One last AIS/AIP posting

[Anonymous]

Dear Customers,



Some of you know me, but for purposes of introduction my name is Andrew
Anagnost and I run product and solution marketing for the Manufacturing
Solutions Division. Tod Cordill and Peter Adams report into my team. In
addition, Kevin Schneider and Paul Lebovitz (names many of you know) are
also members of my team.



That said, it's now my turn to take a crack at the AIP/AIS discussion.



As many of you know we cannot publish detailed roadmaps in a public forum
such as a newsgroup (for many reasons). I wish we could, but we cannot.
Unfortunately, I feel nothing short of our detailed roadmap will be
sufficient for many of you, and I'm not going to insult you by asking you to
trust us. Instead, I would like to propose the following:



- Autodesk will extend the current AIS to AIP promotion for our
subscription customers to December 31st, 2003.

- Between now and then progress on both products will give you a
better understanding of our strategy and roadmap.

- By that time I believe that most of you will elect to stay with
AIS because of your enhanced understanding of what goes in to each product.



Okay, let me have it!



Andrew Anagnost

Sr. Director, Product and Solution Marketing

[jiml]

Tell me when to jump on

[Alex123]

Maybe you don't care about flat patterns, but that is one of the main reasons I purchsed Inventor. I use it everyday.

[Anonymous]

It almost seems like Adesk was planning for and
wanted the responses we are giving them with their "last" and "final" response.

If you really look at it they are not even lying
any more they are politely walking up to us, punching us in the nose and saying
too bad, take us or leave us.

Am I wrong in thinking that even from a "marketing
experts" view this is not the way to treat customers?

I know a lot of people use my next saying for
public employees but it IS TRUE with Autodesk

 "WE ARE THE ONES THAT SIGN YOUR
PAYCHECK!"

[Anonymous]

I have to agree. When I was in college I did an internship in the
department in charge of writing code for the detailing portion of a 3D CAD
company in their quality department. The company as a whole would run
automated programs every weekend that would check for inconsistancies in the
program over thousands of test cases. If a change occurred in a test case
versus past runs it would mark it and they would have a quality engineer
check the problem over the course of the next release.

This would catch a lot of the problems, but only the problems that had been
documented before. Most of the problems would come out when they would
bring in a mess of users prior to the release to try to break the beta.

My department took it one step further and had a full time staff of quality
guys, and a revolving group of interns that would continuously try to break
the software. We would spend all day trying to break the software and would
find the most backward bugs...but by doing this we made it a solid program.
There were as many quality guys as there were people writing code, and it
showed. It was rare for us to get a customer submitted bug.

I have no idea what Autodesk has in regards to quality engineers but I think
they should seriously bring some people on board to find the problems
themselves before we have to. Hire some of the consultants out there that
use Inventor and other programs on a short term project basis every release
and make them do a project. Keep it like a real work situation where they
have to get the project done by a certain time and see what happens.

...my two cents worth...

