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Autodesk Suing to Keep Format Closed
An anonymous reader writes "AutoCAD is by far the industry standard CAD tool for engineering drawings. When I was an engineering student it was on every computer in the college of engineering. Autodesk, the makers of the AutoCAD software, are attempting to quash an effort to reverse-engineer the proprietary binary format used by AutoCAD. Looking at the court order, their whole argument revolves around something called TrustedDWG that basically looks like a digital signature that verifies the file was created by an Autodesk product."
From the court papers, the restraining order is against "using or simulating Autodesk's TrustedDWG technology, including but not limited to the Autodesk watermark and/or TrustedDWG code, without Autodesk's authorization, from distributing DWGdirect libraries that use, incorporate or simulate Autodesk's TrustedDWG technology or that otherwise insert or mimic the unauthorized Autodesk watermark and/or TrustDWG code."
It further says this is granted under the Lanham Act, which is "found in Title 15 of the U.S. Code and contains the federal statutes governing trademark law in the United States. "
My (limited) search of the 41 sections of the Lanham Act finds no reference to any technological protections, and everything I can find points to other sections of federal law which deal directly with patent and/or copyright. Anyone running some legal codecs care to explain how a trademark grants protection for code and technology?
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
I've been using CAD programs (mainly CATIA) in my line of work for 10 years and haven't used AutoCAD once since college.
To me AutoCAD is like MS Paint compared to Photoshop. Maybe other places use it more but they sure don't use it much in aerospace CAD.
This doesn't even deserve publicity as there is no chance in hell that it's going to pass. Saying this will pass would be equivalent of Microsoft being able to quash OpenOffice.org and StarOffice's .doc import utilities.
This behavior is consistent with monopolistic thinking: we own the market, so let's raise the barrier to entry and/or companion-software diversity by making our product harder to use.
The thing is, you'd best be sure your monopoly is rock solid before attempting such a move, lest it bite you in the ass when your users find their workflow has a new kink in it.
Interoperability is cool. All the happening kids are doing it. Software mongers who fail to understand this are doomed to wither and die, or rule us with a taste of rising bile in our throats (I'm looking at you, MS Office). Grudging and bitter acceptance is not equal to brand loyalty.
We've been phasing AutoCAD out of our shop here because it won't play nice with others. I doubt we're the only ones.
These stories are free but worth money.
I've been using CAD since the Mid 80s (paper before), and AutoDesk got the jump just because they were the only early serious 2D CAD player when Microsoft hit the street with that, what was it, CP/M derivative OS, called DOS or something.
This is a new millenium and 2D is not gone, but it is dying fast. Somehow they, Autodesk, missed the point that we live and think in a 3D world.
SolidWorks.com has about 500,000 users of their mid-range software and has trounced AutoDesk's various offerings, so AD is just trying to protect what little it has left in 2D. What a pity.
By all rights, AD should have been a leader in low-mid 3D CAD, but they squandered their efforts, not the least of which involve cumbersome user interfaces. I think they needed someone like Andy Hertzfeld and others from Apple's early days to make their CAD interfaces far easier to learn and use.
Good bye AD. I use us no more.
Now History. Part of the lore.
All Autodesk had to do was join the Open Design Alliance, and they could use the ODA libraries without restriction. Instead, they filed suit.
Don't forget to read The Autodesk File for more insights into how the once-revered company became just another soulless money hole.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Not in the mechanical engineering world. 3D packages like CATIA, Pro/Engineer and Unigraphics have long eclipsed it in the high-tech industry.
It's still usefull for making quick sketches etc.
For exporting drawings, dxf and especially pdf are much more important than the dwg format. For 3D data, IGES and STEP are most often used, especially because they're open standards.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
...more inovation please. AutoCAD is desperatley trying to hang onto past instead of leading the way with new inovative and intuitive CAD/3D software. They are no longer the only game in town. Sour grapes.
