[sbuk]

They bought Revit and have somehow managed to regress it. Before owning Revit, and therefore only owning a small percentage of the nascent BIM tool marketplace, they drove the creation of IFC classes to ensure interoperability between BIM platforms. Now they practically own BIM, support for this has gone.

Auto desk are a vile company. A serial monopolist that make any of the othe offenders look tame. I'd love to see them go out of business. That said, I hope those that have lost their jobs find new ones soon.

[theoh]

I was commenting on "most CAD software", not just Autodesk products. Autodesk is not a sexy company (monopoly or otherwise) but I really wonder whether DWG/AutoCAD's key market, architectural drafting (as opposed to architectural drawing) is ever going to be a rewarding activity for anyone.

I've got years of diverse experience in the field of architecture and software, and Revit seems like a very clever toy but not a substitute for endless labour over details. Good architects draw every brick (or equivalent), and/or they also work in close experimental collaboration with the people fabricating the building elements. I'm thinking in the first case of Caruso St. John http://www.carusostjohn.com/ drawing every brick and in the second of a practice like Grimshaw http://grimshaw-architects.com/ using lost-wax casting (investment casting) to make components. The trade or craft knowledge involved means there are effective constraints which cannot even be expressed in Revit (individual bricks are not really an option in Revit, and you definitely wouldn't want to design a metal casting using Revit... It's an Autocad job, or better, a job for something more expressive like Maya or Mudbox (or whatever it's called) or whatever tool suits your aesthetic. You can't get to Rodin from Autocad.)