There was a press release today "Autodesk's Flagship Product AutoCAD Receives Accolades From Around the World". This press release mentions the worldwide acceptance of AutoCAD 2005.
"CADalyst magazine featured AutoCAD 2005 among its "2004 All-Stars" (http://www.cadalyst.com/cadalyst/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=101698). The publication's editor highlighted the software's powerful file management tools based on the sheet set paradigm that is common among design firms, as well as support for setting and enforcing drawing standards."
I can speak for the AutoCAD and Viz teams in saying we listen to the users of the products. My team has been all over the world this year visiting customers, holding design validation focus groups, usability studies, online surveys, and other customer related research. The teams visited almost every continent. In fact the AutoCAD 2005 beta program had the participation of customers from over 44 countries. Our goal is to make sure we are listening to the customers that use our products every day when we design the next release and features.
One of the hard things to balance is the different ways and methods customers use our products and this can be different in each local region and discipline so the key is getting the feedback from many customers and detailing use cases for features being considered for the next release and then validating those features with customers.
"AutoCAD 2005 mimics the terminology and processes that have been used in design offices long before CAD existed," said Bill Fane, CADalyst contributing editor and a professor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. "Autodesk has obviously been watching and listening to real-world users."
Thanks Bill.
This is exactly what we are doing by visiting, listening and learning from our customers.
There is a bunch of future design classes like the AutoCAD Futures class by Eric Stover and feature validation sessions at AU this year if you are attending and interested in helping us shape the future of AutoCAD.
We will continue to focus on customer problems and designing solutions to resolve them. Without the customers, we disappear and so listening and making sure we involve customers in all decisions for future products and features is critical to keep AutoCAD number one.
Cheers,
Shaan
