Live from Carl Bass Q&A

Carl Bass is answering questions from the media. So far, questions have to do with the cloud and other OSes.

Carl Bass confirms that there is demand for a Mac version of Revit.

Multi-OS Support

AutoCAD has been rewritten so that it can be ported to any viable OS and hardware. "Viable" is determined by consumers wanting to use the software on a particular platform. Recognize that core functions, like calculating angles and drawing lines, is independent of OS, and is written in C++, mostly. File operations are fairly uniform. The big difference is the UI skin.

Two million downloaded SketchBook for iOS devices; 500,000 have paid for the software. Note to Android users: Sketchbook Express (free) and Sketchbook Mobile ($1) now available on the Android Market. I just downloaded it, and it works. For Android 2.1 and up.

The company's CTO notes that only about 15% of CAD operations can make use of multi-threading. He implies that we can expect AutoCAD on Android tablets next year (my interpretation of his words).

(Before this Q&A, I met with Dell, whose head office is in Texas. Now my cell phone is giving me the weather for Austin TX! What was in that USB key they gave me?)

The Cloud

Mr Bass says that he sees that people are using the cloud for two areas:

•    Solve problems that never able to solve before.
•    Solve problems differently, such as being able to solve all possible iterations of solutions (the spreadsheet revisited).

Large customers are not necessarily the first to embrace the cloud, since some of them say they have more computing power than Amazon. Or they will look for the security of virtual clouds. So, Mr Bass thinks that smaller customers will want it first, due to the easy access to huge amounts of computing power -- such as fast rendering.

Regenerative Design

Using scripts to create designs "is coming soon." Autodesk wants to make sure that this new scripting language for AutoCAD can be used by more than just 14 specialists worldwide; even architects will be able to use it.

Now talking about sustainability...

OK, that's a wrap for the Q&A.

Comments

[Rusty]

"AutoCAD has been rewritten so that it can be ported to any viable OS and hardware."

Um, yeah, but with significant crippling of the customization APIs and 3rd party app compatibility.