Autodesk Marketing Falsifications

[scottmoyse]

I don't know about everyone else but I have just about had enough of it. Creating marketing videos or blog posts to promote new features in new releases is all well and good as long as they are clear and not misleading. I have found the Hype surrounding the 2012 range of products, (which has likely been a result of the excitement caused by the new Suites) much greater than it has been in recent years.

Maybe this should be posted elsewhere, but Vault is a core product within this post.

There are 3 great examples, I will start with the most outrageous and each one gets less serious, but nevertheless still misleading:

Showcase 2012 youtube video posted by Autodesk

This video claims Design Reps are directly imported into Showcase from Inventor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TFtcAnu5Ec

Although true, the video & narrator emphasizes the use of sections in the Alternatives/Design Reps. The only part of a design rep that is imported is component visibility state, and NOT the Inventor model section views. The only way that scenario could have been created is if the 'sectioned' diff casing was a reference part in the assembly and had been 'sectioned' (extrude cut) in the parts itself. Then 2 design reps are created toggling the visibility between the original (non-reference) part and the 'Sectioned' reference part. The other pointed to the illusion in this video, is Showcase sections can't be displayed when Ray Tracing is enabled. So the section shown isn't a Showcase section, because (from memory, I haven't checked so I'm not 100%) she demos the ray traced visual style at one point.

This really made my blood boil, because I spent hours trying to get the work flow this marketing video shows, to work. Only to eventually realise the Video was a fake!

Vault Revision History Tables:

This was one of the big new features for Vault 2012. Boy I got really excited about this one, and a lot was made of it too. Across blogs and what's new features etc.. So as soon as a could I set about integrating its use into our process.

Days went by, many questions asked about why I couldn't get it to work, still no answers. Eventually I find out through a vary helpful autodesk support employee, that the marketing literature isn't accurate. Because it turns out the new Vault Revision history table ONLY SUPPORTS RELEASED FILES! was this made clear in any of the blog posts, youtube videos, help files or on the new autodesk Wiki? No! More Marketing smoke and mirrors which caused me lots of frustration and time thinking I was at fault not being able to get it to work.

Vault Job Processor permissions:

The next one highlights the responsibility Autodesk employees have when they are posting on their blogs. The awesome (and I mean that!) guys who contribute to the 'Cracking the Vault' blog posted this back in May. http://crackingthevault.typepad.com/crackingthevault/2011/05/file-locked-when-releasing-a-file.html

Boy did I get excited, finally Autodesk had seen the error in their ways, and had setup the job processor to override user state permissions to update views & sync properties etc. via the Job processor. This meant the same license being used on the machine by the draftsman could be used to run job processor, instead of an administrative one that consumes an extra license unnecessarily. First of all the last line of the blog post wasn't entirely clear, but gave the impression this new behavior was supported from 2012 onwards.

Again more hours if not days were spent trying to get this to work. But no one could/would answer my questions as to why it wouldn't work. Turns out its reproducible, it just flat out doesn't work. I'm sure its unintentional, but I'm shocked that wasn't thoroughly tested prior to release and especially before it was announced on the blog. But that in itself is a good point, if its a significant new feature (and it is, and one Autodesk should be proud of) then why isn't it part of the what's new literature? Why is it being announced on an Autodesk Blog?

Don't get me wrong, I love all these youtube videos, and the Autodesk blogs. They provide a wealth of information, and shouldn't stop! But there is a certain responsibility to be had here, people read and watch this stuff, and if its coming from Autodesk themselves it should be taken as gospel. I take what people like Rob Cohee says with a pinch of Salt, he is very obviously a marketing guy, I love what he does and enjoy his work, embellishing workflows is what he is meant to do to instill inspiration and drive creativity with Autodesk tools. However, it is not the job of the Autodesk youtube channel, the wiki, new features documentation or support blogs to do the same!

What's worse, is more and more people out there will be watching and reading this stuff believing it to be true and may have to go through the same pain I have to find out the truth unless Autodesk do something about it and reign in their marketing techniques!

[Redmond.D]

Let me clearify a few points about licensing.  Even though I don't think you are going to like the answers.

• Licensing is per user/machine combination.  This means that if user X is connected to vault at the same time from two different machines, 2 different licenses are consumed.  Likewise two different users on the same computer at the same time will consume 2 licenses.  The only cases where a license is re-used is if the same user is conected to Vault from the same computer at the same time.
• Administrators and regular users both consume a single license when they talk to Vault.  Having a non-admin for Job Processor is not going to save you a license.
• Licensing is based on concurrent connections.  It's possible to have 5 licenses for 10 users as long as no more than five are logged into a Vault at any given time.

[scottmoyse]

Cheers for your reply doug. I understand all of that. And its all fair enough. But there is no reason why the Job Processor can't run specific non form fit function administrative tasks with a standard user account (as long as their 'Role' suits), instead of having to have the rights within vault to make a change to an otherwise 'locked' file. 

For example, there is no reason why a drawing being transitioned from WIP to Released, can't have the properties sync'd, the dwf view updated and the Revision history block updated by the job processor.

I don't have an issue with the way the licensing works, I have an issue with the Job processor forcing the use of an extra license on each PC everytime you need to run job processor, when it should be able to intelligently skip around the vault state security using the users license already assigned. Which is what the cracking the vault blog suggests it can do from 2012 onwards.

This is off topic from the point of this thread, but i thought i should clarify my stance all the same.

Thanks again for weighing in Doug. Your blog rocks by the way!