Topic: (AutoCAD LT) Is it time to upgrade yet?

[mjfarrell]

Sub support has also provided some valuable fixes to technical problems which have come up (beware their Seibel eCustomer interface - horrible).

Problems that most likely would not have even existed IF autodesk wasn't in such a rush to market, or actually listened to their customer feedback. 

[dgorsman]

If AutoDesk listened to customer feedback... I'd be trying to use MEP to do P&IDs and Revit for refinery design.  Too many danged building people out there!

[Chris]

(saving the $20k over the last 4 years by not upgrading).

Yes, but what about how much its going to cost you if you decided now to upgrade 40~50k (assuming full autocad)
so in reality, you would have saved 20~30k over the last 4 years by being on subscription

[mjfarrell]

how does buying a product one doesn't install really save you any money...that's just so much 1984 Newspeak if you think about it

And all the while your yearly subscription fees (protection money) allows the company to stay in business with the least amount of effort

[craigr]

 -  There is no way that we are going to go to a FULL version and BricsCAD or any other software is out of the question. That being said....

   I am really on the fence about upgrading to 2013. I know we are pretty far behind everyone else, but other than the fact that all of our workstations are going to Windows 7, and our 2008LT isn't 'rated' for Windows 7, I really don't see a need to upgrade. We have been able to get 2008 to work on Windows 7 without issues, so why fix what aint broken?

   I was hoping I would hear some great reason to Upgrade. But, I've yet to hear any real advantages to upgrading. When we get drawings from outside sources that are a newer rev, I simply use TrueView to backrev them to 2008. It's kind of a pain, but it has been working for us so far.

craigr

[craigr]

   Well, I've downloaded 2013 LT and brought my customizations in. It wasn't easy, but not near as bad as I had anticipated. The only thing that didn't come over well were my custom Icons assignments. But I think that was more my fault than AutoDesk's. On my existing workstation, I didn't have them all in one place. On my new workstation, they are.

   I think I may have management talked into upgrading to 2013 IF I can cut down on the number of 'casual users'. We have a few people that use CAD only to strip floor plans of everthing but walls, doors, etc...  They then export the floorplan to a .jpg to use in their graphics package.

   I was thinking that there may be a FREE CAD prg out there that they can use to clean up / strip floor plans then export to a .jpg to use for their graphics. This would save us a few seats of AutoCAD. Before I spend a bunch of time downloading and trying out different softwares, do any of you have a suggestion?

   The other option is for a CAD user to strip the floor plan for them - not really desirable for them or me.

I would appreciate any suggestions you may have.

craigr

[Chris]

what about switching to network licensing, then determine how many you actually need, and let the causal users fight over a few licenses?  For example, at our office, we have 5 full time users of AutoCAD, we might be looking to hire someone part time, we have another user that rarely, if ever gets on AutoCAD, so instead of purchasing 2 full licenses at 7k* each, just get 1 network seat and let the two users split time on it.  While keeping everyone else on standalone seats.

*using IDSP

[craigr]

That would be a great idea for some companies, but unfortunately, not us. That was one of my first ideas to cut down on seats, but I was reminded that we can't do that.

Most of our CAD users do some of their CAD work 'off site' & not connected to the Internet or any other Network. While they are out in the field, waiting for their devices to be wired, etc.. they often update & / or create CAD Drawings.

craigr

[dgorsman]

Network licenses can be checked out/borrowed, even if you have only a temporary network connection, but IIRC LT doesn't have network licensing...

[mjfarrell]

Network licenses can be checked out/borrowed, even if you have only a temporary network connection, but IIRC LT doesn't have network licensing...

And once 'checked out' that license is no longer available to any other user(s)

[mammajamma]

If it's working fine, don't fix it. If you want to find out the differences you could try this:

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/autocad_lt/

[mammajamma]

I'll admit, I haven't read them, but you might find these links helpful:

what's new in 2010
http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/whats-new-in-autocad-lt-2010.html

what's new in 2011
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autocad_lt_backgrounder_final.pdf

what's new in 2012
http://ltisacad.blogspot.com/2011/03/autocad-lt-2012-is-here-what-you-need.html

what's new in 2013
http://ltunlimited.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/03/autocad-lt-2013-is-here.html

[craigr]

Thanks MamaJama for those links. I have copied them into a doc I plan to present to management on all we will be gaining by upgrading to 2013.

I was kind of disappointed by the 2013 link from Kate Morrical. If those couple of changes is all that is different from 2012 to 2013 then there wasn't much to crow about.

craigr

[mammajamma]

Agreed about 2013. We're only in the process of upgrading to 2012, ourselves. We'll be skipping 2013 and probably 2014 as well, unless there's some huge improvement. We're pretty much on a 2 or 3 version upgrade cycle.
Oh, and I've heard that Help in 2013 is pretty bad.
Check this blog for more info about a whole lot of things.
http://www.blog.cadnauseam.com/

[mjfarrell]

From what I've seen so far 2013 is a real let down.

From the botched 'help' system, all the way through to no Google Earth support in Civil 3D.

It looks like autodesk really dropped the ball on this release.

Most likely the only thing they got right is the new DWG format, which ensures everyone will eventually have to upgrade or deal with conversion issues.