MDT RIP

Autodesk has ceased development of Autodesk Mechanical Desktop and will no longer release new versions of the product, and Mechanical Desktop 2009 is the last version of the product to be made available.

No surprise. The first sign of impending death: inclusion with Inventor; second sign: no inclusion with Inventor 2009 (available by request on DVD only, though free); third sign: today's announcement.

Autodesk began including AutoCAD Architecture in its Revit-AutoCAD bundle last month...

Update

The lessen the hurt, Autodesk is doing the following:

• Support MDT customers for three more years, once MDT is dropped from Inventor package. (Subscription customers only).
• Continue to make MDT 2009 available as a download with future releases of Inventor.
• Provide a DWG Import wizard and a migration toolkit for bringing MDT-flavored DWG files into Inventor.  

Comments

[Jimmy Bergmark - JTB World]

Here is another sign that it's soon ACA RIP.
http://blog.jtbworld.com/2008/10/invest-in-education-when-purchasing.html

[Martin]

It's a darn shame they want everyone to use Inventor instead of MDT.
I haven't touched Inventor in a long while because it couldn't handle surfaces the way MDT could. I can take an iges or step file from a customer and separate mold cavities super quick in MDT.
The only reason we upgraded was to get MDT. If Autodesk thinks all the MDT users will convert to Inventor they'll be mistaken. I bet alot of Inventor sales were people using just MDT.

[R. Paul Waddington]

Martin, I agree; Autodesk's management, developers and dealers simply got MDT wrong. Autodesk didn't understand its own products full potential then succumbed to, and accepted, ill informed criticism without properly canvassing the user base to weed out the short sighted critics.

'Face' is a strong driver at Autodesk and despite what you or I, or many other MDT users think Autodesk's management haven't the wisdom or commonsense to admit they didn't understand how flexible and useful MDT is to CAD customers.

This statement, "Autodesk has ceased development of Autodesk Mechanical Desktop", would lead one to believe development has just ceased, but it stopped years ago and yet MDT continues to be a preferred product. This says volumes about MDT's original capabilities and much about Autodesks' management's inability to capitalize on, and recognize a highly flexible, and adaptable product!

I hope you also understand Autodesk has absolutely NO interest in whether you are productive or profitable. Once have paid they have NO FURTHER INTEREST IN YOU!

When you know, understand and accept this point most of Autodesk's decisions are more easily understood.