Hello
I am not from autodesk, I run a company in Western Australia that writes modules for autosketch for
the local building industry. AutoSketch has been the CAD package of choice here since the mid 90's,
because it's easy to use and produces a professional product the other CAD packages don't seem to
be able to match.
Your question of the future of AutoSketch is interesting.Firstly I feel that your main criteria is
probably compatibility with LT, as you will need to transfer drawings. The answer to this is
probably the one AutoDesk will need to address but at the moment it will import from ACAD 2002 quite
nicely. So as long as your package can "SaveAs" to a DWG version 2002 or less you are OK.
Apart from that even earlier versions of AutoSketch (AKA Drafix) are still being used all over the
world. I still have users on versions 6, 4 and 8 with the current versions being 9. Most of my
users, which is in the hundreds are using version 8, mainly because the add on packages I produce
are currently written for V8, and when V10 come out I will will probably re-write for it. If 10
doesn't happen, this will not affect much as there are other ways of transferring drawings and V8
will still be going in 10 years.
Whatever LT can do, AutoSketch can do and probably easier, with the exception of flawless
integration with ACAD. Plus if you need modules created for your less computer literate users,
track me down. I also have a Skype address, with a time stamp of GMT+8.
Paul Jackson
Resolve Computing
www.resolv.com.au
da55 wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am heading up a committee in our company to review how today we are producing drawings for our many events. The goal is to standardize on how we do this and improve how we share the database of the thousands of drawings we work with. Almost all of our drawings are of room layouts.
> For the more complex drawings we use AutoCAD, mainly AutoCAD LT, and we have around 50 licenses right now. We have a need for a very simple room layout program for the vast majority of our other users (~100), these are sales executives and operations staff who plan and execute meetings and events. Today we are using a program called Meeting Matrix. We need to change that for reasons I will not go into.
> One of the programs we are evaluating is AutoSketch as a potential replacement, so we at this time have three long time Meeting Matrix users trying AutoSketch and it appears to be exactly what we need. But - there also appears to be some concern in the market as to the future of AutoSketch. Our target users do not have computers that are good enough for LT and they really have no need for that power or complexity. I have tried to actually talk to a human being at Autodesk but I can’t seem to get past “attendants” that just keep telling me all the information is on the web site. Actually they appear to be irritated by having to talk to a customer….anyway….
> All I want to know should we go with a product that appears it may die? As a product manager, are you allowed to talk to customers or is that a no-no at Autodesk?
>
>
> Regards