P226
For those who have never done CAD:
:)
AutoCAD is a 2D drawing tool with functions optimized for the production of scale drawings. It is an extension of the old T-Square And Pencil technique into the computer; a sort of Adobe Illustrator tuned to drafting.
It is very, very good at this, and I found it (given that I had a little old skool drafting experience) fairly easy to adapt to.
But at its core, you're still projecting 3D objects into 2D or psudo 3D (orthometric projections) using the draftsman's brain as the projection device.
Enter Solidworks.
Solidworks is a parametric 3D modeling package. You create the object in 3D, and then the software generates your 2D drawings from it. No more construction lines. No more mismatched views.
There have been 3D modelers before (VariCAD for Linux isn't bad) but Solidworks takes it a step farther - it remembers every step in the construction of an object, and every step is tunable. Where past 3D modelers used Boolean operations to construct their shapes - but then the shape was fixed - Solidworks allows you to change the parameters of every operation at any time. Punch a hole through an object, but then discover it is the wrong size? No problem - just select the hole in the object's construction tree, and change its size.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
It has revolutionized mechanical drawing, to the point where it is inconceivable that I'd ever use AutoCAD ever again. Solidworks is one of the few software packages I've ever used that just left me dumbfounded in amazement at how powerful, easy, and intuitive it is.
And no, I don't work for them.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
When you can't compete in the open marketplace any longer, bring in the lawyers. I'd have to say this is a rather tacit admission that other CAD tools are catching up, and at much better prices.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...millions of bearded virgins would pore over every aspect of the prison security system until an exploit was discovered. A hole would be opened in the prison's firewall and Linus would be rescued through an SSH tunnel.
All the while the prison officials would be just sitting there going, "Doo doo, doot-doot-doot, doo de doo doo-dah..."
Then, in a feat of classically passionate Finnish revenge, Linus would initiate a global hack which would make all of our cities go coo-coo like in Superman III, like when the little silhouette guys in the walk|don't-walk lights starting punching each other out.
And all the while the government would be just sitting there going, "Doo doo, doot-doot-doot, doo de doo doo-dah..."
These stories are free but worth money.
I work at primarily a UGS house, but AutoCAD is still entrenched in the facilities layout, Electrical Controls, facilities management areas. We do cheat though, we use factoryCAD a add-on which provides parametric capabilities.
Now this suit does raise concerns, we manage all data with Teamcenter, We require one data management solution to keep all of the relationships of parts, tools, and layout linked to reduce effort. With the suit AutoDesk may break some of those links. Also our Parametric plugin may cease making valid DWGs.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
I can only speak for my country, but AutoCAD is absoultely huge here in the architect business, at least on a national scale (Sweden), but I believe it's big throughout at least the rest of Scandinavia too, if not Europe. Over here, it's what MS Office is to Office applications, Apache to web servers. Not AutoCAD by itself though; maybe that's what you meant, but AutoCAD with various plugins depending if it's about architecture, industry and piping, HVAC, or something else.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
My father was chief architect for Royal Bank of Canada, when it had it's own architectural dept (wich they closed in the 90s). The department took the entire 7th floor of the Place Ville-Marie building in Montreal. It was a big department with lots of architects, engineers and dedicated drafting machinery like CalComps.
AutoCAD was the *only* thing they had internally. It was *very* big, and they had 3D extensions and bill management.
So, yes. Industry standard. Surpassed? Certainly with products such as Catia, but in the technical plan & drafting area, AutoCAD is still very big. Most small to medium architectural design firms still use it today.
I believe, that of all things, proprietary document formats should be illegal. If I endeavor to purchase a product to create something for myself, my business, or even someone else, it should not the vendor's choice as to how I must access that document at a later point in time. If I decide that it is no longer feasible to continue using the product (due to licensing, technical, or other considerations), I should be free to access my data with any other software of my choosing. The problem with proprietary formats is that they impose what I see as form ownership by proxy, whereby the owner of the software used to create the document has a sufficient degree of control over the documents themselves.
