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I am Anthony Frausto-Robledo, editor-in-chief at Architosh.com. I assemble the monthly INSIDER Xpresso newsletter to help us understand emerging technologies (emTech) and social forces impacting CAD industries like AEC and manufacturing. 

This month. We have a unique release of our newsletter. Due to unprecedented newsworthiness and demand, this month's newsletter will only contain a long-form Special Feature on Autodesk Revit and the news of a group of British practices who penned an open letter to Autodesk's CEO.

Next month we will be back to our normal format. And subscribers looking for our usual content on emerging technologies (emTech) in AEC can consider our Member Access—(emTech) Section Plus feature coming in about a week's time on Architosh. That feature—unique to just annual subscribers to Architosh INSIDER—will contain additional material related to the Autodesk Revit open letter, as well as emerging technologies content, plus information on a set of key AEC companies advancing the exchange of data in AEC BIM workflows without the method of passing files around, similar in some ways to Nemetschek's recent announcements, but different.  

 
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Special Feature

An Unhappy Marriage—Autodesk Revit Users Unite Around Open Letter


The future of BIM around Revit needs to change, and some in the global architectural community have banded together to ask for—if not demand—particular alterations to the technology and its economics.


AUTODESK REVIT USERS AT FIRMS pushing the leading edge of practice have penned an "open letter" to Autodesk's CEO. The letter made big news in the global architectural scene in the last week of July, as it claims firmly that the world's most popular BIM tool for AEC is failing to meet the needs of architects and at increasing costs to their bottom line. 

A British Letter Goes Global

On Monday, 27 July 2020, a group of mostly British architecture practices—including elite marquee firms like Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, and Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners—along with more than a dozen other large and global practices, sent their open letter to Andrew Anagnost, President, and CEO of US-based Autodesk. Simultaneously, this open letter was sent to Wall Street analysts, major global news outlets like the Financial Times (FT), and all the major AEC and CAD industry press outlets.






"Where once Autodesk Revit was the industry enabler to smarter working, it increasingly finds itself a constraint and bottleneck,"  --- Open Letter to Autodesk




The letter decries Autodesk Revit's increasingly expensive licensing costs, its lackluster development progress, and Autodesk's lack of empathy and spirit of true partnership with these significant architectural customers. The letter reads, "Where once Autodesk Revit was the industry enabler to smarter working, it increasingly finds itself a constraint and bottleneck. Practices find that they are paying more but using Revit less because of its constraints."

For its part, Autodesk immediately responded to request from the media, including Architosh, with a smart and short statement that it was digesting the letter, studying its content, and would reply shortly. By the end of the week, Autodesk published its own "open letter" in response to the British group of practices. 

Simultaneously, however, significant architectural practices from across the globe joined in on the original letter as signatories, adding an additional 18 firms from America, Europe, Israel, France, and South Africa. As in the original letter, some firms took the survey and contributed their data, but chose not to sign. A total of 35 firms from around the globe were now signatories of the original letter to Anagnost, with 18 additional firms' data behind the survey in the letter. 

Context and Survey

The Open Letter begins by citing RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Chartered Practice Benchmarking Report highlights. The chief one being that RIBA firms face increasing cost of ownership of design-based software as part of overall operating costs while growth in profits has remained flat. Add on the complexity now facing every business from a global pandemic, with the rising challenges and costs associated with keeping workforces in action, and it appears a "tipping point" of sorts has forced the hands behind this letter. 

But what of the letter's origins? 

The mostly British group behind the open letter was co-ordinated by industry veteran and IT consultant Iain Godwin who spoke with me at length about the development of both the sentiment in the message and the letter's origination. "The conversation sort of came around the group, with increasing frustration with Autodesk," says Godwin, who before his consultancy was IT Director and Senior Partner at Fosters + Partners for 11 years.





"...it comes as a reaction to years of successive Autodesk development and business decisions which have frustrated its most advanced customers."  --- Iain Godwin, AEC IT consultant and former IT Director, and Senior Partner at Fosters + Partners




There were actually three groups, all based in London, where Godwin acts as a facilitator, and it was from within these groups—particularly the Digital Design Leaders group—where shared concerns about Revit emerged and coalesced into a questionnaire distributed among the various group's associated firms. While small in total number, the 25 initial firms who contributed data amount to thousands of Revit seats and over USD 22 million in revenues for Autodesk in the last five years.

"To put the letter in context, it comes as a reaction to years of successive Autodesk development and business decisions which have frustrated its most advanced customers," says Godwin. "These firms are at the leading edge of BIM adoption, pushing the use of 3D in design through to fabrication and now feel hampered by lack of development, all while the cost of ownership increases."

