Resellers

[cgrover]

I'm not sure if this question has been raised before or not, but I was wondering if Autodesk requires a person to use their local reseller or if we are not happy if we can use someone else?

I don't think my reseller knows enough about Revit and I have a hard time getting a response so I'd like to look to using someone else who is more knowledgeable and facilitating.

Thanks,
grover

[aaronrumple]

...fewer and fewer resellers around. My old boss has just about bought out everyone in our region.

[Wes Macaulay]

I'm not sure if this question has been raised before or not, but I was wondering if Autodesk requires a person to use their local reseller or if we are not happy if we can use someone else?

I don't think my reseller knows enough about Revit and I have a hard time getting a response so I'd like to look to using someone else who is more knowledgeable and facilitating.

Thanks,
groverNot sure how it works in the States, but here in Canada you can choose anyone who's authorised for a certain division and province.

I would guess that you can use any reseller in Montana who is eligible to sell Revit. Check out www.autodesk.com/reseller (http://www.autodesk.com/reseller) -- and note that this is only with regards to sales. You can pay anyone to get support if you need it! We have clients who we do tech support for, but we can't sell them software.

[christie.landry]

You can pay anyone to get support if you need it!

Wes is right. Just because you bought the box from someone doesn't mean you need to get support from them. There are also very qualified consultants that can help you who travel. If you want support directly from Autodesk that is available as well. It all depends on the amount of support you are looking for, the kind of support you are looking for, and how much you want to pay. I've found in the past, now this is before I was working for Autodesk...you get what you pay for.

If you are still having trouble finding someone. Send me an email and I'll see if I can't point you in the right direction.

Hope that helps.

[cgrover]

My check of the Autodesk website shows one reseller in MT. So does this mean I'm stuck purchasing my software from them? What about purchasing subscriptions for an existing product, does that still apply?

Thanks for the help.

grover

[Wes Macaulay]

My check of the Autodesk website shows one reseller in MT. So does this mean I'm stuck purchasing my software from them? What about purchasing subscriptions for an existing product, does that still apply?

Thanks for the help.

groverYou can buy direct from Autodesk, but even then you name a reseller. Given the high prairie dog / human ratio in Montana, you may be stuck with whoever you've got.

I would try to find out who your Autodesk channel rep is for the area and tell them your concerns. Always helps to have the mother ship do some arm twisting.

[cgrover]

Wes,

Thank you for your advice. I'll look into it and see what I can come up with.

grover

Oh by the way the ratio is about 100/1.

[BomberAIA]

All Resellers are a waste. They give no support with Revit as they did with Acad. I always no more than them. I was glad when you could communicate w/ Revit directly. Now that has changed when Autodesk bought Revit. This Forum is far more valuable than a Reseller. That is my 2 cents.

[Beth Powell]

It is my understanding that if you are dissatisfied with your reseller, you can purchase from any reseller, period. It doesn't have to be MT. You can purchase from CA, VA, or even Wes.

There are a few good resellers in the country that actually care about the users and do know Revit. Find some that do.

[Steve_Stafford]

...All Resellers are a waste...I'm sure you realize when you see this in print how unfair it is to some resellers who work hard to understand Revit, their clients and the markets they serve. Resellers who forget what their mission is and fail to see where they fit in the adoption of technology cycle are the kind you seem most familiar with. Just realize that they play an important role in helping Revit mature in the market. We're grateful that our reseller is not like you describe.

[Wes Macaulay]

All Resellers are a waste. They give no support with Revit as they did with Acad. I always no more than them. I was glad when you could communicate w/ Revit directly. Now that has changed when Autodesk bought Revit. This Forum is far more valuable than a Reseller. That is my 2 cents.I can't get half our users to use this forum. Instead, they use my cell phone and also Netmeeting so I can see their desktops wherever they are and I can see in real-time what's going on. But now that I know I'm a waste, I feel all conflicted inside.

[hand471037]

All Resellers are a waste. They give no support with Revit as they did with Acad. I always no more than them. I was glad when you could communicate w/ Revit directly. Now that has changed when Autodesk bought Revit. This Forum is far more valuable than a Reseller. That is my 2 cents.

