Hi There, i hope you're keeping well in these strange times, perhaps i can help with a few of your questions and also as a point of contact. My name is Phil Botley and I'm the Alias Product Manager.
Okay the points 😉
'Will Alias be replaced by other product? (We know that Autodesk plans to replace Inventor with Fusion 360. When we posted xNURBS on Rhino Forum, it quickly became the hottest thread in Rhino Forum'
I can't comment on other products, but Alias isn't in-line to replaced any time soon, in fact at the very young age of 35 (!) it's just hitting it's stride and getting started! We celebrate out 35th birthday this year and intend to still be going in another 35 years - hopefully with some ground breaking new tech along the way as we re-define the nature of surfacing and digital industrial design, driven by our customers and the changing nature of design. So in a word 'no'.
'However, It seems that Alias Forum only has a limited number of users. So we are not sure if Alias would be replaced by other Autodesk product'
This is correct, we have a small number of users on the Forum (compared with other forums) for many reasons. Even with these small numbers though, my colleagues in development/sales are always in contact via this forum with users and try to both answer questions and also include ideas in the new code. Now this small number of users shouldn't be seen as an indication of 'Alias being replaced' either, in fact i'd imagine the numbers are increasing. One of the main reasons for the small numbers is that we try to have a very close and intimate relationship with as many customers as feasible - in Europe/America/Japan/China etc. This means many 'face to face meetings' (although we are doing a lot of Zoom meetings now for obvious reasons) as well as regular calls with users and companies to both update the guys on the new tools, as well as get feedback and enhancement requests. This is our usual method of communication and engagement with customers - so yes we have members on the forum but the majority of customer engagements and feedback is direct to ourselves, either face to face or on calls. Quite often 80% of our working year (across the globe) is taken up visiting customer, big and small.
I hope this helps answer those two questions - naturally if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Please feel free to message me re XNURBs so we can have a more formal introduction.
Regards,
Phil