Joe Bartels

"AnthonyFettig" wrote in message
news:E9B446A5A9FFFF9D24B2376590917414@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> I'm curious, how many in AutoDesk's management responsible to guide
Inventor
> into the future actually use it? By "use it" I mean spend a 60 hour week
> working on a project, with profit or your job on the line if you can't get
> it done.
>
> Don't just make a few 10 part assemblies and explode them into a lovely
> presentations, that is for marketing demonstrations.
>
> Find a 500 or 1,000 part project you can really get into using a mere
$3,000
> workstation. Work with nested sub-assemblies and try to project geometry
> and use adaptivity. Design a weldment using the tools AutoDesk has
provided,
> then try to make a parts list in an assembly containing a weldment and
other
> sub-assemblies. Use design assistant to manage file names and part
numbers
> and try to edit titles or descriptions. Make detail drawings containing
> section views that span multiple sheets, then for some real fun, try to
save
> it as an .dwg. Do all of this without work-arounds and ad-ins developed
by
> your loyal user base.
>
> If decision makers at AutoDesk allowed themselves to feel the frustration
of
> an average week using their product, we would have a higher quality
software
> package at the end of the exercise. I'm unhappy with the direction you
are
> taking with the "pro" version, mostly because you aren't done with the
> software I am paying for yet.
>
> Anthony Fettig
> Chief Operating Officer
> Entrust Tool and Design Co., Inc.
>
>
>
> "Andrew Anagnost (Autodesk)" wrote in
message
> news:D96486D1C2F9A0724377627B84FC92AF@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > Dear Customers,
> >
> >
> >
> > Some of you know me, but for purposes of introduction my name is Andrew
> > Anagnost and I run product and solution marketing for the Manufacturing
> > Solutions Division. Tod Cordill and Peter Adams report into my team. In
> > addition, Kevin Schneider and Paul Lebovitz (names many of you know) are
> > also members of my team.
> >
> >
> >
> > That said, it's now my turn to take a crack at the AIP/AIS discussion.
> >
> >
> >
> > As many of you know we cannot publish detailed roadmaps in a public
forum
> > such as a newsgroup (for many reasons). I wish we could, but we cannot.
> > Unfortunately, I feel nothing short of our detailed roadmap will be
> > sufficient for many of you, and I'm not going to insult you by asking
you
> to
> > trust us. Instead, I would like to propose the following:
> >
> >
> >
> > - Autodesk will extend the current AIS to AIP promotion for our
> > subscription customers to December 31st, 2003.
> >
> > - Between now and then progress on both products will give you a
> > better understanding of our strategy and roadmap.
> >
> > - By that time I believe that most of you will elect to stay
with
> > AIS because of your enhanced understanding of what goes in to each
> product.
> >
> >
> >
> > Okay, let me have it!
> >
> >
> >
> > Andrew Anagnost
> >
> > Sr. Director, Product and Solution Marketing
> >
> >
>
>

[jiml]

All I have to say there are a lot of liers in this group you all jumped me saying you don't have problems but now you ask them to fix what you say is not broken. so what is it broke or not. Mine broke upgrade to AIP not. Why AIS don't work so why trust you on AIP. Plus all this was told to alot of customers that AIS would have the piping, wire, and the vault but now you make them pay. Yes if there is a class action suit I will be there. So far Inventor has not proven to me to be faster than 2d. I just would like to print my prints is that so hard. I want my prints to update like they did in Inv. 4. As far as I'm conserned you are going backwards not forwards. What you need to do is hire me as the QC seeing I find all the bugs.But for my last words we all would pay mabe $100.00 more in the subcription for AIP If you can prove to all of use even those that say they have no problems that AIP or AIS is stable.

[Anonymous]

Walt,

At this point, about the only thing I have to look forward to regarding this
whole issue is the next installment of Dr. Otto Deskus!

Your fans await.

Blane

[MDallaire]

Walt is da man!
I can't even think of facing old customers from my reseller days, or morover current clients / suppliers to whom I've expressed the virtues of Inventor and have switched based partially on my word.
Shame on you Autodesk

[JimO]

Is AutoDesk being run by the current admin in D.C?

I don't care to get political here and don't want to but let's just look at the simularities.

Consider:

IVSeries = North Korea
IVPro = Iraq
Bugs = WMD

IVS has known bugs, yet they focus on IVP which they even admit is of little concern to us for the most part at this moment. Either way when all is said and done, the end will justify the means they tell us, meanwhile our wallets are being emptied and we're no better off.

[cadsysmgr]

I think I clarified myself in the second post, about

fixing what they started and completing it.


I only got involved in this second thread because it

was made pretty clear by Andrew, at least to me, that

the planned course of the ship is in motion. Only an

Iceberg in my opinion will stop it or alter it's course.

[Anonymous]

Andrew

Clearly nothing was gleaned from the previous discussions.

I will take your advice, I will wait and see what adesk does with all of the
Inventor products, during that waiting period I will be researching
alternatives to these tools, as I feel that I have been wronged and no
action is being taken to correct this.

I think that you have realized (because the consumers of your product have
been lied to) that many of us will never purchase "pro" based on your
statement:

"- By that time I believe that most of you will elect to stay with
AIS because of your enhanced understanding of what goes in to each product."

