Let's clear up a couple things.
As of 7 days ago, I became the past president of my local AIA Component, so
I know a little about the AIA. First membership in AIA is not mandatory. I
worked in the industry for many years prior to joining the AIA. I joined
because I felt I needed to support the organization that supports my
profession. Secondly, AIA is not about to try and control the price of
Revit. The organization has already been in trouble with federal antitrust
regulators a number of years ago for openly discussing Architectural fees
and rates. Today, as we gather for meetings, we're not about to talk about
our hourly rates or the price we allow members to pay for Revit. I
personally feel Revit does cost to much, but hey, it's a free market. The
subsciption system on Revit was in place before Autodesk bought it. I'm sure
that's one of the reasons they wanted to buy it, not to metion it was a very
well thought out program.
Mark
"Victor" wrote in message news:41de1eb9_2@newsprd01...
> Sir
>
> Architects, having failed to come up with a viable business model for
> their
> trade are now among the worst paid of all the traditional professionals.
> On
> top of that they now must pay an annual license fee to a software
> provider.
> In an office of ten Revit users this works out to an additional 6,000 in
> annual fees that a lawyer or a doctor doesnt have to pay. And they are
> way
> richer.
>
> Meaning no one any offense I have to say that there is a fatalistic "lie
> down and walk all over me" attitude on this NG that is quite discouraging.
> Autodesk can be fought. One good thing about being in a profession with
> mandatory affiliations is that these associations can easily become
> powerful
> lobbies. I imagine that a disgruntled letter to Phil Bernstein from his
> colleagues at the AIA might cause a stir at Autodesk HQ.
>
> Regards
> Victor
>
> "JeffreyMcGrew" wrote in message
> news:15840411.1105067525272.JavaMail.jive@jiveforum2.autodesk.com...
>> > Also, I have to say, some of these "upgrades" are too minor to be
>> > taken seriously - what was the major difference between Revit 6.0
>> > and 6.1, for example, to warrant a disruptive transition for a firm
>> > with
>> > 100 seats?
>>
>> Yes, yes it was. Going from 6.0 to 6.1 was well worth it. Also, not being
> a Revit user, you might not understand the orders of magnitude less of
> fuss,
> problems, and overhead involved with upgrading to a new release of Revit
> as
> opposed to some of Autodesk's other products.
>>
>> And another thing to keep in mind is that the longer you wait to upgrade,
> and the more complex the system your upgrading, the larger the pain in
> doing
> so, no matter what system you're using.
>>
>> A firm of 70 I worked at before went from heavily customized AutoCAD R14
> to 2000i. It took them a full year and someone working full-time on
> nothing
> more than re-writing all of the LISP customizations, for much of that code
> came from when they were using 12 and the person that had wrote it was
> long
> gone by the time 2000i came 'round. Now they are looking at going to 2004,
> and probably face the same year's worth of overhead to transfer. Oops!
> 2005
> just came out, looks like they are gonna miss that one. And for what? Why
> did they spend so much upgrading? By going to A2000i we now had, what,
> four,
> maybe five new things that actually benefited the users, and a lot of
> stuff
> that they would never bother using or learning about? Sad thing is that
> those of us that knew AutoCAD well enough could work almost just as fast
> without the customization, more or less, and now a lot of it has become
> largely redundant with some of the new features in 2004. So in the end
> they
> would have been better just dumping it and working out of the box. But
> because they have sunk so much time and money into it they feel like they
> need to keep soldering on...
>>
>> That said, I don't think the yearly release cycle is a good idea at all
> for AutoCAD or ADT. The transitions are just going to be too disruptive I
> feel, and the migration time involved too painful and complex for many
> firms
> to want to make that a yearly cycle.
>>
>> A yearly cycle works for Revit because it's still a maturing product, and
> the yearly upgrades tend to not disrupt our way of working or our
> 'customization'- in this case our content. I have Revit families I made
> with
> 3.1 that still work with no intervention at all...
>>
>> > 2. What is it with the lack of specific data that people are asking
>> > for?
>>
>> Well, I think it's a couple of things, law and the SEC being part of it,
> and also the fact that they don't have to tell you a thing, so they don't.
> Autodesk is a commercial software company. They don't owe you a thing. All
> you pay for when you buy their software is permission to use it under
> their
> terms. If those terms don't work for your business, then you have to find
> an
> alternative. And that's all there is to it, really.
>>
>> There are no sure bets. Ever.
>>
>> So, for example, a lot of my personal business is heavily based upon
> Revit. And let's say that the ADT faithful's fantasy of Revit suddenly
> going
> away comes magically true, and I'm left in the cold. Well, knowing ahead
> of
> time that this could happen, I'm always on the lookout for other
> applications and ways to migrate data. I'll find something that I can use
> instead. Probably ArchiCAD. But by thinking ahead, paying attention, and
> understanding the Risks and rewards involved, I can minimize the pain
> Revit's sudden disappearance would cause, while enjoying the rewards and
> making hay while the sun shines.
>>
>> Or, let's say I heavily base my business upon an Open-Source solution
> instead, because I'm too paranoid to trust a company with my software and
> I
> want to believe in the illusion that I'll be able to use it forever for
> free. Oh, wait, but I don't make that software, I'm just downloading it
> and
> using it. And I'm not smart enough to write software myself. And the main
> developers for the product all go and start working on other things, so
> the
> project stagnates. Or all of a sudden the non-profit that distributes the
> software gets sued over a software patent, and now everything's in legal
> mumbo-jumbo, and now nothing happens with the software for years. So now I
> have to learn how to write code, or hire someone who does, and keep
> working
> with that product or I have to jump to something else.
>>
>> There are no sure bets. You either pay someone to handle something for
>> you
> and give up some level of control, or you do it yourself, and that's
> always
> the way it is. And I'm pretty certain that your money spent on ADT is a
> drop
> in the bucket to Autodesk. Maybe with VisonRezWhatever you would have more
> 'clout', like we Revit users did back when it was Revit Inc, but unless
> you're a very very large company I doubt that Autodesk will take your
> private business needs into consideration when they are figuring out their
> business plans...
>
>
