Ok - I've received a lot of private email about the last post.
So yes - there are some interesting improvements - but neither required an overhaul of the UI. I could have been swayed to move to R2010 if learning a new UI (downtime) was offset by substantial functionality enhancements (uptime). As it is, I'm not convinced I can make the business case to move to R2010. More organic modeling tools are great and will help us resolve more than a few geometric edge conditions. But at what cost?
I moved from CAD to Revit 1.0 not because I was smitten by the UI, but because of a philosophy and gains in efficiency that (in spite of significant room for improvement) represented a far more elegant approach to describing a building. Does Autodesk really believe that potentially new users will finally be convinced that they should move to Revit because a new UI is similar to their old UI?
Does ADSK really think we'll buy this marketing speak without holding our collective noses?
The reason Autodesk's tools look different (and should continue to do so) is because ground-up innovation is no longer Autodesk's key strength. Disruptive innovation is too hard and moves too fast outside the confines of 9 to 5 (and even farther outside the confines of being a publicly held company where the "customer" isn't the end user - but the share holder). Autodesk's last decade of growth has been through acquisition and the democratization of those tools. We get that - it's ok. So we expect the tools to look different because we learned to use those tools as soon as they were available and long before they were acquired. The real challenge is the distribution of new technology is fundamentally disruptive to large, pre-internet technology companies that for a time were able to enjoy the control of distribution. But this is no longer the case. And so innovation gives way to democratization. Big deal.
But unfortunately, democratization has now given way to homogenization. Case in point? Site Tools. They should have been in Revit years ago (and would be if Revit were still an independent company) because 1) their customers would have demanded it and 2) they would have faced no internal, existing tools and functionality to disrupt or displace. But in my opinion the reason that Revit does not have site tools is because it would disrupt other business units within ADSK: ACAD, LDT, C3D. Perhaps the idea is that so long as the user has another ADSK flavored tool for site design, Revit doesn't need one. So which site design tool is the tool of choice by Architects?
SketchUp.
It really simple:
1) Let the Revit team fly the pirate flag and disrupt your other business units by making insanely great technology
- or -
2) Continue to disrupt your customer's businesses by drip feeding functionality that when finally released will be far too late to be much used, much appreciated or of much consequence.
4 comments:
Repeat after me.. Elevation Tag ;-)
To be fair to Autodesk, there has been a huge internal process that needed to happen for Revit rate of development to continue or increase. It was unavoidable, although I've argued they needed to be transparent about this a long time ago.
2 other points:
There still appears to be a layer of management in Autodesk that just isn't getting Revit and what it could be.
When a user who has been with Revit since V4 makes an enhancement request, it's worth considerably more weighting than a user who inherited Revit with their subscription or purchased last year.
nice to see this blog alive again, and with a vengeance;-)
I like it when you drink and blog.
Sweet post, even better expressed than the original.
For the most part, I'm confused why these are the features that have been implemented. When i saw it the first time, I was eagr because I thought there would be more, but then was dismayed to see that was it. Users have been asking for a better UI (reduce clicks, make dialogs better, improve how a user interacts with tools while modeling railings, stairs, etc). But this facelift did not achieve those goals. We can all be fed the "it'll be easier to train newbies" soup, but after all, there's no doubt there will be disruption.
For me the only motivation to jump into 2010 is that it's gotta be done sometime and rather than wait, if companies are slow because of the economy, it's better to "waste" some time now, instead of when everything is moving at a faster pace.
Wishlists such as the one at AUGI are beginning to feel useless (it's not a new sentiment). There are a ton of features to enhance that would positively improve the day to day activities and yet, they're still in limbo. That just sucks. And with the subscription system and the fact that Revit is not backward compatible, they know they have a "safe" grip on us.
Nice post Phil. I've always enjoyed your ability to express your opinion, even when you worked for the man. As a Revit 8.x user, there are definitely plenty of tools that could an overhaul / improvements versus the UI. I too don't use Revit for it's UI, but for what it can do! I has hoped Autodesk wasn't gonna take Revit down this path, but my hopes are fading away with each Release.
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