I especially like the "...your enhanced understanding...". I think that this
"understanding" has more to do with the nature of adesk's marketing, quality
control, and road map than of the products themselves.

I would like to thank adesk for producing Inventor 5.3, I believe this tool
will serve me well for some time to come.

Gregg Cooper

[EABell]

"As many of you know we cannot publish detailed roadmaps in a public forum such as a newsgroup.......".

I believe the reason no such road map will be published is that it would indeed be a confirmation of exactly what most of the responses thus far posted to their three attempts at damage control have predicted. The plain and simple fact is AutoDesk has gone back on their promise of an all inclusive design package that will, through the yeary subscription, gaurantee their loyal cutomers will aways have the latest and complete package. A lie is lie. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Bye Bye.

[Anonymous]

Well, this is going well. So in accordance to your title, what is the
solution? I see two simple options.

1.) Make AIP the current R7 release and make sure that all existing and
future customers know that Autodesk promptly responds to it's customer's
reasonable requests. Absorb the expense, bite the bullet, and move on
toward an enhanced singular R8 release.

2.) Remain with this strategy and roadmap, lose your Inventor and MDT
customer base and it's future income sources, and hope for a fat tax
relief against lost future earnings.

Do you see any other possibilities? -Bill


"Andrew Anagnost (Autodesk)" wrote:

> and I run product and solution marketing
> for the Manufacturing Solutions Division.

[Anonymous]

You know what Andrew? I think you guys over at Autodesk have gotten yourself
into a real pickle! You have painted yourself into a corner of which you
cannot get out of. You guys have got to face the music here. You have MAJOR
discontent from your customers and this cannot be good. Personally, in all
my years, I have not quite seen anything like this. I think the only option
you have that will make everyone (you and us) happy is this:

1) Announce that you will be discontinuing AIS (since you don't have the
courage to embarass yourselves and drop AIP).
2) Give everyone on subscription a FREE 'upgrade' to AIP. (You DO know of
course that this would be the RIGHT thing to do).
3) GUARANTEE that the most commonly used tools will be FREE addons. These
will include piping, wiring, and any other tool that has been determined by
your CUSTOMERS as commonly used.
4) Charge for RARELY used addons.
5) And finally, before making any rash decisions in the future please
consult with your customers (after all, WE are the ones who pay your
salaries).

I know of course that you won't do this because it will mean a loss of
revenue for you (at least that is what YOU think). But I can GUARANTEE you
that if you continue on the path you are going it will mean a much, much
greater loss, and it will be really too bad. I hope you guys can see this.
You can see this can't you? Andrew...., Andrew....are you still there???

[Anonymous]

After my ranting last Friday, I'm a lot calmer this week and I finely had a
chance to read the other answers to the last post. As to this post their
comes a time you have to stop beating the dead horse over the head.
Subscription runs out in December. WE'LL SEE.

MSK

[jlaser]

Hello: As a single seat, home user, hobbyist, tinkerer (or whatever) I had to dig deep into my pockets, savings, etc. to purchase a license for IV6 Series. I don't have as much at stake here as most of the others in this NG as far as a career goes(although I'm looking at doing something with this as a career change). I do some drafting for a historic preservation group (lighthouses-maritime aids to navigation). About a month ago my VAR contacted me to see if I wanted to get into the subscription program - even possibly cross grade to IV7 Pro. I thought the piping module would be cool since restoring foghorns is a passion, until he laid the cost on me. Then... I started paying close attention to this NG. I called my VAR today and they seemed oblivious to the "firestorm" going on here. I told him I would pass on IV7 or IV7 Pro and wait to see how this controversy plays out and how IV8 fares in that NG. If most of the issues (the idws don't look too bad after I export them to DWG files and spend anywhere from 45 minutes to most of a day on each page - yes, I know about saving the idw to an AutoCAD template etc.) have not been resolved by R8, I'm outta here!!! I will save a few extra $$$ and talk to the OTHER guys!!
Jeff Laser
Ohio TOOT (reTurn Our Old Tone) Representative
cejl216@earthlink.net.