In its defense, Autodesk acknowledged that the focus of Revit over the past few years had been more squarely on the needs of engineers and contractors over architects. "Our goal with Revit," wrote Autodesk in its open letter back to the British group, "has always been to maximize the value it brings to the AEC market, and to do that we must enable all major stakeholders to participate in the BIM process." Anyone following what is sometimes simply called the "contech" boom in the construction industry, understands the sheer amount of dollars at stake in global construction. When industry giant Oracle acquired Aconex several years ago, it was a shot across the bow of Autodesk, the world's leading design software maker for the AEC industry. It was also an inflection point within AEC, signaling a massive VC-centric push in construction sector software.  

However, the origins of the letter, precede the British user groups' efforts. It has come to the attention of Architosh, through Iain Godwin, that a group of Australian and New Zealand architecture firms reached out to Autodesk with their own letter six years ago. With the British group's message gaining global attention, other individuals are bringing out their "non-open" letters to Autodesk that failed to bring about the change this same letter is mainly asking for.





"Our goal with Revit has always been to maximize the value it brings to the AEC market, and to do that we must enable all major stakeholders to participate in the BIM process."  --- Autodesk's Letter to British Group




Tim Waldock, a Revit consultant at RevitCat published on LinkedIn his story about a 2014 letter sent to Autodesk's Sales Director for the Asia Pacific. "We feel that the value for the money that we have been spending on the software subscriptions has been diminishing steadily, most noticeably in the last 2 or 3 years. We also feel that the annual enhancements to the software are not being sufficiently driven by existing user requirements—it appears that marketing-driven changes are much more dominant," the letter reads. 

And just before the British group published its open letter late in July, a group of South African firms got together and requested a session with the local Autodesk representative to express similar concerns. That session was granted, escalated to a senior executive from Autodesk in Barcelona, and those concerns shared. But in both cases prior to the British group's letter, Autodesk is said to have failed to honestly respond in both the manner and expectation the groups desired. 

A Marriage on the Rocks

With such inadequate response taken in the past, the British group—even with carrying the weight of globally famous marquee design firms like Zaha Hadid Architects—sought this time to make their letter not just public but to get signatories to tell parts of their story to the press. There's a real sense of urgency and criticality developing this time, and Godwin denies that it is not just about a group of firms that underappreciate what they have and are always complaining. 

"I'm a glass-half-full type of person," he says. "But people's concerns are real. If [Autodesk] management doesn't see people's perceptions, then you have to bring that to their attention, don't you?" 

Ana Matic, Director of Digital Development at Scott Brownrigg, a London based firm with offices across the UK, plus New York, Singapore, and Amsterdam, characterized her firm's relationship with Autodesk and Revit as a kind of marriage. Scott Brownrigg is an original signatory. 





"This is the sort of pre-counseling type of letter, the one that says 'we might need some mediation here?'"  --- Ana Matic, Director of Digital Development, Scott Brownrigg, United Kingdom




"I tend to say it's a marriage...you know because it's a very long commitment once you get into a relationship like this with Autodesk," she says. "It's not like something where you can just dip in and out; you are making a commitment, and that commitment is long term." She explained that for Scott Brownrigg, it's a long-term relationship because there is a significant investment in setting everything up and training people, but also long term because their projects can last five, six, seven, eight, or even nine years. 

I asked her if this relationship is like a marriage, what type of letter is the new open letter? Is it the threat-of-breaking-up type of letter, the pre-divorce letter? "No," she says. "This is the sort of pre-counseling type of letter, the one that says 'we might need some mediation here?'"

However, Dr. Josef Dobos, a civil engineer by training and CEO of 3D Repo Limited in the UK, offered an alternative and equally fascinating analogy. Writing Architosh unprompted after reading our reports on the letter, our conversation started with this complex and cynical observation. "Okay, I'm going to be controversial," he begins. "I think what we are seeing here is what I would classify as the Stockholm Syndrome," referring to a psychological description that has never made it into the DSM-5 manual. The statement is interesting, however, because it relates to "a condition in which hostages develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity." This is really about emotional bonds in relationships that cloud the irrationality of the bond and the dangers and risks involving the captive's victim. 



A web browser screenshot of Scott Brownrigg's excellent website. The firm has many sectors, including Aviation which is one such sector where complex geometry tends to be prevalent and where algorithmic-aided design (AAD) tools tend to prevail in the creation of the most dynamic and award-winning designs. In such sectors as Aviation, lots of work happens outside of Revit and the demands presented in the Open Letter ask for greater interoperability between Revit and tools like Rhino + Grasshopper (without specifically naming applications). 