This building you guys got us workin on here, ain't designed by no trusted autodesk product? You can't trust those other designed projects, sometimes things just go wrong on them, the crane pulls something too far and then BOOM! So its like this, we don't move one finger unless it was designed by 100% genuine autodesk products.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
There was a recent discussion about this case, and the central point was NOT that the open source group was reverse engineering documents. It was about the open software's representation of itself as a "genuine" file using the AutoCAD name. The equivalent to a ODT file containing the terminology "Genuine Microsoft Word file, guaranteed to work". I have my issues with Autodesk, but they aren't necessarily the evil ones here.
With the myraid tags and calls in the DWG format, any open source implementation, while well intentioned, is bound to miss a few and create problems. Ironically, the Autodesk Genuine tag was meant to assist interoperability by giving support staff a clue as to why a file might not open correctly. They weren't ever trying to stop the creation or use of DWG files by third party software, and it's likely in their best interests to keep it a de facto standard.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
Documentation/specifications, cable specifications/assemblies, overview drawings, interwiring diagrams, etc are depicted *so well* in a 3D parametric environment.
Sure, the modern set of design tools is far above AutoCAD, but there are quite a few situations where 2D modelling (which AutoCad excels at) is required.
The troll with karma.
I am the IT Director for a county, I can tell you that AutoCAD is used heavily outside of teaching. Not only does our Highway Department use it exclusively for designing civil engineering projects such as roads and bridges, but the State Department of Transport also uses it for nearly every aspect of their projects. I have several friends who work in many different aspects of design and engineering from CNC work to design prototyping for medical devices. Surprise! They all use CAD products from Autodesk.
I hope to god Autodesk loose this case. Their DWG / DWF strategy is a complete and utter shambles. We use AutoCAD because there are tons of plug-ins for our industry, it makes it a very good tool for our drawing office.
Unfortunately, while AutoCAD itself works fine on our network, most of their more recent tools do not. It's a minor point of them not supporting folder redirection... Attempts to point Autodesk at Microsoft's developer guidelines have so far fallen on deaf ears, and I've been complaining of this for over a year now.
Thanks to Autodesks stranglehold on DWG, nobody else produces reasonably priced DWG markup tools any more. And that leaves us stuck using old, buggy, unsupported software, purely because it's the most up to date package produced by Autodesk that still runs on our network and can markup these files.
The sooner someone reverse-engineers DWG the better.
PS. Whoever at Autodesk thought the best way to update their DWF viewer was to embed it within IE just wants shooting. Yes, you heard me, they took a stand alone program and decided it would be better off if it relied on IE... They even went to the effort of creating the File menu structure in html! And yes, SP2 broke it...
It may be that Autodesk has some new version of DWG which is closed, but older versions have been open for many years, as well as DXF. Google on the words autocad compatible, and you'll see it.
IntelliCAD, the most prominent AutoCAD-compatible code base, is still being worked on, and there are new versions of it which are very low in cost, and at least one which is donation-ware. There are quite a large number of companies developing this code-base now. I'm certain that other products are easier to use, but you can still do truly excellent 3D work using the modern AutoCAD-type GUI and its venerable command-line system, and industry compatibility is tremendously high. And because of the command-line system, its scriptability is excellent.
J.E.B.
Joshua Corps
So far as I am aware, no company has EVER succeeded in blocking other people from reverse engineering their file format.
.doc, .xls, .ppt, Project or other file formats. This is why AutoDESK is fighting so hard to keep .DWG closed. Switching to another program, including training your entire user base, is child's play compared to making sure that mountain of existing files you have can still be read and used.
Enter the DMCA, stage right-wing. AutoDESK added basic encryption to the file format starting with AutoCAD 2004. Now, instead of just reverse engineering the protocol, you would have to decrypt it as well. This is now, in the U.S., against the law except for certain conditions. This one, interoperability, may well be one of the conditions, but that will be up to a judge.