Just give them a little time. I worked for a reseller for a while, the one who knows the most about Revit in our area, and when I got there I was more than a little surprised at how little they actually did know about it at the time. They are a lot more up to speed now, and getting better, but you have to remember a fundamental problem with the reseller support model that's never going to go away, and that's the simple fact that most techs working for a reseller have been out of the 'real world' for a while, and in some cases many years, and as such have a very different perspective than you or I. Most have *never* used Revit in production, *never* seen how it really works and fits into a business's workflow, and have only ever fiddled with it- and as such don't understand that the real value of Revit is the efficiency and ease it brings to the rank-and-file's daily tasks. You even see that gap within Autodesk's sales force and the CAD/computer journalists themselves.

I used to argue a lot with my coworkers (friendly-like, mind you) over issues like the viability of display reps within ADT- they would think that it was totally reasonable to think that everyone would understand and use them, for they understood them and used them, and that those that didn't just didn't care enough to learn. It never crossed their minds that it might be a difficult way for people to work, something that conceptually had nothing to do with what there job was, and that many people were simply never going to get it. Not having done production work for years, it was sometimes difficult for them to really see what was important to the actual rank-and-file user. I mean, I once had a lengthly discussion with one of our ADT gurus over curtain walls, for they were saying that the curtain walls within ADT were 'better' because you could make them do a lot more automatically then the ones within Revit, whereas I was saying that the curtain walls in Revit were 'better' because anyone could use them, right off the bat, and it didn't take a guru to make a new one. Time and time again the 'techs' had a myopic focus on 'what you could do' vs. what was actually reasonable, efficient, and practical.

But things are changing, for new people are stepping up to be resellers, customers are asking more and more for Revit (even just to give it a try), and the resellers themselves smell money in Revit (the sales guy I used to work with loved selling Revit, because it was easy to sell and had a nice mark-up)- so the techs will catch up, eventually, and things will smooth out a little more. The guy who did all the Inventor stuff at the reseller said that it was the same thing when Inventor came out; most of the Techs were ex-Autocad people, didn't even understand *why* doing everything in 3D was a good idea, and kind of resented Inventor for shaking things up and making them no longer top geek. He said that once the shakeout finished, everything smoothed out a lot, and now most resellers dealing with that industry had at least a understanding of how Inventor 'fits' into a business.... so I think it's just a matter of time before the same thing happens with Revit too.

If all you've every used is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Then people start buying screwguns, and to you, at first, it still will look like a nail. It takes a while for people to rally get there head around a totally different way of working! :)

[Kevin Janik]

Jeffrey,

What made you leave the reseller you worked for?

Kevin Janik
Otak Architects, Inc.

[aaronrumple]

Ex-reseller here too....
I left because of $$$. The AEC team was 2 people. Me and 1 sales. We generated 2 mil. of 10 mil. revenue in a 40 person company. The boss kept too much.

They are selling ADT like hotcakes to their clients (poor saps)...

[BomberAIA]

I am only talking about my experience in my area, South Florida. You are in Southern California where there are more architects than any other market. I still would prefer to talk directly to Revit.

[hand471037]

Jeffrey,

What made you leave the reseller you worked for?

Kevin Janik
Otak Architects, Inc.

Three things, really: I got tired of the constant debating with people, I got tired of doing tech support, and I got tired of the politics and disorganization.

I loved teaching people who wanted to learn. I liked showing people how to apply Revit to the problems of their business. And I even liked giving presentations to people about Revit. But I got really tired of the constant, repetitive debating that always arose (even within the reseller company!) from people comparing Revit to ADT to Allplan to Microstation... esp. when those people usually didn't really understand the real issues at hand, and mostly just wanted to get into some ******* contest over something...

Also part of the job was doing tech support, sometimes even for ADT, which was something that I really didn't care for. Didn't mind answering my ex-student's Revit questions when they called me up, but having to dig up answers on Autocad 2005 sheet set issues (which I haven't worked with at all, and think is kinda flawed in the first place) or explaining over the phone about the display order & xref problem in AutoCAD 2002 just seemed like a total waste of time.

