An old dog's new Ferrari?

[Anonymous]

I write this topic at the very risk of my job, in order to do a better job....
How do you get an old dog to drive his new Ferrari?
I worked at the same architectural firm for over six years for an very good Architect with a very nice clientele. Since I'm just a worker-bee, drafting construction documents and design coordination & the typical drafting stuff is what I do. I'm NOT an architect.
We recently (Jan 2006) upgraded our hardware and software suites for the office after a six year haul of using very slow pentium 600mhz, or older, machines and plain vanilla AutoCAD R14. I know it sounds ridiculous.. but my job is really good, except for the complete frustration I get from not being allowed to produce as much work as I can. Come on, R14 in the year 2005..? My boss is an Architect, Not a Drafter.
Needles to say, we finally fell behind the compatibility continuum and HAD to upgrade in order to use our consultants' newer file formats or to even produce a pdf!!

Now, we have the shiny new hardware setup and....The bigdaddy ADT2006 licenses!! Finally!... after all these years I can resume using objects instead of being bound to primitives.
WRONG!!
I've stressed on all the ways I know to get ADT implemented and used, but all for not. AutoCAD literacy isn't important somehow. We are still using primitives, and ONLY primitives, because the learning curve is not appealing to the other users(2 architects and another drafter). we've implemented about 3% of our adt capabilities and don't even bother to built models. It's all done transferring lines just like on a drafting board.
How can I make my boss see what he doesn't see without risking my job?

[Anonymous]

Mr McNeal,
Thank you for your reply. I have been compiling training material from the AUGI (I recently joined) archives for use in a training regimen and have been exercising that quiet extension you speak of. I tried to line up some training through our vendor, but there are a couple of road blocks there.
1) The local sales company has a poor standing with my boss because of the level of aggravation he experienced when trying to purchase the new software.
2) The sales rep had no working knowledge of AutoCAD and couldn't even give him informed answers regarding software as applied to what he's trying to do with it. She recommended LT over ADT. They also had no clue about how to set up plot styles or any tech support of the like.

OK, fine, I go the state office for the vendor and they, at least, can help set up the basics for plotting. Soon after i'm reminded by the helpful rep how illiterate I really was by now, I asked them about training and they fax me a price list....

This is where the draftsman is usually trumped, money. My bosses partner does not like the price list. Ok, fine.

AUGI is the answer. Wow, what a deal! All the info I was looking for and all I have to do is read it and I'm on my way.

Wrong again, my boss sees me "not drafting" and that's the end of the overt ops.

Now it's stealth mode... Still, in the name of producing the best product that I can, I don't see how such a talented architect can be such a terrible manager?

As a veteran, I can relate to being a part of something bigger and seeing the difference that my contribution makes or doesn't make. I can also relate to training as a critical investment instead of "time away from production". No drill, no skill. I think I have a pretty good idea of what ADT can do for us which leaves the issue of consensus.

I'm the black sheep here. The others don't like learning or "changing". But, if I can get the boss won over and tell them to implement....

Dennis, Thanks for taking the time to read and reply. 🙂

[skintsubby]

Randy,

I use it for both. It depends on where I'm working. Where I am just now, It's not Aurtocad they need, it's etch-a-sketch. (don't know if you are familiar with that 80's toy?) But it is purely a drafting tool. (see reply to wookies post above)

My previous position we used it as a design and drafting tool. and before that it was used for both as well.

Rule number 1 ... look out for number 1. For a company to hire me I have to justify my hourly rate. Also, I want to learn new things, that's why I want to learn all the new features. What might be pointless where I am just now, could save money in a company I work for in the future, or make me more productive and hence more employable.

If that's how cad-user works, then it obviously works for him where he is just now. but I can't see him ever getting a long term position as a subby, he'd get bagged an awful lot..

Mark

[Anonymous]

Thank you, HenryBL. I appreciate that!

[Anonymous]

>>(don't know if you are familiar with that 80's toy?)

Heehee - how old are you?

Introduced in 1960.... but, I digress 🙂


--
Craig
_______________
Dreamers don't have strategic grill locations...


wrote in message news:5133474@discussion.autodesk.com...
Randy,

I use it for both. It depends on where I'm working. Where I am just now,
It's not Aurtocad they need, it's etch-a-sketch. (don't know if you are
familiar with that 80's toy?) But it is purely a drafting tool. (see reply
to wookies post above)

My previous position we used it as a design and drafting tool. and before
that it was used for both as well.

Rule number 1 ... look out for number 1. For a company to hire me I have to
justify my hourly rate. Also, I want to learn new things, that's why I want
to learn all the new features. What might be pointless where I am just now,
could save money in a company I work for in the future, or make me more
productive and hence more employable.

If that's how cad-user works, then it obviously works for him where he is
just now. but I can't see him ever getting a long term position as a subby,
he'd get bagged an awful lot..

