Abhinav Lal

Discuss on thinkdigit forum

Posted on 18-10-2010

Comment on article

Tweet

• Apple's App Store hits 15 billion app downloads till date
• Apple releases iOS 4.3 update early for its latest iOS devices
• Apple and iOS developers sued for sharing personal user information...

AutoDesk’s offerings certainly proliferate the global market, and though most are professional level software, many of them are almost household names, names such as AutoCAD, Maya, and 3ds Max. We met with Lynn Allen – AutoDesk Technical Evangelist and host of AutoDesk University – on her recent trip to India, where she was promoting AutoCAD’s latest release – AutoCAD 2011.

2010 was a major year for AutoDesk, if only for the fact that they brought back AutoCAD for the Mac platform after nearly two decades. They’ve also created AutoCAD WS for iOS devices, a nod in the direction of mobility. We spoke with Lynn Allen about all of these things, as well as the state of AutoCAD education of India, about what makes Indian users different from others in the world, and much more.

Q1. Let us start off with Autodesk’s latest offerings, before getting to the background. AutoCAD is back for Mac, and in a big way, allowing for an almost unprecedented converged devices offering, by catering to all the iOS devices. How come now after 20 years? Was something vital missing from the Mac platform?

20 year absence? It hasn’t been 20, more like, 17, maybe 18...it’s less than 20. So...I’ve been using AutoCAD for almost twenty-five years. One day, I was at an architectural event, the AIA – a trade show, back when tradeshows were really popular. I wasn’t working for AutoCAD then, but I was helping them at their booth. That was the day they announced that they were no longer going to have AutoCAD for Mac, it was that day. Architect after architect came in, and was so upset that we were no longer AutoCAD for Mac.

But at the time it was a really small market, and it was also very, very hard to program AutoCAD to run on the Mac. It was a nightmare! We could not even keep programmers at AutoCAD, because it was so hard to program to get the software to run on the Mac. But things have changed a lot in the last few years, and now the Mac operating system is a very robust operating system, and it got to the point where we decided the market was big enough, again, and every time, everywhere I do presentations, some architect would raise their hand up and ask when AutoCAD would come back for Mac. We were also now able to do good programming for Mac – we didn’t want to put AutoCAD on Mac if it wasn’t going to be good, we didn’t want to give a crippled AutoCAD and put it on there. So all the timing, all the stars were aligned, all of us were aligned, so it was now just really good timing for us.

So we’re very, very excited about it, and I’m sure you’ve read, it’s been very well-received. The nice thing about this that we didn’t just take AutoCAD exactly as it is and port it over for the Mac. It’s very Mac-friendly, and very Mac-like - different commands look very different in the Mac version. It’s going to make the users very happy.

Q2. What’s the point of making mobile applications of such a powerful software? How exactly are they intended to be used?

As far was AutoCAD WS, it was kind of a logical thing to do, with so many people buying iPads as well as other mobile devices. To be able to go on site, with your AutoCAD drawing, and in realtime make changes, with even people back in the office being able to see the modifications...That’s impressive, and that’s something we’ve had people asking for, for a long time. For a while there, we had an app for the Palm, but you couldn’t see it. You had to go to a site, and see it the drawing in a tiny little window, on a small little screen. But now we have the situation where so many people have these larger devices, because you need to have a fairly big-sized screen to make it really effective. I don’t think you would want to do it on your iPhone either, it’s way too small. But the iPad might be the way to go, nice lightweight, going into field.

It’s not actually AutoCAD on the iPad. You just have access to AutoCAD drawings on the iPad, and you can do some basic editing and drawing operations. It’s not full-fledged AutoCAD. That would be too much for your iPad. You iPad would just be completely filled up with just the program. It’s working in the cloud, and it’s just really great, exciting technology.

Q3. Will any other mobile platforms get the same treatment?

Well, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say anything that hasn’t already been announced. Off the top of my ahead though, I have to be honest, I don’t know of any others.

Q4. AutoCAD 2011 was released nearly 5 months ago. How has it been received - globally, and in India? Are most people looking to upgrade from 2010?

Yes. It’s been well-received, and there are some really nice features in the products, some features that people have been asking for, for a long time. We took the 3D capabilities we introduced in 2010, and really amped them up in 2011. We’re trying really hard to make AutoCAD as user-friendly as possible, from the very beginning of the design process – right from the conceptual stage. We’re trying to let people really be able to mould their design almost like clay, so that they can make changes on the fly, right from the concept level.

So a lot of that has happened in 2010 and 2011. Many customers have been wanting that, maybe they use other programs to that right now. Might as well just use one product, get it all done in one program, no going back and forth. We are trying to take everything you possibly need from the conceptual design at the very beginning all the way to digitalization to completion at the very end. So we keep working on that, and will continue to work on the 3D features and the 2D features.

So, as your question is, it’s been very well received, and at the launches - where we introduce the new features - everyone has been very happy.

Q5. What’s the significance of a HP Workstation being responsible for an expected 44% increase in productivity with AutoCAD 2011, as seen in your press releases? Is there some kind of optimization with HP products? Do you partner with HP?

HP is one of our strong strategic partners, and we actually do most of our programming on HP, as a matter of fact. So we are a very HP-focussed company, and we’ve worked hard with them to make sure our software runs well on their systems. So in the David Count study you’ve referred, we are talking specifically about the HP V200, which is a really strong, robust and not a super expensive workstation, but an affordable workstation. So the 44% was where we included Windows 7 and also HP V200 workstation. You don’t have to have and HP workstation to get good results from AutoCAD. If you are on XP for example, you still get a 31% increase in productivity when you upgrade from AutoCAD 2008 to 2011, just doing everyday tasks from within the software. There’ve been a lot of changes, and when I use older software, it’s hard because I feel I’m missing so much.

Our goal is to keep as many people as up to date as possible so that they can get their designs and their jobs done faster. A lot of people are on subscription, and we want make sure that they are not just paying their money and not upgrading. We want to make sure that they take advantage of the money they are paying, and really upgrading the software, and using the new features.

Read on to know about Indians being "super smart" AutoCAD users, and more...