And file formats are THE key. This is why Microsoft doesn't provide the full specs on
"Function A is under a different menu in OOo Writer than MS Word" and "This function doesn't seem to exist in OOo Calc" are trivial compared to "I can't read this document" and "My formulas don't work any more".
Lock those customers in tight enough, and they'll not only put up with getting screwed, they'll fight for your right to screw them as hard as you want.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Autodesk was a market leader and a real Silicon Valley 80s-90s wonder. One of the great things that came out of it, indirectly, was the book "The Hacker and the Ants" by Rudy Rucker which had some obvious inspiration from the time Rucker spent at Autodesk. The CEO at that time John Walker is a remarkable guy. As a bunch of people have already pointed out, they are long past market relevance (except for legacy lockin issues) so this is sad, but they were at one time quite the acme of geekdom.
AutoDesk can certainly make a lot of noise about other people using their trademarks (if they are), and courts might listen with some interest.
But no way in hell can AutoDesk deny interoperability with their file formats. The precedents for interoperability as a protected activity are legion, spanning decades.
And if such claims were ever to be allowed even once, it would open Pandora's Box bigtime. The ramifications for all of human industry (not just computing) would be utterly immense, and catastrophic.
A huge amount of manufacturing rides piggyback on standards set by named brands, and really the relationship is symbiotic, although the big brands don't wish to acknowledge that. AutoDesk wishes to have a wholly tied customer base instead of being "merely" the leader in their manufacturing community. Such protectionism is very blinkered.
Hopefully their claims will be denied. If not, this could be very bad.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
It's a trick which has been tried many times before -- make your software not work with other software unless that other software contains your trademark. It usually doesn't work; courts have ruled that if you use your trademark in a functional way like that, you can't use trademark protection. Thus video cards which contained strings like "Some code expects 'IBM' here" (because the BIOS was checking for 'IBM' in a particular location), and similar nonsense.
Of course, throw enough lawyers at enough courts, particularly if your opponents aren't well-funded, and eventually you're likely to get your view accepted.
Yea, but they sued under the DMCA. These guys would have sued under the DMCA probably had it not been for that case. So they are trying a unique approach and calling it a trademark issue. By court standards the previous case would have little precedent on this one (though I'm sure it will be mentioned).
including but not limited to the Autodesk watermark and/or TrustedDWG code, without Autodesk's authorization,
.dwg files are clean from a copyright standpoint but the libraries have the ability to watermark or digitally sign the file--it is the signature in the resulting file generated by the library that is what Autodesk has taken issue with and they have pulled the lawyers out of their legal cesspool..uhhh..I mean department...to block the use of their signatures. Precedent doesn't allow them to block competitors from using the .dwg format itself.
- valve-cover-engine-bling that you can easily fit to your modest little DX for that pimpin' project.
.DWGs properly report what was used to create the file for support purposes anyways. After all, it has ALWAYS annoyed me that Microsoft has always had "mozilla" in their user agent string for all those years as its roots from the original spyglass software gradually withered and died.
That is the key statement in the claim. The code in the libraries that read and generate
The lawyers say that the watermarks and digital signatures are equivalent to a logo and that it is afforded protection under trademark law. The car analogy is pretty apt here: Imagine you want to rice-ify your 1989 Civic--you can get cheap third-pary knockoffs from any company--even those without any affiliation with Honda and those suppliers are legally allowed to make everything from spoilers-big-enough-to-use-as-the-tail-of-a-737 to neon-coloured-ignition-wires-and-matching-chromed
There is next to nothing Honda could do to prevent anyone from making and selling parts with matching bolt patterns, electrical connectors, etc. that interoperate with their cars. Believe me, automakers have tried a few times in the past without success to apply industrial design and patent law without success (and rightly so). What Honda CAN do (and probably should be able to do anyways) is prevent anyone from putting the Honda LOGO on their knockoff parts, or the phrase "Genuine Honda" or similar such markings as it misrepresents the source of the aftermarket parts and leads consumers into making wrong assumptions about the quality, source, warranty, etc. Which is why Honda really doesn't like those fake R stickers and has made some effort to stop them from being made. Of course, those fake Rs are easily produced and distributed do it is a really hard game of whack-a-mole, plus the fakers only have to alter the appearance of their own Rs slightly to get around trademark issues.