Mark

[Anonymous]

So.... uuuhh.... where is it you work now?


HenryBL wrote:
> Been there done that. Here is a tip. GET A NEW JOB!!
> I worked for an architectural firm, mid sized, progressive (sort-of) but when it came to equipment, they used Mac's with a real dog of a program that was about like ACAD R-10. I beat my head against the wall trying at least to get them to use LT. Nope.The head guy worked "many years ago" for an architectrual firm much larger than his new one and they used Mac's and "powercadd" and it worked fine.
> No room for opinions. I repeat, "GET A NEW JOB!!"
> I quit the job before that one because the engineer refused to buy the latest ACAD. Still using R-2000!
> I now work for a designer who is very progressive and I need to learn again how to use and improve on my knowledge of ACAD and ADT. I am very excited.
> "Give you employees the tools to do their job, and leave them alone"
> Although I do like the one here, easier to get fogiveness than permission....
> I feel for you, erinhood, been there done that.

[Anonymous]

OH did you forget this little think call INFLATION! A car, house even a pack
of gum as all went up in 18 years! What a pack of gum cost around $.50 and
now is $1, a $50,000 now cost $100,000 and a car was around what $14,000 now
cost around $22,000. If you think there are no great new feature then stop
up grading! No one is twisting your ears to upgrade.

"cad user" wrote in message
news:5133222@discussion.autodesk.com...
Those are all very neat features. I give you the multi-layout, that is a
efficient feature. The others you mentioned are not. Basically what you
are saying is that R14 is only 5% of the current version. Simply not true.
R14 is 95% of the current version. Shoot, even R10 is 85% of the current
version. I would just like to get some justification to the cost increase
over 18 years, especially since Autodesk doesn't develop multiple platforms
any more.

wrote in message news:5133159@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" the biggest, most time saving improvement ""

Is a long way from the ONLY two major improvements as you stated in your
first post.

"" Personally, as far as vanilla AutoCad goes, there's not a big difference
between R14 and 2006. It's still a drafting tool and can be used exactly the
same. Only two major improvements since R14 are realtime pan and zoom. That
is it! No other "feature" helps me get a job done ""

Just multi-layout tabs alone is a much better productivity enhancement than
either of those. As are the new associative dims, new text enhancements,
fields, tables, standards, palettes, shademode, sheet sets, eattext.

As you stated, I guess you're using 2K6 the very same way you used R14, but
if you're only using it as "a drafting tool" you're missing 95% of the power
of the tool.

[Anonymous]

we're all terrible managers. swear to god. it's an aquired talent.

--
If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris
you may be only seconds away from death.

[Anonymous]

erinhood,
I could not believe how bad a manager my architect boss was either.
He didn't really careabout the infrastructure at all. Just billings.
As a drafter, you need to view your employment potential in terms of what you can do with the right tools, tools you know how to be productive on. Especially if you have a significant number of years left in your career.

[Anonymous]

especially now that he the ID ten Tee upgrade

--
Princess Jamie,

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

"Miguel" wrote in message news:5132883@discussion.autodesk.com...
>Personally, as far as vanilla AutoCad goes, there's not a big difference
>between R14 and 2006. It's still a drafting tool and can be used exactly
>the same.


you have got to be kidding... purposely trying to goad posts?

if your not kidding...you really should change your post name.

[Anonymous]

snip>Personally, as far as vanilla AutoCad goes, there's not a big
difference between R14 and 2006.

If you REALLY think that way, you might want to get acquainted with just HOW
MUCH has changed, by perusing this site;
http://www.hyperpics.com/commands/

HTH

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
C3D/LDT/CD/SVY-2K6
AMD XP 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB



"cad user" wrote in message
news:5132463@discussion.autodesk.com...
It's the year 2006 by the way.
Personally, as far as vanilla AutoCad goes, there's not a big difference
between R14 and 2006. It's still a drafting tool and can be used exactly
the same. Only two major improvements since R14 are realtime pan and zoom.
As far as ADT goes though, if you're paying for it you should be using it,
otherwise there was no point in buying it. Just tell him that.

wrote in message news:5131961@discussion.autodesk.com...
I write this topic at the very risk of my job, in order to do a better
job....
How do you get an old dog to drive his new Ferrari?
I worked at the same architectural firm for over six years for an very good
Architect with a very nice clientele. Since I'm just a worker-bee, drafting
construction documents and design coordination & the typical drafting stuff
is what I do. I'm NOT an architect.
We recently (Jan 2006) upgraded our hardware and software suites for the
office after a six year haul of using very slow pentium 600mhz, or older,
machines and plain vanilla AutoCAD R14. I know it sounds ridiculous.. but my
job is really good, except for the complete frustration I get from not being
allowed to produce as much work as I can. Come on, R14 in the year 2005..?
My boss is an Architect, Not a Drafter.
Needles to say, we finally fell behind the compatibility continuum and HAD
to upgrade in order to use our consultants' newer file formats or to even
produce a pdf!!

