While many of the new cloud services are aimed at users of Autodesk's building information management (BIM) platforms, there is a good variety of stuff likely to appeal to mechanical engineers and designers looking for more flexibility in integrating CAD and other design capabilities into their day-to-day work routines. Acknowledging its previous cloud efforts, Autodesk Product Line Manager for Cloud Platforms Shanna Tellerman frames the announcement as "Autodesk diving into the cloud in a meaningful way with a collection of services that will connect together more and more...
"The opportunity [in the cloud] is pretty widespread for us to extend our current desktop tools and take the processes and workflows that our customers use today and help them do more powerful things in the cloud," she tells Design News. "There are a lot of ways traditional software is changing, and the cloud used in the right place for the right kinds of methods is where we are focusing."
In addition to allowing users to access and store their designs anywhere and to view and collaborate on models via Web browsers or on mobile devices, the Autodesk Cloud platform will also leverage the scalability and power of the cloud to offload some of the more heavy-duty processing chores from users' desktops, freeing up their machines for other work. In that vein, the Autodesk Cloud Rendering service lets users tap into powerful rendering capabilities offline on the Web, helping them better visualize designs and increase the number of renderings they create without having to invest in expensive, powerful hardware.
Autodesk Inventor optimization offloads simulation tasks to the cloud, letting users test multiple design variables.
Autodesk Inventor Optimization, another new, upcoming cloud service that was previously known as Project Centaur in the labs, taps cloud resources in a similar fashion, but this time for offloading complex simulation tasks. By performing simulation in the cloud instead of using desktop resources, engineers have the ability to explore more variables, allowing them to better optimize designs around weight, cost, and safety factors, Tellerman says. Autodesk Inventor Optimization will launch shortly.
One other new cloud service of note is Autodesk Cloud documents, Autodesk's version of Google Docs, which is specifically oriented to store and manage design files. Unlike Google Docs or other generic Web-based file sharing services, the Autodesk version is a cloud-based storage system that understands design files so users can readily share and view DWF or DWG files just using a browser. This service is also different from AutoCAD WS, a Web service that lets a user view, share, and edit DWG files, so it can be used across Autodesk applications, not just AutoCAD.
Some of the cloud services will be available in base form for free to anyone who signs up, Tellerman says. Autodesk subscription customers will receive access to the cloud services free of charge as part of their license fee in addition to 3GB of online storage for each seat of software covered under the subscription.
TJ: You raise probably the most important point about the limitations of putting design tools in the cloud. That's why most of the new cloud offerings offload heavy-duty processing tasks like simulation to the cloud and return results when completed. Otherwise, most of the cloud-based tools we're seeing are more design review and sharing applications, not full-blown CAD modeling.
Until vendors come up with new technology that addresses some of these bandwidth issues, there are some obvious constraints as to what can be effectively done in the cloud.
Cloud (network, remote, whatever the buzzword is today) collaboration ignores one key point: bandwidth.
3D modeling software such as Inventor or Solidworks suck bandwidth like there is no tomorrow. This is fine for an internal network at gigabit speeds (we upgraded the engineering network to deal with this). Take the data outside the building, and now the size of the pipeline from the cloud to your desktop becomes the bottleneck.
I'm writing this from a hotel that has a very slow "broadband" connection. I'd HATE to try to do some collaborative design work while in the field.
I suppose one could argue that I should have a dedicated broadband connection for my computer. Do you really want to have two cell phone bills (one for your phone one for your computer)? Even if I tether my phone, I'm still paying an extra charge for the tethering service to use the bandwidth on the phone I've already purchased. The companies also have capacity limits (2gb a month), and that's not nearly enough for 3D cloud collaboration.
I agree with you that it is a bit unsure how all this will work. Clearly there should be some transition from a regular subscription to cloud. My guess that some sections will be available to all users and the some protected areas for special services ar options.
I'm not sure serving up their software on the cloud changes users' ability (or inability) to transfer licenses. As I understand it, some of the cloud services will be included free of charge as part of a user's subscription license. So you log on to the cloud site with your email and password (or some sort of governing license ID) and you get access to the cloud offerings that correspond to your license. For the services that aren't bundled, Autodesk must offer some sort of way to pay by the pound.
Autodesk built up a Web-based subscription services platform a while back to facilitate delivering software updates over the Web. I'm assuming a lot of the user identification and online licensing capabilities used for its cloud offering stem from that development.
I wonder how they'll manage access. Autodesk has been very strict about controlling licenses/seats, as far as not allowing resale and transfer of its products. I understand why; they have a high-value product. I'm simply wonder what impact if any this might have on the user experience of its cloud products and thus what customer reactions might be.
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