Vectorworks, Inc.

And obviously, DWG became a de facto from the AutoCAD side of view.

And so then players like Revit, not Revit, but ArchiCAD and Vectorworks needed to write DWG back in the day as the original transfer mechanism.

And so in certain instances, the players have had this this lock-in um but i mean the argument about vendor lock-in it's taken a different turn now where your files are in the cloud and and if you've got a lot of files in the cloud then certain vendors are taking the view that if you want to take them out then there's transfer costs involved and that's holding people to ransom a little bit from the point of view that here you were providing a service but You don't want to let me go, so you're going to penalize me if I do want to go.

And that's got nothing to do with the file format.

I would go into the shop to work because that's where I thought I was supposed to be, right? I was like, okay, you know, I'm just doing tech, you know.

And then I would get yelled at in the shop by somebody, go to the office to sit, like, in the designer area, you know, like, work on Vectorworks, whatever, and then be yelled at there to go back to the shop.

And I was like, where do I

work here? Where do I work? Like, what do I do? Yeah.

um companies that are interested in that or do ask for xyz uh certain things and it would be more for uh quick uh like research images i feel like which i still personally don't necessarily agree with that because that's not how the physics of light works um personally but i do understand um that it is a tool and if you need to be able to convey quick ideas um and it's something that like i said the client is inclined to um then i feel like it's one of those things like okay well that's something that if we want to use it as a tool moving forward uh okay cool but in terms of like pure creation especially because we're talking about Generative AI versus the AI tools.

We use AI tools all the time in Vectorworks and various Adobe suites.

But it's also going back to kind of talking about that to where these tools are tangential.

taking certain programs, spitting them out and making open source versions of that too.

Um, I work with a whole bunch of vendors doing that sort of work.

Um, and even just like menial tasks, like, like a designer just already has like a full rig in Vectorworks and it's already all there, but they need just a few minute changes here and there that are kind of a pain in the ass to do, or they just don't want to do it.

I'll gladly take that work on because I find that stuff really interesting.

Like I'll just sit there and zone out.

I was going to say

you use Vectorworks.

Is that like your main thing you use Vectorworks? Yes.

That's, that's what I mainly use.

And I was lucky enough in, I think it was 2014, 2015, to cover someone that was the technical manager that was on leave, I think, for three months.

And during that time, we bought a software called Vectorworks and obviously Monash paid for it.

So it's a very expensive piece of software.

And that was the only way I was ever going to be able to learn this software.

So I got the university to pay for it.

So we bought this software and I just kind of, delved into it.

And Vectorworks is sort of what I draw everything in today.

Like 10 years later, it's what I do my designs in.

... front of house.

And, um, a big part of Mick's workflow at the time, Vectorworks and drawings, and that's become more of a thing.

At that point, not a huge amount of...

It, it was still kind of Mi- was drawing system flow drawings.

It was all Excel spreadsheets and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, um, so trying to get hold of Vectorworks when you're a poor associate.

Yeah.