Now, we have the shiny new hardware setup and....The bigdaddy ADT2006
licenses!! Finally!... after all these years I can resume using objects
instead of being bound to primitives.
WRONG!!
I've stressed on all the ways I know to get ADT implemented and used, but
all for not. AutoCAD literacy isn't important somehow. We are still using
primitives, and ONLY primitives, because the learning curve is not appealing
to the other users(2 architects and another drafter). we've implemented
about 3% of our adt capabilities and don't even bother to built models. It's
all done transferring lines just like on a drafting board.
How can I make my boss see what he doesn't see without risking my job?

[Anonymous]

I think you only left out one word...

T-H-A-N-K-F-U-L-L-Y

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
C3D/LDT/CD/SVY-2K6
AMD XP 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB



wrote in message news:5133240@discussion.autodesk.com...
I used Dbase 3 and AWORD to create tables. Fill in the database, export to
comma delimited file, run it thru aword and bring it into V2.62.

Long time ago in a land VERY far away.

[Anonymous]

Well thanks for the thread Melanie, but I missed "cad user" amongst the
handles from top to bottom in that thread.

Maybe their portion was rather small, comparing what I've seen them say so
far.

Which may account for their attitude. 🙂

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
C3D/LDT/CD/SVY-2K6
AMD XP 3200+ 2.2GHz
XPPro 32bit SP2
1GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 128MB



"melanie stone" wrote in message
news:5132594@discussion.autodesk.com...
no he's not.

hmm... anyone who's tempted to believe him, might want to revisit this
thread...
http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=436751

wrote in message news:5132520@discussion.autodesk.com...
<< Only two major improvements since R14 are realtime pan and zoom. >>

Your kidding, right?

[Anonymous]

Actually the rich subbies are the one's that learned from their mistakes
early and never ever ever take a contract without a clause in their
agreement that asserts their right to draft according to their own standards
when a specification (standards document) is not provided during the bid
phase. Those same rich subbies never accept a project that would be a "Death
March" (which is how they become rich subbies) by avoiding being presented
with a 1993 corpse that was dug up out of the grave after they lied to you.
In America that's called being a chump and they probably had you all figured
out in the interview.

Finally, in the U.S. what the employer has done to you is a violation of the
tax laws. There are about 20 line items that an employer can not dictate
when hiring a contractor, e.g. an employer is not allowed to dictate what
tools to use and what procedures a contractor must follow to accomplish a
contractual job for hire. Depending on circumstances the penalties can be
strict. If called to answer to the IRS an employer could likely get away
with dictating the use of AutoCAD but they would have to prove why when
audited by the IRS.

Pulling out a 1993 "standard" would get them nailed in an audit and destroy
all of their credibility resulting in getting fined and having to pay all of
the contractor's federal and state taxes. On the other hand, an employer
such as Boeing that dictated the use of AutoCAD 14 (for example) and
provided a 1993 document because the actual job was updating some archival
drawings for equipmet from 1993 the employer would get a break from the IRS
and the contractor would be expected to comply as that was the explicit
nature of the job the contractor was hired for.

Its up to the contractor to complain to the IRS which would then initiate an
audit.

<%= Clinton Gallagher












wrote in message news:5133288@discussion.autodesk.com...
From www.dictionary.com

skint......
adj : lacking funds; "`skint' is a British slang term" [syn: broke, bust,
stone-broke, stony-broke]

Have you eve seen a rich subby? 😉

[Anonymous]

Skint, the problem with turning up at a new work place and saying ;
"Hey guys, you don't know me from a bar of soap, but everything you do is wrong. You should be using these totally forigen techniques..."
Is that they will respond with;
"We dont know you from a bar of soap. There's nothing wrong with how we work, its served us well for generations. Your techniques are totally forigen, we don't want anything to do with them."
However, if you start with putting effort into building relationships with the rignt people. And earning respect for your knowledge of the software and ability to fix small problems. Then it is possible to talk people around to your way of thinking. Like I said, its taken some patience, but I'm getting some traction over 3D. The main stumbling block at the moment is that to do 3D (mechanical) properly it needs to be in cconjunction with xrefs. We have now changed out EDM to one that can cope with xrefs & my proposed xref proceedure has the support of more than half of the designers. Which should make it easy to implement.
I've also;
-Re written most of our 1996 CAD Standard,
-Re drawn all our title blocks
-Changed our revision box from a block with attributes to a table, which forced everyont to learn how to use tables.
-Run training courses on emailing drawings, viewports, blocks, tool palletes, tables, and so on.
-But the most effective training is one on one.
-Two staff paid me directly for extra 3D training during the Christmas break. (but not the one I needed to crack to get 3D to become routine instead of unusual)
-Changed the way we dimension,
-Made the drawing scale a field linked to the viewport in our template drawings. Which forced everyone to learn about fields.
And thats off the top of my head.
Now I'm a full time project designer with no official cad management responsibility. So this kind of thing has to fit around my design workload, so it gets put on the back burner when I'm busy.