Dobos' comment may seem incredibly harsh and unfair and—above all—biased. After all, his company offers competitive tools to Autodesk. Its 3D Repo app is a SaaS web-browser based digital platform for BIM data that aims to "democratize data" as well as mitigate risks and reduce complexity. It features broad support for BIM and 3D file formats but more than that true data integrations via APIs to tools like Power BI, OpenText, Dynamo, Excel as well as featuring Navisworks plugins. And the company counts major AECO firms among its clients, like Buro Happold and Atkins, among others. 

But Dobos' analogy gets more interesting when he counters and places the responsibility for the relationship at the feet of the British firms behind the letter. "Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to defend Autodesk," he adds. "But I understand both sides of the argument because we are on the software side. I can appreciate the difficulty of producing scalable enterprise software that can meet the needs of thousands of users, but I think many people don't necessarily appreciate that." 





"Nobody in the AEC industry has the same gravitas as Autodesk. "  --- Simon Jardine, Technology Director, Scott Brownrigg, United Kingdom




Dobos contends that leading-edge design firms, like the kind in the British group behind the letter, do a lot of bespoke development, a lot of scripting, dashboards, and stuff like that. And he suggests it can skew their understanding of the rational manner in which decision-making happens with commercial software. On the flipside, Ana Matic of Scott Brownrigg says that Autodesk may not see things from "their point of view, our view. They don't appreciate what we are facing," she says. 

Josef Dobos says of commercial software development (and Autodesk simultaneously), "they are putting their limited resources into various directions. I do feel that because we often have to make those same very difficult decisions about limited resources." 

But Scott Brownrigg, like other architecture practices around the globe, have limited resources also; Matic spoke to me about the difficulty of in-firm maintenance to support Revit, "...we are creating an army of people who are not really creating architecture, who are just keeping up with the stuff."
 
Dobos says, "As the architect, if you can't meet your client's needs to deliver to your customer, you have a commercial problem as well, right? So on the other hand—and this gets back to the Stockholm Syndrome—I would argue that there is a lot of other software out there, right? Nobody is forcing you to use Revit." 

Gravitas

I spoke to Simon Jardine, Technology Director and Shareholder, at Scott Brownrigg, and asked him towards the end of our half-hour conversation, why continue if it is that bad? He answered in nearly one word—"gravitas." 

"Nobody in the AEC industry has the same gravitas as Autodesk," he stated.  

But is gravitas in the AECO industry something real and truly meaningful or a specter?
If the idea of using the smaller player's tools—despite their favorable capabilities, and not being a part of the majority haunts your mind, in that kind of gnawing worrying way—then gravitas is likely more specter. It is perhaps more a ghost in the mind rather than a tangible, reality-based phenomenon grounded in actionable competencies. However, despite the actual competencies the open letter cites as lacking or entirely missing, both Simone Jardine and Ana Matic of Scott Brownrigg do admit that Revit has weight in their decision-making. 

Scott Brownrigg, like many large practices around the world, has expertise in specific sectors. "Revit is predominantly the software we use most for BIM," says Jardine. "We do have some work in Bentley, but that is mostly around rail." Scott Brownrigg's sector expertise includes rail and infrastructure, aviation, education, business, residential and mixed-use, hospitality, civic and culture, defense and security, and finally, advanced technologies. As Matic explains it, in their data center projects, the engineers working on those projects demand Revit alignment because they have so much invested around Revit in those very technical buildings. On the other hand, she says that sectors like aviation use a lot of generative design and tools like Grasshopper, while the residential sector is much more straightforward and sees little use for generative design while also not requiring the multi-layered engineering expertise that has been established for some engineering firms in Revit. 


A web browser screenshot of Scott Brownrigg's excellent website. The firm has many sectors but excels in design across all of them. Ada Matic, Director of Digital Development, made the note that in some sectors the pressure by engineers to align architects around Revit makes sense due to the complexity of engineering requirements and capacities already invested by those engineers in that sector or building typology. Data centers are one of those sectors, she notes. However, residential and numerous other sectors or require either more simplified straight-forward engineering or bespoke engineering, AAD workflows, and enable a more liberal relationship between tools. 

It is very understandable to make software decisions based on actionable competencies providing clear advantages. This is what happens when software gets highly focused on specific sectors with dense technical requirements. As Autodesk has admitted to being focused for years on the technical needs of other AECO participants, especially engineers and contractors, architects have been pushing on the leading edge of what is possible with design.

