SAN FRANCISCO (Autodesk World Press Days), Jan 13, 2008 - In the AEC demo shown today, Autodesk led off with a design study of high rise towers that were modeled in Inventor — an application considered by most to be exclusively for mechanical design. Then a train station concept was manipulated in

Maya, long a favorite animators/modelers. The remaining applications showed more of the traditional AEC applications but in the MCAD demo that followed, machinery designed in Inventor was brought into a Revit building model.

It’s not just for MCAD: a high rise tower concept done using Inventor leads off the AEC demo at Autodesk World Press Days 2008

Such interdisciplinary applications were not isolated incidents, but oft repeated to the point of becoming a minor theme of the press event. Autodesk seems to have seized on the idea that users of its AEC software should also be using MCAD software, and to a lesser extent, vice versa.

Autodesk point: why not use the best tools for the job? Certainly, all the really cool new building designs are curvaceous — a stretch for traditional AEC applications but very possible with MCAD tools.

Of course, it would be in Autodesk’s best financial interest if architects needs surpassed the capabilities of their AEC software. They would be only too happy to sell Inventor to them.

But pity the poor architect. Once all he had to learn was AutoCAD, and he probably felt that had taken a lifetime to master. Now, an architect risks falling behind unless he learns 3D, BIM, rendering, collaboration, and more.

Never mind the cost of all this software — and the bigger book cases needed — how can one hope to be proficient in AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Inventor, Maya, Revit, Civil3D and NavisWorks? They all have different interfaces, commands. And what a headache to transfer data! Even some of these Autodesk applications cannot read each others’ native data formats.

Autodesk appears to be somewhat aware of this burden. One highly placed Autodesker has said there is a long term commitment to achieving more of a commonality among the various applications to reduce the training burden. "But don’t expect them all to look the same," they added.

An alternative would be to add capability to applications the user was already familiar with. Couldn’t curvy shape technology could be made available in a Revit pull down menu or icon?

Now, really — how much profit would there be in that?