I won’t beat about the bush, AutoCAD 2009 is getting a pretty hostile reaction out there. Have a look at Autodesk’s AutoCAD 2009 newsgroup, for example. It’s true that many releases receive a hostile welcome, but this year it looks particularly bleak. Frankly, AutoCAD 2009 is taking a hammering.
I think it’s possible to gauge the general AutoCAD user reaction reasonably well by looking at what is said in places like this, but adjustments do need to be made. There are always some people who are resistant to any change, some who are habitually hostile to Autodesk, some who dislike parts of the new release without fully understanding them, and so on. The percentage of the comments you read that can be attributed to that kind of thing is open to debate, and there is always a point to be made that people tend to complain about things they don’t like and keep quiet about the things they do.
To try to take a more objective approach, I’ve added a poll to the right. This has exactly the same options as my earlier poll from before the release date where I asked for your speculation on how good the product was going to be. It will be interesting to see how that compares with your initial reactions to the shipping product. I’ll repeat this poll later in the life of the product to see if there is any change after people have had a chance to use AutoCAD 2009 over an extended period.