[Anonymous]

 >>>I called my VAR today and they seemed oblivious to the
"firestorm" going on here.

Trust me your VAR knows, just don't expect them it
acknowledge it. Selling you Inventor is their livleyhood remember. There are
some brave souls in here as VARs who protest, but on the whole it can have
backlash to do so.

You gotta feel for the poor guys tho, they are the
ones who always cop the flak from the customers and have to attempt to continue
to sell to angry customers when the stupidity is coming from higher up the food
chain (people who rarley see the angry customers and are in a world of their
own). The VARs see both sides IMO they know they have to cut a living with
Inventor so need a profit, but also are close enough to the coal front to know
the pains of using the product and the grief of recent policy.

If Autodesk were smart they would listen to these
guys to find a solution to the whole mess, instead of getting their marketing
spinners to try spinning the same old rubbish in another direction

Brian Corbin

[Anonymous]

😞
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------
"Andrew Anagnost (Autodesk)" wrote in message
news:D96486D1C2F9A0724377627B84FC92AF@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> Dear Customers,
>
>
>
> Some of you know me, but for purposes of introduction my name is Andrew
> Anagnost and I run product and solution marketing for the Manufacturing
> Solutions Division. Tod Cordill and Peter Adams report into my team. In
> addition, Kevin Schneider and Paul Lebovitz (names many of you know) are
> also members of my team.
>
>
>
> That said, it's now my turn to take a crack at the AIP/AIS discussion.
>
>
>
> As many of you know we cannot publish detailed roadmaps in a public forum
> such as a newsgroup (for many reasons). I wish we could, but we cannot.
> Unfortunately, I feel nothing short of our detailed roadmap will be
> sufficient for many of you, and I'm not going to insult you by asking you
to
> trust us. Instead, I would like to propose the following:
>
>
>
> - Autodesk will extend the current AIS to AIP promotion for our
> subscription customers to December 31st, 2003.
>
> - Between now and then progress on both products will give you a
> better understanding of our strategy and roadmap.
>
> - By that time I believe that most of you will elect to stay with
> AIS because of your enhanced understanding of what goes in to each
product.
>
>
>
> Okay, let me have it!
>
>
>
> Andrew Anagnost
>
> Sr. Director, Product and Solution Marketing
>
>

[rolfert]

To add my 2cents As quoted from "Manufacturing Solutions", Spring 2003, Page 10, in regards to the new technology aquisitions from Via and Linus AutoDesk states.. "The common thread that runs though all of these acquisitions, however, is that this technology is incorporated into the Autodesk Inventor Series of products.." And from their website on AIP. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3232893 “Through the acquisition of assets from Linius Technologies, Inc. and the purchase of discrete assets from VIA Development Corporation, Autodesk will be extending the capabilities of Autodesk Inventor Series in a single, fully-associative software” Not being aptly versed in mareting lingo, I stuggle to understand how "incorportated" and "extending" mean the same thing. As far as I can tell these technologies were going to be including with the subscription that I pay, which they should have been whether I needed them or not, but then they decided to screw me and release AIP which I can fork out more dough for. As for this little tidbit..
 "I'm not going to insult you by asking you to
trust us.."
You already are asking me to trust you by taking my subscription money before I see anything you are going to put into or fix in AIS. So you ARE insulting me by not including these technologies into AIS, thanks I really appreciate being insulted. I, too, was sold on the ALL in ONE marketing lie back on R5. I have lost all trust with you AutoDesk. And after being lied to, insulted, and (edited) of my subscription I hope to have a great weekend.

[Anonymous]

I was contacted by a SWX VAR today with a vague but quick realization of
what is happening here. He is sending info on SWX for my review and highly
suggested that DSS / SWX corp. will be taking FULL advantage of this
situation. Guess time will tell, hey got until 12/31 right?


