Most journalists cover the AEC software industry because their publisher tells them to. It matters not that they studied, be it English, history, journalism or liberal arts and they are ill-prepared to deal with the intricacies of architecture, engineering and the construction trades. Anthony Frausto-Robledo, founder and editor of Architosh, on the other hand, is a publisher and a practicing architect. He has been one since graduating from Boston Architectural College 30 years ago.
Publishing is no side hustle for Anthony. Publishing and architecture are two whole careers that run in parallel.
How does he do it? An engineer who struggles with just the publishing business needs to know.
“It was easier when I was younger,” Anthony tells me during an episode of the History of CAD podcast. “I had more energy for sure.”
The kids have moved out. This gives him more time, somewhat compensating for the loss of energy.
Anthony’s day starts at 5:30 a.m. Emails, press releases, communications with vendors. Then he writes an article every day or two. He pivots to architecture by 9:30 a.m. Evenings, he monitors the Architosh inbox. It’s a 50 to 55-hour week, most weeks. Always has been. He is not complaining.
I gave up practicing engineering to teaching basics of engineering, then jumped into the deep end of publishing. Each career change was a fork in the road for me. Anthony saw not a fork in the road but another lane.
Architosh: The Name That Says It All
Architosh was launched in 1999. The name is a portmanteau of architecture and Macintosh. For the first decade or so, it was devoted entirely to architects using AEC applications on Apple computers. A narrow lane, perhaps, but Anthony was alone in it.
Anthony broadened his purview in 2008 to cover the full AEC software industry — regardless of the operating system it ran on. He had to. His revenue came from advertising, and Apple had pulled back from professional markets like architecture, shifting its media spend to consumer media. His counterparts, such as Martyn Day of DEVELOP3D and Lachmi Khemlani of AECbytes, covered Windows-based applications and invited him to do the same.
What distinguishes Architosh from the rest of the tech media and social media influencers is, according to Anthony, his tacit knowledge of the profession. His is the only publication in which the editor is a practicing architect, and therefore offers a unique form of tacit knowledge. You can’t get that from press releases, product demos or pitches from the conference stage. Anthony has it from using AEC software on real projects, with real clients, under real deadlines.
“That’s my pitch for why they should keep inviting me to conferences,” he adds with a wink.
His go-to design application is Vectorworks but he is well-versed in Archicad and SketchUp. He has used Rhino a little, though not as much as he wants to.
“My projects don’t require Rhino,” he says.
Point is, Anthony knows what he’s writing about. He doesn’t have to take vendors at their word. He can be the judge.
Sweet and Sour: Vendor Relationships
Anthony and I compared notes on the economics and realities of reviews, especially critical ones. How do you write honest reviews when the companies you’re reviewing are also the ones buying your advertising?
For one thing, Anthony does not do comparative reviews. Stick to the product in front of you. Mention the competition in general terms if necessary, but don’t line them up and rank them.
I wish I had Anthony’s wisdom. In my CADENCE magazine days, we published a three-way comparison between Mechanical Desktop, SolidWorks and Trispectives’ IronCAD. It pleased no one. Autodesk was furious we’d covered their competitors—even though I ended by recommending their application. SolidWorks was furious that we hadn’t recognized their product’s intrinsic superiority. Trispectives stayed mum —and proceeded to fade from the spotlight.
Even more pointed in his criticism was David Cohn, erstwhile editor of Cadalyst. He reviewed AutoCAD Release 13 and declared it a hot mess. Autodesk took exception. David lost his job. He talks about it on our Master of Technology Happy Hour podcast.
I lived in fear of the Autodesk Mafia, as I called it. It wasn’t entirely a joke.
I ask Anthony if he has ever had to check his rear-view mirror after a critical review.
“I have not,” he laughs.
I’m sure he doesn’t need to. Anthony’s criticism is no doubt more gentlemanly than mine. The most critical he ever got, I press. It was about Vectorworks. “They actually listened to what I had to say and used it to improve their product,” he says.
Twenty Feet from Jobs
Coverage of software running on Apple led Anthony to his Steve Jobs moment. Jobs, at the height of his influence, was working the crowd at a Macworld party. Anthony was about twenty feet away. He didn’t walk over and introduce himself. Anthony had tried to register the “Architosh” with the US Patent Office and had been rejected. The examiner determined the name could be confused with an Apple product or that Apple itself might want it. Anthony wasn’t sure if Jobs would bring it up.
“I wasn’t sure how he’d react,” he told me. “I didn’t really want to get a bad reaction.”
He chose to let the opportunity to meet Jobs pass, but later learned from people who knew Jobs that not only was jobs aware of Architosh but liked his writing. A review Anthony wrote about a 3D modeling tool called Modo—developed by Luxology, entirely native to the Mac—has been forwarded to Jobs.
