Autodesk should acknowledge and respond to ideas

[autoMick]

I periodically scan through the ideas on this ideastation and it amazes me how many good ideas just seem to flounder for years without any evidence that an Autodesk employee even bothered to look at them. Very, very occasionally an idea will be flagged for additional comment. Does that mean those are the only ones that autodesk looked at?

My radical idea, which will probably also go unnoticed, is that there should be a series of notifications next to an idea to:

1. Acknowledge that someone of some authority in the development team has actually read and understood the idea.
2. Rank the idea according to its alignment with Autodesk's strategic development path for the product.
3. Give some indication of a timeframe for implementation (never, too far into the future to tell, 3 years, soon as possible).

How about some stats on how many ideas have actually been considered, assessed, accepted, implemented or rejected? Also how about some actual discussion/feedback from Autodesk?

Thanks

Mick

[joantopo]

Totally agree. I am disappointed with Autodesk in that sense.

In fact, I have proposed to participate less here due to they ignore us.

[troma]

The cynic in me feels that the development team just do whatever they were already intending on doing, and then someone scans the Ideas page for something that sounds somewhat similar and marks it 'Implemented'.

[troma]

I guess the idea statuses are intended to be the 'notification' that you speak of:

I guess that means that there are 2,403 ideas that no-one at Autodesk has even looked at?

Idea Statuses

• Gathering Support 2,403
• Under Review 5
• Future Consideration 28
• Accepted 39
• Implemented 40
• Archived 67

[BlackBox_]

Autodesk is full of incredibly nice people, but satisfying AutoCAD product customers has always been a pain point.

I'm going to break (my own) precedent of being highly critical and posit that anyone who feels that the Civil 3D team is lacking in any way please consider joining the AutoCAD Customer Council... So you'll know what not being acknowledged really feels like.

Yes, I know Civil 3D Futures is where to participate for testing Civil 3D, but without violating NDA all I can really say is that many Civil 3D users do not know just how good the Civil 3D team is at incorporating user feedback, keeping us in the loop and allows 'us' more influence over new features than any other product team.

If you're uninterested in that - that's perfectly fine - just consider the fact that the AutoCAD team is such an echo chamber that they don't even offer an Idea Station... Let that sink in.

In my limited experience, as a member of 11 different betas, the Civil 3D team is the single, best product team I've ever interacted with or observed... Not saying there isn't always going to be room for improvement... Just that they are literally the best example of how a product team *should* be, as compared to all others.

Please take from this what you like.

Cheers

[autoMick]

@troma yes, I've seen those stats - and that's the way I interpret it - a lot of ideas that appear to not be worthy of any sort of evaluation. I guess I was thinking more short-term acknowledgement - you know the sort of feedback you get in your own lifetime, rather than relying on inter-generational knowledge.

@BlackBox_ I have noted the lack of autocad portal knowledge - and good point about beta testing, which I also sometimes get involved with. I'm not necessarily criticising the development approach, more the timeliness and quality of official feedback on ideas. 

Personally I've submitted quite a few ideas, I think a few have been 'implemented', but for the main part they are just flotsam. I see other people consistently spawn ideas (like @joantopo), for which I applaud the commitment, but can't help wondering when the motivation will run out for lack of encouragement.

Regards

Mick

[autoMick]

I was also going to voice another gripe - which is that ideas sit around for so long that they inevitably get duplicated - not only wasting time, but also diluting the votes for a particular concept. You are supposed to search for similar ideas when you post, but as we all know, searching is a hit and miss affair.

Ironically, when I was looking at the stats it appear that even this idea is a duplicate of sorts, please refer to @Joe-Bouza's https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-ideas/communication/idi-p/5814159. This one was 'implemented' but autodesk could do better in my opinion.

Cheers

Mick

[Anonymous]

Hear hear! I have thrown ideas (complaints!) for years and seems as if falls on deaf ears.

[Anonymous]

I think your idea will definitely be noticed. Because most of us have the same opinion as you. Thank you.

[alexey.kurenkov]

In fact, I think the Civil3D ideas station has no effect on development. There are a lot of ideas with a lot of votes. There are no comments on these ideas. Developers do not pay attention to the proposals, if the proposals do not coincide with the plans and make the appearance of approval. I don't think we're influencing anything. Sorry for the pessimism.

[jouni_maenpaa]

I notice that this is an old thread, but

Great that there is a conversation where the cat is raised on the table. I've been working with Autodesk products since 1992. The best design applications (add-ons) have been made by a third party. The pipe design application in Civil 3d is really clumsy, completely unproductive. Third-party applications 20 years ago knew how to do things, what C3d does not know yet. Third-party applications were made by the civil engineering office and thus comply with the wishes of the users.