Anyways, because of this I don't really have an issue with Autodesk protecting their trademarks--though I think that a digital signature is brushing the line of what constitutes a trademark. If all that is at issue is the idea that a user can open a DWG and look at its properties and it has a "generated by AutoCAD xxxx" property in there when it was NOT generated by AutoCAD then what's the big deal? I think it is probably best that programs that do greate
Where I WOULD have a problem is if Autodesk were to use this signature to prevent interoperability, which would in my mind constitute abuse of a monopoly position. If...at any point and in any way...the absence of a "generated by genuine AutoCAD" signature prevented the file from being FULLY usable in AutoCAD or prevented "genuine autocad" files from being fully used by 3rd party software...then it ceases to be a trademark and becomes an access control mechanism that limits interoperability. Though I imagine then they'd LOVE to pull a DMCA trick....oh well...THAT is the point where Autodesk will have truly moved into the dark side.
"On the other hand, well . . . who gives a shit?"
.dwg file that is not "trusted" into AutoCAD and a dialog pops up with warnings that say the file format is not "trusted, unsafe, etc".
Well, for one, the end users do, when they bring in a
Extending your GM analogy, say you install a non GM part in your GM car and get a blinking light on the dash to the effect of "Car may crash violently or explode through use on non-GM part." What are the results of that? The consumer is scared back into going to GM and GM only to buy the part.
Also, for more analysis of the case, go here:
http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/
I know in North Carolina, there were specific rulings dealing with this, and the outcome ..
...
well damn, just go to Office Depot, they have an entire section dedicated to recycling and off-brand inks.
Ain't to hard to figure out what happened I guess
AIK
Let's say the DMCA etc basically say that "breaking into a locked box" is unlawful, even if the lock is encryption etc...
This case is far different, because no one is breaking into a locked box, What they are doing is creating a new box, which happens to use the same key.
Take the key to your office. You could ask a locksmith to make a lock to fit your office Key - say to lock your bicycle and save the chaos of a thousand keys.
You are not breaking into someone else's locked box.
No on the other hand, if you do not own a key to this office, and you jam a screwdriver into the lock - that is a very different matter.
The question is - do people have the right to make a lock so it works with a pre-existing key. The answer from the court had better be - apsofreakenlutely. The person who owns the information in an autocad file are not autodesk, but the engineer who designed the building, and that engineer has the unequivocal right to use their data anyway they choose, including opening it into a different program. The relinquishment of ownership of a significantly valuable work such as that would surely require more than a contract, it would require meaningful compensation. Unless Autodesk has paid for the services rendered by the author of a file, it has no argument to constrain the use of that document.
The Autodesk format (DWG etc ) is a piece of crap anyway, and it would appear the company is the devil incarnate.
