The DWG problem.
“Police in Russia said on Wednesday they were searching for thieves who plundered technical equipment from a top-secret military aircraft.” Have you heard of the myth about a man who found the blueprints of a F18 Hornet and sold them on ebay? Why is this illegal? It is just paper? Is not the drafting or the drawing but the engineering techniques found in it that is worth money.
How much does Autodesk make in revenue?
US$3.27 billion (2020)
Operating income
US$343.0 million (2020)
Net income
US$214.5 million (2020)
Total assets
US$6.18 billion (2020)
“Indeed, recent data from the BSA, shows that the United States, though lowest in the proportion of unlicensed software, comes up as first in the total value of pirated software. At an estimated “loss” of $9.1 billion, it is more that both China (70 percent piracy but second place in loss with $8.7 billion) and India, which has a bit more control per capita (58 percent unlicensed and about a third of the loss at $2.7 billion). One CAD CEO tells of the heartbreak of being offered his company’s software years ago for a few dollars worth of local currency in a market.”
Check out the 10 reasons why people pirate software.
“The defenders of copyright infringement would say, leave it if you can’t afford it.”
Ephesians 4:28 ESV /
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
“The DWG format is probably the most widely used format for CAD drawings. Autodesk estimates that in 1998 there were in excess of two billion DWG files in existence.”
Let the pirate no longer pirate right?
I have been in the 2d drafting business for 10 years and have tried to use non-Autodesk open source programs to open DWG drawings and it is not possible. Why? Autodesk considers DWG a close format. Why? All the drafting industry uses the DWG and this is a close format since they created.
“As neither RealDWG[10] nor DWGdirect are licensed on terms that are compatible with free software licenses like the GNU GPL, in 2008 the Free Software Foundation asserted the need for an open replacement for the DWG format.”
People have done all kinds of things to try to solve the problem but most of the time it ends up as a “copyright” DWG infringement.
“Several companies have attempted to reverse engineer Autodesk's DWG format, and offer software libraries to read and write Autodesk DWG files. The most successful is Open Design Alliance,[11] a non-profit consortium created in 1998 by a number of software developers (including competitors to Autodesk), released a read/write/view library called the OpenDWG Toolkit, which was based on the MarComp AUTODIRECT libraries.[12] (ODA has since rewritten and updated that code.).” this ended up on a lawsuit.
Only a few can afford it:
“The price of a monthly AutoCAD subscription is $210 and the price of an annual AutoCAD subscription is $1,690 . Software for 2D and 3D CAD. Subscription includes AutoCAD, specialized toolsets, and apps. Software for 2D and 3D CAD.”
Autocad LT is about 60 dollars per month but this is too high. In the United States a“Civil Engineers made a median salary of $87,060 in 2019. The best-paid 25 percent made $113,580 that year, while the lowest-paid 25 percent made $68,130.” In China “A person working in Engineering in China typically earns around 24,700 CNY per month. Salaries range from 7,850 CNY (lowest average) to 52,300 CNY (highest average, actual maximum salary is higher).”In other parts of the world an engineer makes about 6,000 dollars per year. This is about 28 percent of total income if a person bought one Autodesk license. Those who are honest cannot afford AutoCad and are morally obligated (ethics) not to steal it.
What does the program do? It allows all of the Construction industry to be under one common file format. That is the only thing that it does, The problem is that the format is owned by one company. The intellectual property is not found on the software but on the construction documents. One can draw this intellectual property with a pencil and would still be worth a lot of money.
Autocad has been the strongest CAD platform and this is good because it creates jobs. On the other hand it excludes poor people from using the program without pirating it. The industry must either create a format compatible with another Cad platform that is not owned by one company and it is sharable.
Please sign a petition that makes all drafters share their work in an open format that is not engineered to freeze, or become corrupted if not open in native Autodesk products.
(the falling water architect plans.)
Check out the following plan is not drawn on AutoDesk but it is relevant.
AutoCAD or AutoDesk in first class countries will alway be strong, I am only a poor craftsman who is under the constraint of biblical principles not to pirate software.
Works Cited
“.Dwg.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Dec. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dwg.
“10 Reasons Why People Pirate And Illegally Download Movies, Songs, And Software.” Fossbytes, 29 May 2017, fossbytes.com/10-reasons-why-people-do-piracy-and-download-movies-shows-albums-software/#:~:text=Short Bytes: People download pirated,indulge themselves in copyright infringement.
“Frank Lloyd Wright - Falling Water Floor Plan - Architectural Models.” The Falling Water Floor Plan - Howard Architectural Models, www.howardmodels.com/frank-lloyd-wright/falling-water-model/falling-water-11.html.
“Russian Police Hunt Thieves Who Plundered Top Secret 'Doomsday Plane'.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 9 Dec. 2020, www.reuters.com/article/russia-army-theft/russian-police-hunt-thieves-who-plundered-top-secret-doomsday-plane-idUSKBN28J1Y1.
“Seeking Pirate Booty-Autodesk Aims at 6 Million Unlicensed Users by RoopinderTara.” Engineering.com, www.engineering.com/story/seeking-pirate-bootyautodesk-aims-at-6-million-unlicensed-users.
My Ideas to create a new command line to be use in Cad.
In this case the drafter oints to the screen and will say the command (Line) he moves his finger and saids 10 feet until he draws the box.
He can say circle, spline or things like that.