A few days ago, a group of 25 architecture firms had sent Andrew Antagonst, president and CEO of Autodesk, a five-page open letter. The letter aimed at censuring the Silicon Valley-based design software and services giant for the mounting ownership costs. The costs have increased as much as 70 percent over a five-year span through the end of 2019—of its central BIM product, Revit.
In response to this letter, Autodesk issued a statement addressing the concerns. Autodesk stated that they consider addressing the concerns of their customers as one of their top-most priorities.
But, since then the number of architecture firms requesting more development of Autodesk’ flagship design platform, Revit, has increased to 33. This indicates that the firms weren’t satisfied with the publicstatement issued by Autodesk earlier.
Amy Bunszel, senior vice president for design and creation products, framed the lack of recent development for Revit software in terms of the company using its finite resources to invest more in engineering and construction products instead of those for architecture and style.
As reported by Engineering News Record, Bunszel said that they have underinvested in architectural modeling functionality in recent years and are working to make that right. Bunszel wrote that Autodesk’s goal with Revit has always been to maximize the value it brings to the the design and construction markets, and to do that they must enable all major stakeholders to participate within the BIM process. She also added that in pursuit of this goal, they increased their product development to better serve engineering and construction customers. This required several platform projects to enhance scalability and performance to support fabrication detail for engineering that also benefited all disciplines. The results of this was a slowdown in development on core architectural modeling capabilities.
Bunszel said Autodesk realizes and understands the impact its actions has had on its architecture and style customers, adding that Autodesk has increased investment and resources within the architectural capabilities of Revit during the last quarter of 2019. It will take some time for the impact of the company’s 2019 Revit investment to be fully realized, and users could follow the company’s Revit Public Roadmap to see when and where that investment will be realized.
She added that they’ve done their best to balance licensing changes with a more valuable experience and trade-in offers that give longtime customers a path to experience these benefits at a cost consistent with what they pay today.
