Is Autocad a dying 3d tools?

[Luthor628]

I've been doing 3d modeling in Autocad for years. I am very much happy with the modeling tools and its ease of use.
When my company integrates Navisworks in our system, majority of file types that has flooded in our native folders
from different trades and disciplines were done in Revit.

Now this is scary... Is Autocad a dying 3d tool? I am contemplating of switching to Revit just for me not to be left behind.

Any thoughts?

[TrevN]

The future is BIM.

All things 3D are heading down the BIM road and plain AC will be left behind. AC will still be used by an awful lot of people who don't need BIM, but if I were you, I'd get to know Revit very quickly.

[Bob_Zurunkle · Accepted solution]

AutoCAD already has the ability to add parameters within blocks, as well as constraints for 2D CADD, so it is slowly integrating some of the tools that are common in engineering modeling programs (such as Inventor) and architectural modeling programs such as Revit. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, AutoCAD will offer these abilities in the creation of 3D blocks. Once that happens, perhaps some form of mating constraints such as those found in Inventor, will be introduced. The ability to quickly create related views of 3D objects has been in AutoCAD for years (eg SOLVIEW SOLDRAW etc).

One must remember that AutoCAD is a base platform for use in a variety of CADD disciplines, and the addition of these functionalities can only help the vertical products. But Autodesk has to balance the integration of these features so as to not take anything away from sales of Inventor or Revit etc.

If I was to make an observation, I would say they have been trying to align a lot of these products so that a lot of tools and interfaces look and act similar -- and they have for years been introducing some of these more advanced features into AutoCAD.

[heinsite]

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Bob_Zurunkle wrote:

If I was to make an observation, I would say they have been trying to align a lot of these products so that a lot of tools and interfaces look and act similar -- and they have for years been introducing some of these more advanced features into AutoCAD.

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That would be a good observation, Bob.  It's my understanding that when the ribbon came into AutoCAD in 2009 it was because it was already in Revit.

Dave.

[JDMather]

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@heinsite wrote:

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  It's my understanding that when the ribbon came into AutoCAD in 2009 it was because it was already in Revit.

Dave.

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I thought the ribbon interface influence was from Microsoft?  How does that Revit explanation influence competitors SolidWorks and Creo having nearly identical ribbon interfaces?

[heinsite]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@heinsite wrote:

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  It's my understanding that when the ribbon came into AutoCAD in 2009 it was because it was already in Revit.

Dave.

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I thought the ribbon interface influence was from Microsoft?  How does that Revit explanation influence competitors SolidWorks and Creo having nearly identical ribbon interfaces?

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The influence for Autodesk might well have been Microsoft... I'm not sure.  It was in Revit before it moved to vanilla AutoCAD and it makes sense that Autodesk would try to migrate it from there to all of the other products in the line to get some consistency.  As for influencing other incarnations of CAD software it sure looks as if there has been a lot of reverse engineering in this field over the last few years.  Witness all the products out there now that for all intents and purposes look almost identical to AutoCAD. 

Dave.