I would like to see Autodesk actually make some changes that users are requesting via the Autodesk Idea Station - specifically for Fabrication products - whether in AutoCAD or Revit. Isn't that what the idea station that Autodesk asks us to use is for?
Here are some statistics from the Fabrication Idea Station since the first post was added to this forum back in 2013:
- 527 total ideas have been posted
- 474 of those are "gathering support"
- 35 of those have been implemented
- 15 of those are slated for "future consideration"
- 3 of those are archived
So since 2013, only 35 ideas out of the 527 have been implemented. And what is even worse is only ONE idea has been implemented since 2016. I believe that is around the time that Autodesk thought they didn't need the services of Andy Robins and his team any more.
So let's look at the number of votes that it takes to get something implemented. Evidently, there are TWO ideas that were implemented with a grand total of 0 votes. One would think that not a lot of people want that feature to be included. Yet it was implemented anyway. However, there are ideas out there with way more votes that are still "gathering support". One of those ideas has 95 votes! I guess that is not a feature that many people want?
In conclusion, I have to ask - "what do I think the voting actually does for the product that we depend so heavily on?" In my opinion - nothing. I would also ask - "what does the idea station actually do for the product that we depend so heavily on?" In my opinion - nothing. I believe we have a product that Autodesk feels is perfect and there is no room for improvement - even though there are a lot of good ideas that people are suggesting.
I apologize for my frustration and this rant, but we continue to try to make the product better (especially in Revit), but it falls on deaf ears. We need hangers to be more robust in Revit. We need them to work vertically as well as horizontal. We need trapeze hangers to have the ability to have more than just single strut as a bearer. We need hangers to wrap around either pipe or insulation depending on what type of hanger it is. We need sleeves to wrap around the outside of insulation. We need sleeves to upsize. We need sleeves to stretch. We need hanger information visible in Revit. We need a way of colorizing our services in Revit without using filters (which Autodesk has stated slows down the modeling process). We need reloading the configuration to not break all of our content. We need reloading the configuration to be faster. We need to be able to modify the database from within Revit as opposed to going over to AutoCAD. We need more parameters available in Revit for certain things. We need a million other ideas that people are asking for. I just ask that Autodesk actually listen to its users that spend thousands and thousands of dollars for software that it depends very heavily on. Hopefully I get a lot of "votes" for this and it gets "implemented".......but I'm not going to hold my breath.
