Category: <span>AutoCAD</span>

Category: AutoCAD

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, BricsCAD, Bricsys, CAD Management

Bloatware – a tale of two CAD applications

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You may have seen me mention in passing that AutoCAD is bloatware. That’s not just the general grumpy-old-user moan you see from long-term users like me, who can remember when AutoCAD used to fit on one floppy disk. Yes, programs get bigger over time as new functionality is added and old functionality needs to be retained. Hardware gets bigger, better, faster over time to compensate for that. I get that. Understood. The AutoCAD bloatware problem is much more than that. AutoCAD is literally ten times the size it needs to be, to provide the functionality it does. How do I know? …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, BricsCAD, Bricsys, Customer Service, Performance, Win

Bricsys shows Autodesk how to do mid-term updates

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BricsCAD V17.2 is out. Although there’s nowhere near as much new and useful in this mid-term update as in the full upgrade from V16 to V17, there’s more here than in Autodesk’s last mid-term update, AutoCAD 17.1. There’s even arguably more than in the uninspired AutoCAD 2018 upgrade, including those 17.1 features. But that’s not the main reason I say Bricsys is schooling Autodesk in how to do mid-term updates. While Autodesk is restricting such updates (including the bug fixes and security updates included in those updates) to subscription and maintenance customers, Bricsys is doing no such thing. BricsCAD V17 …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Autodesk, Other Autodesk Products, Rental, Subscription

New Autodesk subscription offer to perpetual license holders

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Don’t get too excited. Autodesk’s recent attempt to price-force perpetual license maintenance customers onto subscription (rental) remains in place, unchanged and just as unappealing as before. If you’re one of those customers, there’s nothing new here of interest to you. This new offer, at 30% off the normal but extremely high subscription price, is at first sight even less appealing than the approximately 60% saving that the above offer provides. But it’s aimed at different customers, and there’s the remote possibility that such customers might find it worthwhile. The new offer is called FY18 Q1 Autodesk – Global Field Promotion …

AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, Customer Service, Development, Other Blogs, Win, Writing

AutoCAD 2018 – at last, something to praise

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This isn’t supposed to be an Autodesk-bashing blog. Really, it’s not. Sure, Autodesk (and anyone else) gets criticism where deserved. There’s been a lot of that lately, but only because Autodesk has thoroughly deserved it. I don’t make up things so I can have a go; Autodesk provides the material all by itself. Among other things, I’m a customer advocate. I don’t care who you are, act in an anti-customer manner and I’m going to slam you. Hard but fair. Dish up bullshit to your customers and I will gleefully point that out and heap derision on you. Deal with …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, Bug, Customer Service, Tip

AutoCAD 2018.0.1 mystery partially resolved but questions remain

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As I mentioned earlier, the release of AutoCAD 2018 was followed almost instantaneously by the first update, 2018.0.1. At the time of writing, there was no official information about this update. Some information is now available, but more questions have arisen. If, like me, you don’t/won’t/can’t have Autodesk desktop app running on your systems, the only current official way to get at the download is using Autodesk Account (but read the whole of this post before you go there). That’s also how you get at information about the update. Go to Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons. From there, …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, DWG, Other Blogs, Thoughts

AutoCAD 2018 – why did the DWG format change?

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In my review of AutoCAD 2018, I had this to say about AutoCAD 2018’s changed DWG format: Why does AutoCAD 2018 need a new DWG format? It probably doesn’t. The 2013 DWG format is capable of holding pretty much anything you want… Although Autodesk cites performance reasons with certain drawings, I strongly suspect the new DWG format was introduced purely to make life difficult for competitors, and to encourage wavering customers to stay with Autodesk for fear of losing compatibility. In other words, it seems likely this is an anti-competitive change rather than a technical one. In a recent blog …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, AutoCAD LT, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Tip

AutoCAD 2018 – disable InfoCenter

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Here’s another AutoCAD 2018 download, just in case you haven’t had enough. If you want to disable AutoCAD’s InfoCenter (and you should, unless have a specific reason for keeping it – here’s why), go get the updated download from uber-expert Owen Wengerd’s ManuSoft Freebies page. It works for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT.

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Bug

AutoCAD 2018 – there’s already an update

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If you downloaded and installed AutoCAD 2018 yesterday and don’t/won’t/can’t have Autodesk desktop app running on your systems, you may already have another download to do, because AutoCAD 2018.0.1 is out. At the time of writing there is no sign of this update on Autodesk’s main site, but you can get at it using Autodesk Account. Go to Management > AutoCAD > Downloads > Updates & Add-ons. All that’s downloaded is an executable. No readme, nothing. There is currently no official information about the reasons behind this update, what it includes, what it might affect, how to include it in …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2017, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, Other Blogs, Other Sites, Spin

AutoCAD 2018 – bear this in mind

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Given the dearth of new functionality in AutoCAD in recent years, it’s understandable that Autodesk has taken to claiming credit for the same thing twice. The same features have been touted once for the 2017.1 mid-term update and again as 2018 new features. Even I fell for it, listing linetype gap selection as a 2018 feature in my original review. For the purposes of reviewing the earlier AutoCAD releases and AutoCAD 2018 as upgrades, I have included the 2017.1 features in 2018, not 2017. Some of those features are praiseworthy, and there have been some minor improvements to some of …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2018, Autodesk, Interoperability

