R12 vs R14

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

My dad has been sick for the last twelve years and he's finally back on his feet. He has a Ph.D in architecture and was one with Autocad R12 back in the day. I tried for the life of me to install it on XP and even tried installing Windows 3.11 but I failed (and I'm an IT Engineer!). He's an old man and its hard to teach him new tricks, but I had no choice but to give him R14 anyway due to the new technologies.

I was hoping if someone could explain real quick the most important differences between the two softwares? Or maybe there's a reference of this already out there?  Even if the advise is brief it'd be very helpful.

Thanks,

Alan

[Bob_Zurunkle]

If he likes Windows he'll love R14. He can arrange the command icons any way he likes, and there are more that can be added (plus whatever he doesn't use he can remove) to the screen. R14 has two different modes or areas, called tilemodes. The default is the same old modelspace he was used to in R12. But in R14 there is a separate space called paperspace, just for setting up the output (the sheet layout). He can create a number of "viewports" that look into modelspace from paperspace, at his model. These can be all different scales and views, and each one can be set to display different layers (or not). It isn't all that easily explained in the help menu, but once a person catches on they never want to go back to just modelspace!