"AUGUST PANNING" wrote in message
news:721AFA65C8BAB8873447C5A187511B99@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> 😞
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ------------
> "Andrew Anagnost (Autodesk)" wrote in
message
> news:D96486D1C2F9A0724377627B84FC92AF@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > Dear Customers,
> >
> >
> >
> > Some of you know me, but for purposes of introduction my name is Andrew
> > Anagnost and I run product and solution marketing for the Manufacturing
> > Solutions Division. Tod Cordill and Peter Adams report into my team. In
> > addition, Kevin Schneider and Paul Lebovitz (names many of you know) are
> > also members of my team.
> >
> >
> >
> > That said, it's now my turn to take a crack at the AIP/AIS discussion.
> >
> >
> >
> > As many of you know we cannot publish detailed roadmaps in a public
forum
> > such as a newsgroup (for many reasons). I wish we could, but we cannot.
> > Unfortunately, I feel nothing short of our detailed roadmap will be
> > sufficient for many of you, and I'm not going to insult you by asking
you
> to
> > trust us. Instead, I would like to propose the following:
> >
> >
> >
> > - Autodesk will extend the current AIS to AIP promotion for our
> > subscription customers to December 31st, 2003.
> >
> > - Between now and then progress on both products will give you a
> > better understanding of our strategy and roadmap.
> >
> > - By that time I believe that most of you will elect to stay
with
> > AIS because of your enhanced understanding of what goes in to each
> product.
> >
> >
> >
> > Okay, let me have it!
> >
> >
> >
> > Andrew Anagnost
> >
> > Sr. Director, Product and Solution Marketing
> >
> >
>
>

[Anonymous]

My last post also on AIS-AIP, as I feel we are and
never will get anywhere

Being a VAR just prior to the introduction of
INVR1 we were all told that MDT "HAD" to be replaced as it was
dependent on ACAD which was a seperate development team. Autodesk stated many
times that the MDT team was frustrated as wanting to add new features to MDT
meant waiting on the ACAD team to add, Update or fix the ACAD engine in most
cases. They wanted a truley independent MCAD product, which was one of the main
reasons behind Inventor being all new fresh un-dependent
code.

Now we have AIP which we are being told is a
seperate development team to AIS. It will be dependant on AIS, for bug fixes etc
etc etc. Hmmmm sound familair?

How far down the road till we then get the line
"AIP is to become AIELITE" as the add-on thing is not working and they want to
break the ties. Upgrade for xx thousands of dollars now. Gee I feel I am being
set up for a fall once again. I may be dumb but I aint stupid 😉

Andrew you come in here and take a huge post to
once again tell us nothing at all of use and then once again elude to "wait and
see" "Trust us it's coming" blah blah blah. Autodesk has had IMO 10
times the amount of time that is required to do the right thing
here.

When this first started out we were annoyed, then
we were angry, now you will see from most of the posts that we just don't care,
as a marketing man you must understand what that means surely.

Autodesk marketing policy has always been to start
out with the most horrible, unfair biased money making policy you can think of
then when users complain back off and everyone trots along to where you wanted
them to be anyway, trouble with this policy is 2 things.

1: To many of us have seen this before and are
tired of investing in a company that will happily do this to us.

2: You are no longer heads and shoulders the market
leader in this market. People have a choice and will not blindly follow no
matter what.

I remeber that Autodesk's own number a while back
were that only 10% of the wolrd design in 3D for mechanical purposes. That
number would still be high I would imagine, so those few people who cannot
leave the Autodesk fold because of cost/company policy/legacy data etc etc what
do you think they will tell the other companys who are looking to go to 3D? They
also do not stay in the one job forever.

No matter what you do now you have waited to long
to fix something so simple. Long time INV users and guru's that have spent
so much of their own time have even given up. If you are truley where the buck
stops stand up and be counted, break the Autodesk mold and respond quickly and
fairly, its your only chance. Given this may well go down as the
biggest disaster in Autodesk's history, and you are at the helm dude. Thats
gotta be good for your job prospects after someone is held accountable for this
mess.

Give us what we paid for,

One MCAD product on the subscription
fee

Make that product the outstanding software we know
it can be (fix all the annoying bugs that have been around longer than you
have)

Hesitate and we are all looking for a
job,

Dont hesiate and lets all bask in Inventors
success.

Brian Corbin