Topic: LDD 2007

[Dent Cermak]

I don't think you are missing much. As Mark pointed out on another thread, the changes in LDD have not been that much. i am running LDD3/2002 so i can send poor relations drawings in R14 and I have LDD5/2005 loaded and really like it. I have a stone age computer at home with Windows 98SE so I can't load 2005 at home. My LDD3 is my take home and work on it hoss. I have seen no earth shaking improvements in 2006 and 2007 , but I have read the reports of the earth shaking problems with both, so i am quite happy with my 2005.
I have always waited for the bugs to be reported and fixed BEFORE I load any new release. If you jump right on a new release, you KNOW you are going to hit a stone wall sooner or later. I let all of the gurus here beat their heads on the wall and then I slide in the fixed version.
It used to be that a new release meant significant changes. Now all a new release means is that another year has passed.

[drizzt]

Well maybe I won't beg for an upgrade yet. I know that sooner or later Autodesk is going to succeed in making previous versions unworkable.

[sinc]

Well maybe I won't beg for an upgrade yet. I know that sooner or later Autodesk is going to succeed in making previous versions unworkable.

They already did.  After using 2007 for the last two weeks, I have been driven nearly crazy by random crashes.

LDD 2006 set a new standard with unreliable, quirky, and bug-riddled software.  Not since Microsoft released Windows 95 had I seen such a high level of incompetence.  But LDD 2007 takes everything to new lows.

It seems the last version of LDD that they really did anything with was 2004.  And actually, I'm not sure if they really did anything there, either - I think 2000 had practically all the same functionality.  But the underlying Autocad has been changing dramatically.

All they seem to do is each year, they do a minimal check for conflicts between LDD and the new version of Autocad.  They obviously don't spend much time on it.  So, each year has gotten progressively worse, as more and more unfixed problems creep in.  Random crashes were pretty bad in 2006.  Random crashes in 2007 are intolerable.

They obviously did not send LDD 2007 to a SINGLE beta-tester.  THEY BROKE THE POINT EXPORT!!  If they had sent the product to EVEN ONE beta tester, this problem would have been caught.

Essentially, 2007 is nearly unusable, because of the random crashes.  Everything will seem to work fine, and then when you go to save your drawing, you lose all your work since the last save.  This problem existed in 2006, but it is much, much, much worse in 2007.

And of course, due to the lawsuit, it sounds like 2005 is compromised.  From what I hear, Autodesk is no longer allowed to issue new seats because they violated an agreement with a partner software developer, so it sounds like 2004 is the last, good version of LDD.  Any growing company on 2005 is up a smelly creek.  Can't get new licenses of 2005, and 2006 and 2007 are pieces of garbage.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed or not, but the cost of LDD+Civil Design Companion went up DRAMATICALLY this year, from $300-400 to add on Civil Design Companion to a seat a few months ago, to over $2000 for the same thing now, and the product isn't even usable.  This strikes me at best as highly unethical, and may possibly even open Autodesk to another class-action lawsuit.

It seems Autodesk lately is really not worried at all about unethical behavior, if it makes them money...