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general upgrade questions

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Message 1 of 8
Anonymous
240 Views, 7 Replies

general upgrade questions

I started using LT 97 and within 6 months LT 98 came out. Eventually I
upgraded. I "recently" bought the Lt2002 upgrade (about 18 mo. ago), finally
began using it about a year ago (slow to change what currently works fine)
and of course 2004 is now out. That's 4 product changes (5 if you included
2000) within a 6-7 year period. Given I have a VERY small business, even
bi-yearly upgrades are a tremendous drain. I know you can no longer upgrade
from LT98. Question 1: What is the typical planned obsolescence for LT?
(i.e.. how long can I reasonably assume that 2002 will last without having
to purchase a full version?). Although sometimes I must upgrade sooner
because clients have more recent versions, and do not want to downgrade
their drawings to send to me, I still prefer to keep using what works fine
rather than constantly updating. I end up spending more time familiarizing
myself with the new product, than necessary. I can imagine the drain on
large firms that have to re-train lots of employees. While I applaud trying
to make things better, surely constant updates are not necessary.

Question 2: A firm I work with, who currently does not yet use Autocad, is
being pressured to do so because it is the industry standard. They are very
reluctant to switch in part because of the planned obsolescence. While my
projects are short term, and I'm unlikely to refer to the drawings again
after several years, they have projects they sometimes need to reference
from 5-10 years ago. How can that easily be done when only the new version
(say 2004) would be installed, and it no longer reads some older versions?
They are very concerned about joining the autocad bandwagon for fear their
old drawings will be archived and unreadable in 5-10 years, at least without
an extreme amount of effort. (I didn't have an answer for them). Any
suggestions?
7 REPLIES 7
Message 2 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

Concerning question 1. While the software will continue to operate
indefinitely, you are going to want to be able to receive, work on and
provide drawings in a format compatible with your customers. So one reason
would be file compatibility which isn't an issue with your current version.
Another reason would be if the newer version offers features that would
increase your productivity. In my discipline where I do alot of hatching, I
have found that the Tool palettes (2004) have enabled me to make a major
reduction in drawing time and justify the cost of upgrade. These are just
two examples, there is no one answer fits all situations. You have to decide
for yourself. AutoDesk and their resellers often offer free online new
product demos and if you have a local user group you can see what features
might be of benefit to you.

Concerning question 2. Newer versions of AutoCAD are designed to open older
drawing versions. They will of course be changed to the current version when
you hit save.

--

Chip Harper
Member of the AutoDesk Discussion Forum Moderator Program
Message 3 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

On Sun, 4 May 2003 13:21:08 -0700, "tlcc" wrote:

>I started using LT 97 and within 6 months LT 98 came out. Eventually I
>upgraded. I "recently" bought the Lt2002 upgrade (about 18 mo. ago), finally
>began using it about a year ago (slow to change what currently works fine)
>and of course 2004 is now out. That's 4 product changes (5 if you included
>2000) within a 6-7 year period. Given I have a VERY small business, even
>bi-yearly upgrades are a tremendous drain. I know you can no longer upgrade
>from LT98. Question 1: What is the typical planned obsolescence for LT?
>(i.e.. how long can I reasonably assume that 2002 will last without having
>to purchase a full version?). Although sometimes I must upgrade sooner
>because clients have more recent versions, and do not want to downgrade
>their drawings to send to me, I still prefer to keep using what works fine
>rather than constantly updating. I end up spending more time familiarizing
>myself with the new product, than necessary. I can imagine the drain on
>large firms that have to re-train lots of employees. While I applaud trying
>to make things better, surely constant updates are not necessary.

The decision to upgrade is something you have to consider from a
business point of view. There are many ways to justify an upgrade. For
example, the upgrade from R12 to R14 was very worthwhile mainly because
with R14 you did not have the problem with *UNNAMED dimensions. It
would be very difficult to say that this saved time or more correctly,
brought in more work, but it did save problems with work having to be
re-manufactured because something caused the *UNNAMED dimensions to be
regenerated with them ending up with the current active DIMSTYLE. There
was also the improvement in AutoLISP programming. In the same vein, the
upgrade from R14 to 2002 was worthwhile because of the introduction of
trans-spatial dimensioning and once more, improvements in AutoLISP
(Visual Lisp). This does not mean I was at all happy with the
proverbial gun to my head with the warning upgrade or else re-buy.
Also, the upgrade was made easier by discounts of up to 30% depending on
how much earlier than the deadline you chose to upgrade.

When/if you decide to upgrade, you have to be very clear as to why you
are upgrading, and you really must go through an analysis after you have
upgraded to see if the basis for upgrading has been met. One of the
reasons put forward by many is an "improvement in productivity". Do not
confuse productivity with the rate of production. Just because you
produce drawings at a faster rate does not make the business more
productive. The only way a business is more productive is if it earns
more with the same business inputs, or if it earns the same with less
business inputs. Simply producing drawings faster means that the people
preparing the drawings are being paid for working less of the time than
before. Even then, the estimates put forward on improvements are
generally exaggerated. When I worked as product development engineer
with a racking company, the rate of return was generally discounted by
anything up to a factor of 10. The simple fact is this. If it is going
to be possible to get 10% more work by upgrading software, why are not
companies and individuals filling this gap now, and where is industry
crying out because they cannot get work completed at the moment?
Generally, the only way such gains can be made is if employees are
dismissed because there is now a lesser demand for the numbers to be
employed. This then means more competition and so the original
justification gets a little shaky.

