Back to school

You know I'm not a great fan of autodesk, not even after winning a free t-shirt and a free seminar on one of their events. They dominated for a while as the (only) industry's standard, but they had to share that position with Alias, Rhinos or Solidworks. My opinion is that their dominance made them lose the innovative edge for a while, specially 10 to 5 years ago. A similar story happened with Windows vista: the expectations on innovations for new releases were so high, that many did not even acknowledge the changes, or were frustrated by old and/or new limitations. They also started to diversify into 10 or more specialized suites (just like windows went from 2 versions to 4) in an effort to meet the specific demands of several design fields like architecture, civil engineering, topology, industrial design, mechanical electrical plumbing, etc. instead of putting that effort into renewing the "main engine", they just gave away some aesthetic minor candies for those users. For me, the greatest disadvantage so far is that their apps are not cross-platform i.e. PC-Mac-Linux except for the ones they inherited from Alias.

When Autodesk bought Alias, reminded me when Bill Gates "bought" CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet... my concern was (and still is) that with fewer competitors, it would bring them back to the times when they ruled as "the standard" and they will soon again forget about innovation. There was a rumour of a soon to be released version of Alias studio tools for mac shortly before any news about the takeover. I predicted that if there was in fact a remote posibility of a Studiotools for macs, it got lost on that takeover. That lost hope was probably the worse loss... but (to my surprise) Autodesk has improved on innovation since the Alias takeover.


The AutodeskUniversity Annual User Conference and Exhibition wil take place on December 2 - 5, 2008 at The Venetian Resort Hotel, Las Vegas.

Autodesk University offers the world’s broadest curriculum of technical content designed specifically for Autodesk product users. Enroll early to make sure you get the classes and labs you want: Many offerings—nearly all of which are AU exclusives—fill up quickly. With more than 640 multi-level classes and labs organized in 20 discipline-specific tracks, you can easily customize your learning experience by choosing classes that are just right for you and your organization. Plus, class handouts and website downloads from AU Online make it easy to share the knowledge with your team. The AU 2008 curriculum offers 65 more classes than last year—and the number of hands-on labs has swelled to 80, a 20-percent increase from AU 2007.

The Industrial Design curriculum offers a full scope of classes covering software techniques, design methodology, and creative inspiration. We are interested in providing design insight for product engineers and strategies for interdisciplinary collaboration within product teams.

Some podcasts are freely available at the Autodesk University Blog (BLAUG).

ciao