Roopinder Tara is fooled again, when Autodesk doesn't buy SketchUp

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com

Following Autodesk is like chasing a jack rabbit. You think it will hop one way but it hops the other.

I have watched Autodesk for about 15 years. I’ve written much about them, their products. I live in its shadow; my neighbors are Autodeskers. All that, I still can’t predict their moves.

Never has this been more obvious than when Trimble came out of nowhere to buy SketchUp from Google. CAD insiders had known SketchUp was on the blocks. We speculated over and came up with the usual suspects. Not one predicted Trimble.

Why did Autodesk not outbid everyone? I would have thought they’d do whatever it took to acquire SketchUp. Autodesk has been actively chasing the maker/inventor/hobbyist market, such as it is. The AEC community may not have jumped on SketchUp to create the built world, but the DIYers sure jumped on it to make whatever whirligig, gizmos, low-riders, furniture, or whatever crazy contraption that was in their head.

It was easy. It was free. It spread like wildfire, reaching and saturating an unintended but huge audience. I attended a Maker Faire south of San Francisco and was amazed at the almost universal adoption of SketchUp. Autodesk noticed, too, and they were not about to let this go unanswered. With great fanfare they came out with 123D. They were chasing the same audience, but devised a new product to do so. And so spent millions.

123D is free, like SketchUp. But it takes more to convert users than throwing around free software. Think children from their mothers. SketchUp already had its faithful adherents. Lots and lots of them. This was clearly evident in its 3D Warehouse, a vast library of models, produced over the years -- all available for free.

One time, I had to make a factory layout. Let’s see, should I make each machine in 123D, even if was free and easy to use (supposedly)? Or should I download models from the SketchUp library? I found Bridgeports, lathes, drill presses, tables, even a water jet cutter in the SketchUp library. In less than one hour, I had a reasonable attempt at a factory layout. In fact, every tool and machine I needed was there.

How deep was this library? Out of curiosity, I looked for Adirondack chairs. There were dozens of Adirondack chair designs. Thousands of people had been at this for years. SketchUp had – without trying – gained an incredible head start into a market that Autodesk was drooling for publicly.

So, if I were Autodesk, I would wonder: do I spend millions on developing and marketing -- and years to try to lure customers away from a product they willingly chose, invested time to learn, may be even love? Spend more millions on a Website [www.instructables.com] that purportedly has the demographics of makers/DIYers, and end up with picklers and cupcake makers?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to just buy the product everyone is already using? Don’t ask me. I can never get it right.

[Reprinted with permission from CAD Insider.] 

Comments

[Kevin E.]

I read Roopinder's article and it got me curious. SO I downloaded and installed Autodesk 123D and gave it a try.

123D seems to be a repurposed Inventor Fuion. The UI seems to be designed for the DIY crowd, but the core of the products seems to work and feel a lot like Fusion.

So did Autodesk really have to spend millions on this? Maybe, I'm not sure. But in some ways this seems to make more sense than buying Sketchup.

If Autodesk had purchased Sktechup, would they have made it fit the rest of the Autodesk design products? How much would it cost to make those under the hood changes?

So it seems they could have approached this in 2 ways. They could have bought Sketchup for the userbase and then spent the money to integrate the product into the Autodesk family. The other way is to use your already developed core tech, put a new UI on it for novice cad users and try to win the base over by builing a better product.

Both routes are challenging to pull off.

[Rande Robinson]

Roopinder you might still have it right. It is possible that you are looking at the wrong acquisition. Rather than buying Sketchup. How about Trimble? That would fit much better into the Autodesk world (and would help it considerably in the the AEC arena). With all the current consolidation in the Surveying/Mapping/GPS world Autodesk may have a different target in mind. Just a thought.

[plawton]

Apparently, 123D imports SKP files, so the advantage of the large library of existing content might not be such a huge factor ... just another thought ...