“I probably should have gone up and introduced myself,” Anthony said. “I didn’t need to worry.”
There was a lot to like about Jobs, his singular certainty, his design sense. The Isaacson biography shifted his view of Jobs somewhat. Though Anthony found it to be a great work—another strong Isaacson bio—it complicated the picture. The book made the flaws visible in ways other accounts had not. Isaacson lays Jobs bare. Literally. Bare feet in the office. The smells. Plus, the treatment of others was anything but gentlemanly.
The Mac and the AEC Market: A Long Grudge Match
Here’s the frustration Anthony and I share. Apple hardware is now unambiguously better. Apple silicon lets MacBooks run circles around Windows workstations in the tasks AEC professionals actually do, for example, rendering. And yet the software ecosystem still lags. AutoCAD’s Mac version exists but its architectural add-ons are only available for for Window. Revit on Mac is not a serious discussion.
Why did the engineering and architecture software industry turn its back on Apple? The AEC software industry has orbited Windows for the last three decades. AutoCAD first, then Revit. The installed base will not move from the Autodesk platform. SketchUp, even with its great improvements in ease of use, shook the base only a little. Most of Autodesk users stayed in place. A new generation of design and engineering software, like Shapr3D and nTop, runs on Windows. Startups addressing design, engineering and manufacturing, if not running on the cloud in a browser, follow suit.
“It’s a matter of gravity,” says Tony. Autodesk’s userbase is the largest, hence the most gravity.
The calculus is shifting, though. Mobile-first and cloud-first development means desktop is increasingly an afterthought. The platform debate may not be as polarizing as it once was.
The Graphisoft Story
Graphisoft is the exception to the Windows-only rule. Graphisoft’s Archicad was built on the Mac from the beginning. And there’s a Jobs story there, says Anthony. In the late 1980s, Jobs met the Graphisoft team at CeBIT in Hannover, seeing the application that would become Archicad, and was reportedly so impressed that he helped them get Macintosh hardware behind the Iron Curtain into Soviet-era Hungary.
“Both Graphisoft and Apple are true innovators and plot their own course — like pirates,” says Anthony. “Apple even used to fly a pirate flag.”
Sketching Still the Fastest way to design
A fan of Apple devices myself, I tell Anthony about being dazzled the first time I saw Shapr3D demonstrated. István Csanády, the founder, stood before a small group with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil and began creating a 3D mechanical part. From a distance, it looked like he was sketching freehand, but he was using a Parasolid engine. On a tablet! I thought of it as a world-changing moment.
It wasn’t, though. The mechanical design and engineering software userbase did not budge.
Anthony understands the appeal of creating precise geometry on the tablet, but he has his own take. He sketches—prolifically, by his account—but not in a CAD environment. His hardware of choice is a reMarkable tablet. He sketches freehand. No 3D. No constraints. Just a trace paper look and feel on a screen.
“The sketching process is quite fluid and fast,” he said. “You’re working out ideas. It’s not shapes you need to get into 3D yet.”
There’s a whole theory of architectural cognition in that. The sketch is where you think. The CAD model is where you commit. Conflating them, even with a natural interface like Shapr3D’s, misses the point of what the pencil is for.
Morfolio Trace—the digital equivalent of tracing paper—was his example of software that got it right. Vectorworks acquired the company earlier this year.
AI, Tacit Knowledge, and the Next Generation
And because today’s rules of engagement in tech circles demand discussion of AI, we end up talking about implementation of AI in CAD software and in writing.
Anthony had been testing Ares Commander, an AutoCAD competitor that has baked OpenAI directly into its interface. You can literally ask it how to draw a line on your first day. It will guide you through.
He’d gone further: issuing a single prompt to draw a series of interconnected lines—an outline that could be a building footprint or a mechanical profile—and the tool handled it. He could reference the first, second and last lines. Connect an endpoint to a midpoint? It understands.
“When you see that it can put together a very large prompt and do a bunch of things rather quickly,” he said, “that’s when your eyes open.”
His prediction: AI will lower the barrier to switching between software applications. Firms will move between applications with less pain. The learning curve that has kept Revit and AutoCAD entrenched for decades may indeed flatten.
He stops short of using AI to write. He uses it for ideation, then proofreading and copy-editing. In between, he works through the structure of an article, then writes it. He has an editorial method he describes as first creating a skeleton. The AI adds flesh to the bone. The style remains his.
On the question of whether AI will eliminate junior architects and engineers—the grunts who do the lifting in every professional firm—he was measured and not all that concerned. His own kids are in the film industry, an industry being reshaped by AI. He understands why young people in film would be worried.
Anthony can afford to be secure. Thirty years of industry experience has got to be worth something. AI has not, on its own, been able to design a building of beauty, he seems to suggest.
Not as of yet, I think.
You cannot prompt your way to a final design, he seems to say.
Not at the time of this writing, I conclude.