[jameshitt]

@BlackBox_

This is very good to know. Regarding the AutoCAD team having no Ideas forum whatsoever is just plain sad. But not too surprising when one considers that AutoCAD's position as an industry standard is much stronger than C3D (which has much stronger competition from Bentley for example). So, along with its relative newness compared to AutoCAD, I think we can see the only reason why we're fortunate enough to have an Ideas forum.

I don't think anyone is really faulting any programmers (the "boots on the ground", you might say), and even the most frustrated among us understands that we can't just expect our wildest dreams from the program; everything takes effort. But I think the source of so much user frustration is simply the need to be acknowledged. Just be a little bit more forthright! We understand we can't expect everything, but at least make a better effort to show that you're listening and considering our problems and ideas. Sadly, at the corporate level, I think its fair to say that this philosophy is basically non-existent.

[TimYarris]

Hi everyone,

Over the past few weeks, hopefully a few of you may have noticed I've been a bit more active on the Civil 3D Ideas forum. I have blocked out a few hours every week to do some long-overdue Civil 3D Ideas maintenance, which will include acknowledging ideas as appropriate, asking for elaboration, and combining duplicate issues. I own that this is long, long overdue and I'm committed to doing better going forward.

There is an overwhelming number of great ideas on this board. Going through page-by-page to respond to each one is not practical, so my plan is to focus on a couple areas:

• Most popular ideas. Hopefully you'll agree this is where our priority should be. You and your peers have made it clear these are important and Autodesk needs to take them seriously.
• Ideas that directly relate to areas that are on our roadmap and are under active research. For example: we're doing a bunch of research related to corridor modeling efficiency, so you'll see folks on my team respond to ideas that complement that research. Some ideas that will influence that research will be big effort ideas that have gotten a lot of votes, while others may be little productivity ideas that fit the overall theme that we hadn't otherwise considered in our research. While we're overhauling an area of Civil 3D, why not knock off as many small ideas as we can?

Other considerations that are still in work:

• I'm still evaluating how to acknowledge ideas that will fall into the "sorry, never going to happen" category. At some point in the future, it's likely ideas that are older than n years and have fewer than n votes will be closed/archived.
• Civil 3D is built on the AutoCAD platform, so some ideas would need to be implemented in AutoCAD. We work with the AutoCAD team and can pass these ideas to them.
• I'll use this idea to keep you updated about my progress.

I've waited to wade into this idea until I spent some time acknowledging and responding to more ideas. As I mentioned earlier, each week I'm committed to spending time on this forum and being more transparent about how your ideas influence the future of Civil 3D. We sincerely appreciate your ideas and feedback, which plays a key role in the Civil 3D roadmap.

Please keep the ideas coming. I'm listening!

[多情的娃娃]

非常遗憾，Autodesk公司全球的用户提出了很多、很好的创意，但是，无论你们的创意投票支持的多与少，Autodesk公司官方99.999%都是难以受理认可的。

Unfortunately, users around the world at Autodesk have come up with many great ideas, but regardless of the amount of support you have received for your ideas, 99.999% of them are officially difficult to accept and approve.

我举个真实发生并最终实现的例子。CGCS2000(China Geodetic Coordinate System 2000)，在2008年7月1日起，中国全面启用CGCS2000。然而，你敢想象吗，civil3d支持CGCS2000竟然是2023年6月1日。

Let me give an example of a real occurrence and its ultimate implementation. CGCS2000 (China Geodetic Coordinate System 2000) has been fully implemented in China since July 1, 2008. However, can you imagine that Civil3D's support for CGCS2000 was on June 1, 2023.

提供这条创意的不是像我们这样的普通用户人员提出的，而是Autodesk公司中国区的官方人员@renr ，在他多次呼吁的情况下，最终才得以实现的(15年之久)。如果是普通Autodesk用户，再等待数年，几乎，都难以实现这一基本创意。

This idea was not proposed by ordinary users like us, but by the official personnel of Autodesk in China, @ renr, who was finally able to achieve it after multiple appeals (15 years). If it were an ordinary Autodesk user, it would be almost impossible to achieve this basic idea after waiting for a few years.

终上所述，Autodesk官方，接受用户创意的意愿是非常排斥的。

As mentioned above, Autodesk's official willingness to accept user creativity is highly exclusive.

Example file

 1、China Geodetic Coordinate System 2000(CGCS2000)

2、Support CGCS 2000 coordinate system-支持CGCS2000坐标系 

3、CGCS2000增强包的下载与安装

4、关于Civil 3D 支持CGCS 2000问题