AIK
As someone who's been writing AutoCAD plugins using their API software many years... All the TrustedDWG thing does is basically tell the person opening a dwg in autocad that the file was last saved by a trusted dwg product (i.e. one using AutoDesk's software, or one of their own APIs). Consider it like having the right to slap the Windows XP Certified logo on your software. That's all it does. There's no encryption, no DRM stuff here... it just prints a string of text in the AutoCAD command window when you open the file. Is it right for some other company to claim to be AutoDesk? No. But why does Autodesk bother, you ask? The main concern for AutoCAD here is not that the OpenDesign (formerly OpenDWG) Alliance is reverse engineering their format. AutoDesk is partnered with several companies that use the OpenDesign API, and AutoDesk is well aware of them using it. Opening a dwg generated from the OpenDesign API, however, was marking files as being a Genuine AutoDesk product file, which guarantees that AutoDesk programs were the last programs to have saved the file. Aside from the point that people have been asking AutoDesk to open up the DWG format legally for years, there are some considerations here. Consider the issue of the OpenDesign API having a bug that corrupted the DWG files, in a subtle way that eventually caused problems in AutoDesk programs. AutoDesk shouldn't have to help companies with support agreements to solve it... they can just throw up their hands and say, sorry, but your file was not last saved by us... your other program corrupted this file, talk to them. Really it's only right. Would you expect MS to help you find the cause of formatting loss or file corruption on a word document that you had saved with OpenOffice? What's wrong with trademarking your files? It's not like they are saying it is illegal to use them any way you want to, nor that the OpenDesign Alliance must stop releasing the API... they just don't want another company claiming to be generating genuine AutoDesk files. Also worth noting here is that AutoDesk sells their own API to access dwg files without a copy of AutoCAD or AutoDesk Map installed... This API is currently called RealDWG (formerly known as DwgUnplugged). This is sold at a one time fee to a company with the right to make small applications or viewers for reselling. The fee for the license to make your own dwg format manipulating program is somewhere around $5000 last I heard... for a license to make your own software from the ground up, using their dwg access API and resell it. One last point... According to that site, the OpenDesign people have already released an update that no longer violates the AutoDesk trademark by claiming that their software was an AutoDesk product.
I am not sure which planet you read Slashdot on, but on planet Earth what you are saying is either completely wrong, or you are not correctly verbalizing you argument. In deference to you extremely low /.ID# I am hoping that it is the latter.
"But no way in hell can AutoDesk deny interoperability with their file formats."
I have been using CADD for way longer then I would like to admit, but lets just say I started when CADD was invented/initially commercially available. Autodesk has always been the stinky 600 pound gorilla in the room. I have used ACADD among many other competing products, I personally find ACCAD to be very difficult and counter intuitive from a UI standpoint. However; that is not why I am replying to you ridiculous statement.
As a matter of fact AutoDesk ROUTINELY denies interoperability with their file formats. I currently use VisualCADD for 2D drafting, mainly preparing details for the gas stations we build for our customers. VisualCADD is a competing product that is actively being developed. I constantly receive ACADD DWG files from engineers which I can NO LONGER open if the engineering firm is on the latest version of ACADD (I think it is release 14). When contacting VisualCADD support about this, they informed me that this is standard operating procedure for Autodesk on every release. They change the file formats and all competing products must stumble around until a import filter is built. It is complete and utter bullshit.
I should not have to be forced to buy a multi thousand dollar application to do simple drawings. Further more, the Engineer/Customer of the Engineer owns the drawing and SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT to do with their IP what they want. It is like a pencil manufacturer putting restrictions on anything you create with their pencil.
DK
I'd just like to rant for awhile about AutoDesk. I hope no one minds...
I've been a draftsman/designer for 12 years now. In the consulting engineering industry (for commercial, residential, & industrial building design) it is the defacto program. Even companies that standardise with other CAD programs, they have a copy of AutoCAD somewhere just to work with everyone else.
I started out on AutoCAD r10 running on DOS, and I'm currently using AutoCAD Arch Desktop 2004. I've been involved with the program from the level of an individual draftsman, to a CAD manager working with over 100 other CAD operators. I can honestly say, that while AutoCAD's interface (keyboard based) is one of the fastest interfaces around - the file format has always been AutoDesk's most problematic issue.
In AutoCAD 2004, the only file format it will open are the 2000 and 2004 DWG file format. An absolutely useless number of file formats for a company who has had a NEW FORMAT EVERY FREAKING VERSION. What's more, the only other format that AutoCAD opens, is the old DXF format (thank goodness for that at least).
AutoDesk has a horrible habit of pretending that it is the only CAD software in the world. In addition to it's own short term memory about previous DWG formats (thanks for making my old CAD files unopenable assholes), it has no clue how to open a Microstation file, or any other of the other competing formats out there.
