A User on Autodesk and GIS

This letter appeared in this week’s UpFront.eZine:

It was a little discouraging to see the dearth of anything related to GIS/Geospatial at AU. I heard several folks in that field saying they felt like the red haired step child at Autodesk. It is hard to understand what they are thinking when they put resources into products Map and MapGuide (very good products) then do nothing about promoting them.
They have the software, especially MapGuide, to compete with ESRI. When you consider how many civil firms use Autodesk, and how many engineering departments in towns and cities use AutoCAD verticals and get DWGs for consulting firms, the number is huge. It is not a stretch to think a good PR firm could create an ad campaign that stresses this fact.
I’m a contractor for a town in Massachusetts and we use Map and MapGuide (see mapguide.beld.com), because the engineers at both the light department and the engineering department wanted the accuracy of Map, and didn’t want to deal with the issue of converting to [ESRI] Shape files.

- Rod Haywood, constractor
Braintree Electric Light Department

My observation is that this is spot-on.

Autodesk Dances the Big Ideas Dance Around Geospatial

While Autodesk is clearly not leading its marketing with geospatial product pitches, it is still addressing the topic.

Dale Lutz of Safe Software provided a round up of the geo trends he saw at Autodesk University at his company’s blog. That event is now 95% education/marketing and 5% new products/new ideas. I can’t argue with putting the focus on existing customers.

Geoff Zeiss is the voice of geospatial (though his title is Director of Technology) is speaking about 5D design in Malaysia (Digital Arts Online). That’s nothing - we heard about 6D at the GeoDesign Summit last year (APB coverage)! To be honest, these models that include time, money and in the case of Shannon McElvaney of Pacific GPS who talked about it at the GeoDesign Summit, carbon, are quite impressive and valuable as we pursue sustainability.

Autodesk’s Carl Bass on Geo Open Source Experiment

Matt Ball is at Autodesk University and got a chat with the CEO.

I asked Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, about the success of their Open Source experiment with MapGuide and its applicability to other markets that they serve. He commented that the effort has been a success based on the large number of users, but that Open Source was a bit of a ‘last gasp of the commoditization of desktop software.” He mentioned that the push toward mobile and cloud computing have eclipsed the interest in open source as a means to extend software capability, and that the phenomenon in the geospatial space that made this the right move doesn’t translate well to other markets that Autodesk serves.

It seems Autodesk is ready to move away from the commoditization of desktop software (it didn’t really do that in the geo experiment as MapGuide is open source server software). It also seems that the company is ready to focus on mobile and cloud, again getting away from the desktop. I have not heard GIS “box pushers” make such a bold statement, but actions suggest they are heading down the same path.

- Spatial Sustain

IGN Picks Autodesk Products for Data Distribution in CityGML

The French National Mapping Agency, IGN, has chosen Autodesk LandXplorer products to help distribute their data in CityGML format.  As a national mapping agency with international reach, IGN relies on open data standards for information exchange and values the fact that LandXplorer products can be used to read and write CityGML.

That’s the first geospatial news from Autodesk in a very long time!

- At Lands End Blog
- press release (pdf, French only to date)

Access AutoCAD DWGs on iOS Devices

AutoCAD WS, formerly Project Butterfly, is an add-on for AutoCAD (Win only for now) that uploads DWGs to the cloud so they may be access by an iOS app on iPhones and iPads.

To me this is the cloud implementation of DWF. Remember that failed attempt to keep folks from using PDFs; it didn’t work in the geospatial community so far as I could tell.

Autodesk continues to appear to have lost its way with geospatial and I’ve seen no effort to position this announcement for geo uses.

- press release