AutoCAD 2018 – 2/10, would not rent

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It must be March, because another AutoCAD has just been launched. Despite this one being codenamed Omega, I’ve been assured it’s not the final AutoCAD release. The good news is that AutoCAD 2018 is twice the upgrade that 2017 was. But hold your excitement, because the bad news is that 2017 was only a 1/10 upgrade. Autodesk has continued the well-established tradition of acting like a low-quality sausage machine, reliably popping out consistently unexciting products at regular intervals. Here’s what’s in this year’s underwhelming sausage: Xrefs now default to relative path attachment and there are a few associated tweaks including …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, CAD Management, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

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This is a revised version of the Autodesk license costs options – summary post, where I examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. This version is based on limited new information from Autodesk. While this post can be read alone, to better understand the context you may wish to check out that summary and the preceding posts in the series: 1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now 2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, CAD Management, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk license costs options – summary

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Note: an updated version of this post is available, using new costing information from Autodesk that was unavailable when this original summary was written. In this series of posts, I have examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. In this fourth and final post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up. However, that means this is a very long post. I want to ensure one essential point …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, CAD Management, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk

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Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted. In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. In this third post, I examine what happens if you do something out of the box. Something Autodesk didn’t plan on you doing, and something it won’t like. What if you don’t renew your maintenance and then maybe hop on the subscription gravy train later? What if you don’t renew your maintenance and switch to a non-Autodesk product? As stated …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, CAD Management, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch

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Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted. In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. In this second post, I examine what happens if you switch from maintenance to subscription (rental) once the recently-announced offers kick in from June 2017. As stated in my first post, staying on maintenance is the baseline with which I’m comparing these options: Option 1 – stay on maintenance Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020 Pros: keep …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, CAD Management, Rental, Subscription

Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now

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Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted. In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. Once I’ve gone through all the options, I’ll do a summary post that compares everything, but there are so many variables that a single post that covers all the options in adequate detail would be very long and complex. First, I need to describe what I’m using as the basis of my comparison. Prior to Autodesk’s recent announcement, the annual …

AutoCAD, Autodesk, Nostalgia, Rental, Review, Subscription, Thoughts

33 years of AutoCAD upgrades rated – part 5 – summary

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In this final post of the series, I’ll examine the patterns that have emerged from the upgrade history I rated in parts 1 to 4. Bear in mind I’m only assessing the DOS (up to R13) and Windows (from R12 on) versions of the full version of AutoCAD. Of course, this only represents my opinion of those releases and is bound to be biased by the uses I and my users have for the software. Your experiences and opinions will almost certainly vary. What can I say? My assessment is based on a third of a century of experience, and …

AutoCAD, Nostalgia, Review

33 years of AutoCAD upgrades rated – part 4

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In this series of posts, I am looking back on all the AutoCAD upgrades I’ve experienced over the years and rate each of them out of 10. See post 1 for information about what the ratings mean. In part 4, I rate AutoCAD 2011 to AutoCAD 2017. AutoCAD 2011 (March 2010): 5 – Object transparency was a very important enhancement for some. The X-Ray and other visual styles made 3D editing more efficient. Object visibility (independent of layers) was handy but has confused some DWG recipients ever since. Selection Cycling, Add selected and Select Similar (which had been in AutoCAD-based …

AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2017, BricsCAD, CAD Management, Development, Interoperability, LISP, Performance

BricsCAD’s LISP kicks sand in the face of AutoCAD’s

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If you’re a power user or CAD Manager transitioning from AutoCAD to BricsCAD, one of the things you’ll like is that almost all of your LISP routines will just work. That’s not an statement that can be made about various Autodesk products that bear the AutoCAD name, such as AutoCAD 360, AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD for Mac. It’s not just simple old AutoLISP code that runs in BricsCAD, but complex dialog routines that use DCL, and Visual LISP stuff that uses ActiveX. Yes, even on the Mac and Linux platforms. Some DOSLib functions are built in and the rest can …

AutoCAD, Nostalgia, Review

33 years of AutoCAD upgrades rated – part 3

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In this series of posts, I am looking back on all the AutoCAD upgrades I’ve experienced over the years and rate each of them out of 10. See post 1 for information about what the ratings mean. In part 3, I rate AutoCAD 2004 to AutoCAD 2010. AutoCAD 2004 (March 2003): 5 -The return of Express tools was a good start. Better still, Autodesk’s abortive attempt to sell Express Tools as an extra meant some effort had been put into improving them and they were much bigger and better in 2004 than they were in 2000. The death of the …

AutoCAD, Nostalgia, Review

33 years of AutoCAD upgrades rated – part 2

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In this series of posts, I am looking back on all the AutoCAD upgrades I’ve experienced over the years and rate each of them out of 10. See post 1 for information about what the ratings mean. In part 2, I rate AutoCAD Release 12 to AutoCAD 2002. AutoCAD Release 12 (June 1992): 9 – Big, big changes. A mass of UI and other improvements. Lots of new dialog boxes. The first release that retained its predecessor’s DWG format, which was very handy. DCL gave LISP and C programmers the ability to create dialog box commands. The first usable Windows …