Yes, I know you can download a drawing file converter for old ACAD files, but this should have been included in ACAD itself - and the file converter still doesn't open DGN files.
Microstation on the other hand, has changed it's file format ONCE in 10 versions. Not only will it open up the old file format, it also opens up EVERY AutoCAD format as well. I currently use Microstation to convert my old DWG's to new DWG's because MStation does a better job of it than Autodesk's downloadable converter. Hell, the free Bentley DWF-style reader opens up every format as well - something that AutoDesk's viewer can't even do for it's own native format.
DWG files have a long history of becomeing corrupted, often to the point of being unable to be recovered. Do you have a corrupted DWG file that AutoCAD can't recover? Open it in Microstation, and it will recover the file for you instead.
The fact is, AutoCAD is the dominant CAD software for two reasons only. #1, the interface is faster for old-school users (though I must say, a properly set-up system with a trained MStation user is only about 5% slower). #2, since AutoCAD 2004 doesn't open up R14 ACAD files - and can't save down to R14 either - people with R14 are forced to upgrade against their wishes. As if there has been a good reason to upgrade besides mouse wheel support since R13...
Basically, I hate AutoDesk even though I use their product. They do not care a wit about their customers, the industry, or even producing a reasonable product. Even today, 1/4 of the time I save a drawing I LOSE DATA. Nothing like finishing up a design, clicking save to go home, and losing 2 hours of work in the process. I'm sure that AutoDesk would love to say that their new TrueDWG initiative will save me from these worries, but I've had this problem with DWG's (made 100% by me, in AutoCAD) since I first started using the product.
Instead of working with customers to create a truly open file format and competing based upon a superior interface and support - they instead choose compete through vendor lock-in. It's the same as if MS produced a new version of Office every 2 years that didn't open up any other format on earth including the previous version. Oh wait, that's what they do too.. they can both kiss my butt.
Logitech's DOS mouse driver MOUSE.COM (dumped from an actual copy I've here) :
Also mentioned here by other
The Dreamcast boot code checks and runs only games that display "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA" in their Loader.
Opensource environment like KallistiOS feature a Loader that displays the required string on-sreen, and then adds an explanation that in fact, it's not under Sega's License, but that the string is required to the game to boot.
So the trick isn't urban legend and is genuinly used to circumvent such string checks, although I don't know if the trick was also used by PC BIOS cloners
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If AutoCAD is crashing on bad input, that IS a bug. You should deal appropriately with bad data, and crashing isn't appropriate. This sounds like it's bad software engineering on Autodesk's part.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'm confused; you replied to the GP's statment that "But no way in hell can AutoDesk deny interoperability with their file formats" with the following:
You went on to describe examples of ACCAD doing just this in practice. However, in the context of this thread, when the GP said "But no way in hell can AutoDesk deny interoperability with their file formats", I took it to be saying that AutoDesk could not successfully use the legal system to enforce this denial of interoperability. Of course they can technically deny interop. Wasn't the point that a technological item could have it's intellectual property protections weakened when it exists solely to lock out competition?
Pi Ran Out
"If a man says something in the forest, and his wife doesn't hear it, is he still wrong?"
"Good news, everyone!"
For 2D it is probably the best out there. For 3D it is a joke.
I'm using Mechanical Desktop at the moment and the MS Paint/Photoshop analogy is quite appropriate. It is a suicide-prone and retarded cro-magnon midget compared to übermench like Pro/Engineer and Solidworks, at least as long as 3D is regarded.
It is excellent for 2D markup though.
Autodesk have always been the Microsoft of the CAD business and tried to crush the competitors using this kind of scemes for as long as I have known them, which is about 15 years.
There are at least a dozen half-baked CADs out there that can read and write DWG files, but usually there is something that goews awry in the process. I had a backsplash the other month when I recieved a DWG and looked at it in TurboCAD. All was well except that the table with all the important data was missing, which made our communication about the job rather confusing.