>Question 2: A firm I work with, who currently does not yet use Autocad, is
>being pressured to do so because it is the industry standard. They are very
>reluctant to switch in part because of the planned obsolescence. While my
>projects are short term, and I'm unlikely to refer to the drawings again
>after several years, they have projects they sometimes need to reference
>from 5-10 years ago. How can that easily be done when only the new version
>(say 2004) would be installed, and it no longer reads some older versions?
>They are very concerned about joining the autocad bandwagon for fear their
>old drawings will be archived and unreadable in 5-10 years, at least without
>an extreme amount of effort. (I didn't have an answer for them). Any
>suggestions?

There is planned obsolescence, but at the moment licenses are not time
limited (at least for North American users). For the rest there is the
added problem of obtaining fresh authorisation codes when hardware
eventually fails and has to be replaced. So software can continue to be
used as long as you can install the OS and software. This said, newer
versions will read older versions, but then again, this is not cast in
stone. It is however a problem that has to be considered. I have a
client who doe the electrical and mechanical services design for a major
multi-national fast food giant, and they use LT 2000. They have
indicated they are not going to upgrade further. If the need arises in
the future, they may well have to buy fresh licenses, but this is
unlikely. They also have some contractors who use Generic CADD very
effectively.

One of the reasons for upgrading is to maintain compatibility with
clients. Well, even here, it is only an issue if the your client or
other contractors are unable to save down to the version you are using.
If you are using an older version, then at the moment, this should not
be a problem. This is not such a problem. Even now, a drawing prepared
with MTD has to be saved down to Vanilla AutoCAD to be read by a non-MDT
version. If you do not provide drawing files then your problems are
reduced, and you will find many businesses gladly convert data down for
a fee where a client or contractor refuses to do this.

So, the long and short of this is to be clear as to why you are
upgrading. Do not fool yourself by accepting a justification knowing
that it is not the reason you are doing it. At the end of it all,
conduct a "post installation audit" to see if the original justification
has been met. Above all, do not confuse productivity with the rate of
production. If the reason for upgrading is productivity, then make sure
your balance sheet reflects this otherwise you are paying people to do
nothing once they have completed the work sooner.

Quite frankly, if you have LT2002, I would wait until you are threatened
with upgrade expiration before worrying about anything. Planned
obsolescence only works when the product fails to work and users have to
replace it. If the product continues to work and the user does not
replace it, planned obsolescence fails.

--

Regards,

Ian A. White, CPEng
WAI Engineering
Sydney 2000
Australia

Ph: +61 418 203 229
Fax: +61 2 9622 0450
Home Page: www.wai.com.au
Message 4 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

FYI, newer versions of AutoCAD don't have a problem reading older. The problem
arises when you want to SAVE as that version. (That's what "supported" means)

--
Dave Jacquemotte
Automation Designer
Message 5 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

BUT...If you want to work on a building from 10 years ago, say with
additions or alterations, that's where the problem comes in. You can "read"
the old plan, for example, but you can't use it to develop the new plans???
That's a rather severe limitation! When you "read" the old plan, can you
"cut" portions and paste into a new drawing version?

"Dave J" wrote in message
news:D32A35235B90DE6934650E4748F67D81@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> FYI, newer versions of AutoCAD don't have a problem reading older. The
problem
> arises when you want to SAVE as that version. (That's what "supported"
means)
>
> --
> Dave Jacquemotte
> Automation Designer
>
>
>
>
Message 6 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

If you can read (open) it why can't you use it to develop the new plan? I
don't understand! I don't see any limitation other than the fact that the
old drawing may not have been drawn using all the objects that the new
software can understand. You can just save the "old" drawing with any
changes as a new drawing.

--
David W. Claflin
Associate/Architect

TSP

Architecture Engineering Construction

8751 E Hampden Ave, Suite A-1
Denver, CO 80231-4928
phone (303) 695-1997
fax (303) 695-1938
cell phone (303) 378-3414
www.teamtsp.com <>

--

This email may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you
are not the intended recipient (or have received this email in error) please
notify the sender immediately and destroy this email. Any unauthorized
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Remove .ns from reply address.


"tlcc" wrote in message
news:D8B9DF0889A4F11CFA0CBB33A7962D39@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> BUT...If you want to work on a building from 10 years ago, say with
> additions or alterations, that's where the problem comes in. You can
"read"
> the old plan, for example, but you can't use it to develop the new
plans???
> That's a rather severe limitation! When you "read" the old plan, can you
> "cut" portions and paste into a new drawing version?
>
> "Dave J" wrote in message
> news:D32A35235B90DE6934650E4748F67D81@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> > FYI, newer versions of AutoCAD don't have a problem reading older. The
> problem
> > arises when you want to SAVE as that version. (That's what "supported"
> means)
> >
> > --
> > Dave Jacquemotte
> > Automation Designer
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
Message 7 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

"tlcc" wrote in message
news:D8B9DF0889A4F11CFA0CBB33A7962D39@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...
> BUT...If you want to work on a building from 10 years ago, say with
> additions or alterations, that's where the problem comes in. You can
"read"
> the old plan, for example, but you can't use it to develop the new
plans???
> That's a rather severe limitation! When you "read" the old plan, can you
> "cut" portions and paste into a new drawing version?

Once you open an old file in the new version, it is converted to the new
version. From there, you can do anything you want. The real problem arrises
when you work with someone who uses a real old version, as saving back is
severly limited, ie AutoCAD 2004 won't save as to R14, tho' it will probably
open an R9 drawing without even flinching.

Gordon
Message 8 of 8
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

You misunderstand. We are talking about SOFTWARE VERSIONS, not building plan
versions. If you open an old version (Release # i.e.: R14, R12, 2000i, etc.)
drawing, you can save as current version (2004). No problem. I was just
commenting on the fact that you might not be able to save back to the originals
SOFTWARE VERSION. (because the software is so old, Autodesk think no one will
want to save as that r#)

--
Dave Jacquemotte
Automation Designer

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