Architects have long abandoned all BIM tools for leading-edge work in form-making. And they have firmly established algorithmic-aided design (AAD) outside of BIM in tools like Rhino + Grasshopper and Dynamo. Now, architects are pushing on the leading edge closer to the front end of the process. They are adding AI and machine learning to the mix, establishing new types of workflows that "load the constraints" into generative design software that then automatically generates hundreds if not thousands of options. "The difficulty is that Revit is built for the technical part of Architecture," says Matic, and that makes sense. It is not so much [built] for the design part of Architecture." 

Full-Stack vs. Integrations

Both Ana Matic and Simon Jardine of Scott Brownrigg made the point that Autodesk's historical approach has been more aligned with trying to solve all your problems rather than in working with third-parties to form best-in-class "solution sets" to these problems. This, too, gets at the heart of licensing models based around bundles and collections of applications. Jardine noted that the inclusion of FormIt within software licensing arrangements is presented as an economic benefit, so firms no longer need to buy Trimble's famous SketchUp modeler. But he criticized the approach on the merits of the software pitted against each other. 

"Since we are getting it as part of the bundle, we can save money and replace some of the other tools and make it easier to move those models into Revit," he says. But FormIt has repeatedly fallen short. "I have been trying to push FormIt and push out all the SketchUp licenses, but I am constantly failing," says Ana Matic. "It's just because of what people know, they come out of uni with it, it's what they know. That's just what people go to because it's quick." Autodesk isn't the only software maker or BIM provider to fail to understand that to beat SketchUp you have to beat it at its own game. formZ provider Auto-Des-Sys for years attempted to offer an alternative, focusing on what SketchUp was missing rather than beating it at its strengths. 

When a tool has become so well established around core strengths that are years of development ahead of the competition, what the AECO market is asking for—by looking at the market's behaviors, as in the case of SketchUp use inside Scott Brownrigg—is the integration of those tools. This point is repeatedly missed by established software players and the giants in the industry in particular. Sometimes we see a stunning reversal of what is the "normative error," as in when Graphisoft, well known for  coding nearly everything themselves, chose to integrate McNeel's popular Rhino + Grasshopper into Archicad. Instead of embracing such a route, Autodesk built Dynamo. And Vectorworks built Marionette.





"Designers are in a continuous mode of innovation and improvement as they recycle and evolve data between an ever-expanding portfolio of applications."  --- Open Letter to Autodesk




It's the difference between one company providing the full-stack of tools needed and the option to build tightly connected and productive integrations with other tools. The open letter speaks directly to this issue: "Project design outcomes thrive on ever-increasing collaboration between different design disciplines requiring many forms of data interoperability between software platforms as well as compliance to international standards." 

"Designers are in a continuous mode of innovation and improvement as they recycle and evolve data between an ever-expanding portfolio of applications," the letter reads. "It is essential to effect better interoperability between Autodesk products as well as with the rest of the industry."

It has to be far easier to write APIs and support common industry standards like IFC than to invest millions in trying to crush a third-party industry software darling. Whether it is Sketchup, Grasshopper, Rhino, or some new wunderkind's latest real-time rendering solution, it is becoming increasingly evident in the AECO industry that there are too much complexity and areas of expertise for any one company to offer a full-stack solution that provides more value to the AECO user than an integrated set of solutions. 

The open letter ends with several asks, including a "ground up" replacement for Revit. There is much irony in this request. If the letter's participants mostly see more value in integrations than in a full-stack solution from a single vendor, if indeed they envision a future of "expanded geometry support and alignment with international data standards"—all code words for make Revit work better with Rhino + Grasshopper and help us move data between other non-Autodesk tools—then aren't they in a sense asking to embrace a new vision of how the whole process can work? And if so, why are they asking for Autodesk to be at the very center of that new vision when other companies have been pushing for that agenda for much longer? 

It's a perplexing question for sure. And perhaps its best answer does, in fact, lie in Ana Matic's statement that the relationship firms have with Autodesk is like a marriage. But who will be the mediator? Iain Godwin told me just a day ago that behind the scenes, these firms have never been so open in discussions about considering alternatives. And the reality is there is no counseling in the AECO market. There are just market providers and consumers and competitors. 
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End Note
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Warmly,
Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP


This is a free newsletter and companion publication to Architosh.com. 
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Companies mentioned in this newsletter where I have a financial interest will be listed in this section. This is consistent with Architosh's Disclosure statement on our Ethics page here. 
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