clashcheck for free...

Anyway, I see only great benefits for this product even though the price increases, there is to my knowledge no equally good product on the market and it would be devastating if AutoDesk fails to market, maybe put the measure stick in Freedom and this product would be perfect... however that would probobly ruin buisness so it will not happen!

BR
Markus

[JoelHarris5671]

I have been a Navisworks user for a long time and manage 31 seats of Simulate and 1 Manage.  I agree with much of what has been said previously about the product's enhancements since AutoDesk purchased it (many fewer improvements in capabilites and more tweaking the interface).  But since AutoDesk owns it now, I am sure most would agree that the majority of changes will be in GUI and pricing rather than core functionality or speed.  I say this based on what I've seen with other well-established AutoDesk platform products.

If I had one wish list item it would be for Freedom to have the Measurement tool enabled.  If AutoDesk is afraid of giving away too many features for free I will point out that Adobe beat them to the punch with PDF over DWF.  I would hate to see 3D PDF or something else beat AutoDesk to making Freedom a De-Facto standard for 3D model viewing just because they were slow to understanding what a gold mine they have purchased.

Just my 2 cents worth...

[rmcd]

FREEDOM 2012 HAS THE MEASURE TOOLS, THIS SHOULS SAVE YOU A FEW QUID IF ALL YOU WERE USING REVIEW FOR WAS MEASURING

[richardparker]

Hi bcskbge, please to advise you that native SolidWorks support has now been introduced to Navisworks 2013.

Best regards,

Richard