Shafted again

[Alexander McGee]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Ed, I can tell you first hand that Autodesk has placed a bad taste in our team's mouth. Does the Website award tell you what tools you must use? Does the Industrial design award tell you what tools you must use? The answer to both these questions is "no." Do the animation awards tell you which software you must use? You bet. Does the Inventor Award tell you what software to ... oh wait ... Inventor Award. The Autodesk guy was looking at our poster in front of our pit showing our robot design and use of solid models. He asked, "who did all the great Inventor work?" We replied, "we used SolidWorks." What he said next floored me. He said, "oh, that's too bad ... never-mind." Are you kidding me? That is ridiculous. The Inventor Award is a joke to me because it EXCLUDES any team that chooses to use a different set of tools to do robot design. Anyone who uses Inventor to do design, don't get me wrong, it is a great tool and keep using it but the award has an ulterior motive that just doesn't sit well with me.

-Paul

Paul, I respect what you have said here, and understand where you are coming from. However, I would like to point out some facts.

Some teams do use other pieces of software. Maya is one of the favorites, as well as Lightwave and other utilities such as poser. I do most of my modeling in UG or it's cousin solidedge, then I import it to max. Some teams don't even use max at all, and render straight from maya, and then re-construct with some other video editing program to hide the video signature.

Regardless, the thing to keep in mind is that Autodesk is an “Official Sponsor” of FIRST teams, right up there with FedEX. Of course they want teams to use their product, and of course FIRST is going to make the award requirements include their software.

To put this in perspective, perhaps a FedEX rep was wandering through the pits during shipping, and noticed a UPS label on your crate. They would probably wonder / ask why you chose UPS for this shipment, as their company had provided several air bills. Even if you used them all, you would probably continue to use FedEX for your robot crate. I know we did.

These companies aren’t selling this stuff to FIRST. Autodesk doesn’t make huge amounts of money each year by selling FIRST 1000 copies of their software. It is donated, educational material. They get really good advertising, and FIRST provides them with thousands of students who are willing and able to use their software, and get really good with it. Win-win baby.

A true animator won’t stick to one piece of software. I don’t know any animators / CAD guys here at Stryker Instruments who only use WildFire (our companies software of choice). People try new things, to extend their skill and learn.

Autodesk gives us access to very expensive software, and I for one am grateful of that.

-Alex