Evan on Engineering Software

I was just reading what Greg Milliken, CEO of Alibre, had to say about FUD in the CAD industry.  He was relating SolidWorks' competitive analysis of Alibre to his experience, 20 years ago, writing a competitive analysis of CADKEY when he worked at Autodesk:

To produce the piece I recall sitting and working with CADKEY at length and finding it had all these robust and elegant tools for real mechanical design in 3D. It could do things like calculating precise apparent intersections, snapping directly to them, trimming relative to them, etc., or projecting geometry onto other planes with the result being precise analytical curves, like an ellipse or spline...

As an engineer, I was really impressed. I recall even calling CADKEY for support a number of times. I actually got to be known there, the Autodesk competitive guy, and they really supported me, graciously I might add.

I was sweating it because I knew, at that time at least, CADKEY was technically far better for mechanical drafting and design. I was young and idealistic, fully believing it was more about technical merit, what you knew, not who you knew. All they needed to do was keep doing what they were doing. Unfortunately, for them and the industry, they didn’t keep doing that. They got pushed off their game. FUD.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to the folks at CADKEY. I was part of the reason -- albeit probably only a small part -- that a better product was beaten in the market by a weaker one. 

At the time Greg was writing his analysis of CADKEY, I was an AutoCAD dealer.  And I remember being frustrated, knowing that AutoCAD was not good enough... but also knowing that better products, such as CADKEY, Anvil 1000MD, and FastCAD were going to lose the marketing battle.

Flash forward to today.  CADKEY has grown to become KEYCreator -- moving far beyond AutoCAD's capabilities.  Anvil 1000MD is still the best 2D mechanical drafting package I've ever seen.  And FastCAD is still not only the fastest CAD program ever created, it's also still easier to learn and use than most anything out there.  Yet, AutoCAD has, if anything, become even more entrenched over the years as the leading drafting package.

I believe that Greg is right -- that FUD has a lot to do with AutoCAD's continuing success.  Yet, I have to believe that a another big factor is probably the unwillingness of competitors to actually offer users a palatable alternative.