Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Editor-in-Chief ([email protected])

5 Mar 2004

 

Editorial: Adobe vs Autodesk Document Battle Stirs Debate and Concern

Adobe Heats Up PDF Battle with Autodesk's DWF Format - Macintosh Professionals Stand to Win or Lose by Decision

It agitates me to know end to dwell on the possibly that Autodesk -- a company that years ago coldly turned its back on creative professionals on the Macintosh platform -- might possibly do serious market share damage to Adobe's PDF standard file format in the AEC market...and even the Internet in general. I can say with almost near certainty that the vast majority of Macintosh, Linux and Unix CAD and engineering professionals would much prefer to see a neutral party develop and maintain an industry standard shared document format like PDF rather than let a CAD/engineering software competitor (and a big one at that) take control of such a vital industry standard. This isn't to say that PDF is perfect technology for CAD professionals, but it sure beats having an inferior and platform limiting technology take its place.

Paperless AEC Battle

Unfortunately for end users whenever there appears a major run up to a contest in dominance in format technology journalist everywhere begin to establish a line in the sand. This paperless AEC battle has caused erroneous information to be published and in the haste to pick a winning side many in the industry falsely represent information. In an email letter from Pete Evans AIA, an architect and lecturer at Iowa State University he describes some of these problems:

...A month ago I was in an office training for Autocad 2004 / ADT4 and got a bit hot under the collar when the Autocad trainer [name omitted] started to talk DWF versus PDF. He (strongly) asserted that PDFs were arcane and DWFs much smoother and more efficient for Autocad implicitly -- which I found quite dumbfounding and frustrating.

Five years ago I designed and PA'd (project architected) a project that was printed (CDs/specs) indentically to paper and PDF document that was multipages [long] (50 plus pages) and I added hyperlinking between keys, plans and details while the paper sets were printing...in a couple of hours. This trainer provided some [Autodesk] published literature which compares DWF and PDF and basically lambasts (including incorrect data) the PDF format.

Pete's frustration is completely understandable, on multiple levels. Naturally an Autodesk-oriented trainer is going to promote Autodesk technology; however it is always frustrating to hear of trainers misleading professionals and hopefully most professionals are keen enough to check the facts themselves.

It has only been very recently that Autodesk has seriously taken to heart the dominance of PDF in the AEC market and in many ways they are still in a reactionary mode. Of course they are reacting very quickly. DWF is being promoted as a new industry standard technology to both supplement and replace Adobe's PDF document format. Adobe for its part has developed deep partnerships with company's like Bentley and other Autodesk rivals -- such as Graphisoft. These Autodesk rivals have taken strong measures to promote and extend PDF technology on their respective CAD platforms. It doesn't take a rock scientist to figure out that it might not be in the best interests of non-Autocad firms and CAD rivals to promote another proprietary file format from Autodesk. Doing so may only help Autodesk achieve its goals at the expense of Adobe and the platform-agnostic technology they developed that has profoundly enabled non-Microsoft Windows platforms to participate fully in Internet document viewing, sharing and production.

Pete writes:

With much of the core graphics of Mac OS X based in open formats [like] PDF and OpenGL, I would think this is a mission critical issue [for Apple], especially with AEC in mind.

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