The politics was the final straw tho. We had a local guy here, head of a *big* firm, who wanted to use Revit on a *big* project, and the local Autodesk sales team was pushing hard for them to use Building Systems instead, to the point where they made the guy out to be stupid for wanting to use Revit, to the point that they didn't even *tell* the Revit team about it, to the point where they were even *going over the head of the guy to the client*. He got so mad he threw Autodesk's sales team out completely, and until *I* called the Revit team, no one at Autodesk (other than the very arrogant Building Systems Team) had any idea of what was going on. And, in the end, the whole thing fell apart, and Revit or Building systems wasn't used on one of the largest projects going out here- it's all being done in Autocad 2000.

Or the fact that I discovered from my coworkers and others that a upper Autodesk sales person had, in the past, when I was working for Huntsman Architectural Group, gone to our direct competition and showed them *my* work to get them to switch to Revit, when we were fighting them over a major client *that we lost to them* over this... bah...

Sorry. Still some bad feelings there.

So I decided that I really just wanted to build buildings and have fun applying technology to the problems and issues of Architecture, rather than working for a reseller, esp. one that represented a company that was so political and problematic. Everyone I ever met from the Development side of Autodesk was wonderful, intelligent, laid back. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the people I met. ;)

[Wes Macaulay]

...most techs working for a reseller have been out of the 'real world' for a while, and in some cases many years, and as such have a very different perspective than you or I. Most have *never* used Revit in production, *never* seen how it really works and fits into a business's workflow, and have only ever fiddled with it- and as such don't understand that the real value of Revit is the efficiency and ease it brings to the rank-and-file's daily tasks. You even see that gap within Autodesk's sales force and the CAD/computer journalists themselves.No fear of that around here. I work with clients on their projects, resolving code or building issues with the design in Revit. Wouldn't have it any other way. If I was only doing tech support I'd go insane; you never feel like you're actually getting anything done.

"Application Engineer" is a term I dread (and don't even use), and for anyone to be a real help, they have to have RECENT project experience. I started in architecture, and have no intentions of leaving it to become an ubergeek.

and the resellers themselves smell money in Revit (the sales guy I used to work with loved selling Revit, because it was easy to sell and had a nice mark-up :)Huh? It's no different than ADT, and the clients are on their own so much faster that you can just see all that ADT consulting dough melt away. :lol:

[Wes Macaulay]

The politics was the final straw tho. We had a local guy here, head of a *big* firm, who wanted to use Revit on a *big* project, and the local Autodesk sales team was pushing hard for them to use Building Systems instead, to the point where they made the guy out to be stupid for wanting to use Revit, to the point that they didn't even *tell* the Revit team about it, to the point where they were even *going over the head of the guy to the client*. He got so mad he threw Autodesk's sales team out completely, and until *I* called the Revit team, no one at Autodesk (other than the very arrogant Building Systems Team) had any idea of what was going on. And, in the end, the whole thing fell apart, and Revit or Building systems wasn't used on one of the largest projects going out here- it's all being done in Autocad 2000.

Or the fact that I discovered from my coworkers and others that a upper Autodesk sales person had, in the past, when I was working for Huntsman Architectural Group, gone to our direct competition and showed them *my* work to get them to switch to Revit, when we were fighting them over a major client *that we lost to them* over this... bah...The whole ADT/ABS vs Revit thing is a huge quandary. It's internal competition, and if they want to go for the big bottom line, Autodesk pushes ADT/ABS.
Not a quote but an aside: since Autodesk Arch Desktop is not called AADT -- the company name isn't in the letters -- shouldn't Building Systems be called BS and not ABS? Obviously someone thought of that.But they bought their BIM-flavoured plum and now they're figuring out to beat the billion dollar barrier while flogging ADT/ABS and Revit all at the same time.

Your story causes me to set my phasers to "Remove from the Gene Pool". Thank goodness for the development people out there...