Skint, I think you give up too easily.

[Anonymous]

well now that we have the "official" word on this..

[skintsubby]

Hi Wookie.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't think it's a case of "Who are you to tell us what to do?" If I even mention doing something different to the "Engineers" It's like they stick their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA LA" until I stop.

It’s not like I turned up on day one and said”You’re all crap, this is the way to go”. I took my time trying to change their mindset. I’d say that the only person that can see the benefits is my immediate boss. The rest are “LA LA LA LA LA “

<< Re drawn all our title blocks >> Me too. only used by me. Staff won't change to new block, even though theirs are the wrong size. They won’t insert them as blocks either. Cut and paste from the original master…result, the borders are lines and text, not a block.

<< -Made the drawing scale a field linked to the viewport in our template drawings. Which forced everyone to learn about fields. >> They don’t use the blocks / templates I set up, so there is no point. It’s not like they don’t know they are there. …. “LA LA LA LA LA “

I understand what you are saying, but I just can't get around to how much resistance to change there is.
I envy your patience.

[skintsubby]

Hi Clinton.

Well in the UK it goes like this....

1) get a job, agree rate.

2) start job

3) The contracts are pretty "open". 1 weeks notice either way, you make waves they bag you, you're useless, they bag you. You don't like it, you leave. You get a better offer, you leave. Pretty simple.

No laws (that I'm aware of) are broken.

I could probably stay here for years, and be rewarded well financially. (my biggest reason for staying is I get home every night)

And yes I agree, if this place was ever audited it would definitely fail.

Mark

[Anonymous]

wrote in message news:5133387@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" I would just like to get some justification to the cost increase
over 18 years, ""

Well if you're still drawing like you did for R14, there's no wonder you
can't see any justification. You've just stated that there are no
productivity enhancements gained by:

1.) tool palettes - so you're still sloggin' in every command at the command
line like you did for V2.6. yeah that's productive.

Icons take up valuable screen estate and clicking icons take more time then
a 1 or 2 key command. Tool palettes are for the technically challenged.

2.) Extended ATTtribute EXTraction - how are you doing BOMs? with a pencil
and calculator? yeah that's productive.

Don't know what a BOM is and don't care.

3.) MTEXT enhancements - oh yeah, you've paid EXTRA for that

Use Mtext on one sheet, big deal, not a great advancement.

4.) TABLES - Oh yeah, you've paid EXTRA for that.

Tables are still worthless. Spanner and Toolpac been around for at least 12
years.

5.) Sheet Sets - Still doing them one at a time??
Batchplot/Publish, been around for at least 10 years.

6.) Associative Dims - still making update by hand eh?
Dim update, been around for at least 10 years.

7.) Shademode - must still be stuck making 2D cartoons.
No need for it.

8.)Standards - still drawing all by yourself, no collaboration with other
subs. I guess staying little has it's perks.

Subs do things our way. Smart contracting.

And that's just the few I pulled off the top that would enhance even 2D
cartoons.

But then you're still using it as a drafting tool only, so I'm not surprised
that some of these enhancements escape your capabilities.

It is a drafting tool, what else would you call it.

BTW, you keep throwing out that you've been using the software for 18 years
(one would think you'd know more about it), but just so you don't think I'm
a newbie, I've been using it for 22 years (V1.4). Every release (including
R13) has provided me with productivity enhancements, but then I use it for
much more than a drafting tool.

Still not much. Everything is still lines and arcs. Geometry hasn't
changed in centuries.

[Anonymous]

Randy must be one who never used the board. Drafting IS Design! Drafting
tool, design tool same thing. You can't design without drafting unless you
are a chinese motorcycle builder.

wrote in message news:5133390@discussion.autodesk.com...
There you are. Caduser wants to use only the features he used for R14, then
complain the program is no different.

Skint, I have a question. For you, is AutoCAD merely a drafting tool or do
you use it to improve design, as a design tool??

[rculp]

12 years on the board, 22 years with AutoCAD. Drafting is NOT design, never was, never will be. Drafting is merely a medium by which designs are communicated. Drafters that use the tool only as a drafting tool, merely format someone else's design for plotting. AutoCAD, if used properly, is so much more than an electronic straight edge, if improperly used, well then 2K6 is no different from R14.


BTW, CNC is an example of design that can be devoid of drafting. It can go straight from design to coding to fabrication without the need to produce a single drawing.