Thank you for all who weighed in on this thread. The feedback is very helpful.
If you haven't met me yet, I lead the Product Management team responsible for Manufacturing at Autodesk. Please, feel free to reach out, I'd love to chat with any of you. I'd take talking to customers over internal Zoom meetings any day of the week. Al.Whatmough@autodesk.com Again, I will be as publically open as I can below. With that said, we can I'd rather have personal and direct conversations with each of you.
As you all know, we have no shortage of CAM products at Autodesk. FeatureCAM, PowerMill, PartMaker, HSMWork, Inventor CAM, TRUX and Fusion 360. Each of these tools have become powerful solutions in their own right. At the same time, as we look at the request for each of the products, without knowing it, customers are asking for convergence. FeatureCAM customers want better 5X from Powermill, Powermill customers want to turning From Partmaker, HSMWorks customer want nesting from TRUNest, Introduction of additive, robotic and Fabrication technologies introduces a whole new set of capabilities. You get the point.
With that said, each of these solutions designed to meet a specific market segment. As you look to continue to make big capabilities of the solution you end up in a state where it takes more and more disruptive changes to existing products. These are products that you are using today to run your facilities!. To us, the most important thing is to make sure we maintain stability and performance so you can run your business today.
We are committed to continuing you provide value to these proven solutions.
Most of us have been through the pain of living in a house that had the kitchen under renovation. It's no fun at all. Wouldn't you prefer to have a new kitchen built and dropped it in when it is ready without living through the pain of drywall dust all through the house?
Speaking openly, we are aggressively working to bring all of our technology together is a single Solution Fusion 360. The best of Automated programming from FeatureCAM, Additive from NETFABB, Complex Machining from Powermill, Connected modeling and Manufacturing from HSMWorks, Fabrication from TRUX.
Is ready for you now, in some ways yes, in other ways no. It's up to us to prove that value to you, to earn your trust, not bait and switch, but by presenting you with the opportunity to use this combined technology as it is ready for you alongside the proven technology that you are using today.
In this way, we feel we giving you a choice;
- Choice, to work how you work today - uninterrupted. We are committed to continuing to improving the performance of these solutions
- Choice, to use elements of our new solutions through bundling at no additional charge
- Choice, to completely move to Fusion and reduce your per user spend
- Choice, to move to a competitive solution. This one may be controversial, But, subscription means from a financial perspective you have prepaid for X years of software, it's up to us to earn your business each and every year.
I look back at what I wrote and wonder, how far have I gone from being a machinist? Am I another talking corporate head? maybe, I hope not. My hope is, along with our team, we are building a future while minimizing the disruption to the present.
It's not an easy balance, we will continue to get details wrong along the way. So, please, keep this conversation going. Please, reach out, let's chat. Al.Whatmough@autodesk.com 415-755-3087
Cheers,
Al
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AL Whatmough
Director Product Management - Manufacturing
Note, I love to engage on the forums. However, I spend a lot of time in meetings trying to help clear the path for our amazing team of Developers working on Manufacturing at Autodesk. So, if I don't respond immediately, it's not that I don't care.