OLD-CADaver:
Shaan will get no argument from me that AutoCAD has certainly become a
better product to use with major improvements going from r14 to r2000 and
r2000 to 2004. From my perspective the jury is still out on r2005. I've
gone through the turorials on "Sheet Manager and Layer manager" and so far
they seem too complicated to mess with - I'm still using the beta and
probably will until it expires and then will decide whether or not to load
my copy of R2005 or stick with R2004. Personally, I'm not real keen on this
hardware/software activation lock - just something else to go wrong.
R2004's Layer Manager worked fine. I'll have to agree with Shaan in that my
CAD time on a project does seem to be consuming less of my time on a project
that it did with earlier versions. Some of that I attribute to AutoCAD's
improvements and some I attribute to third party "add-on's" by Terry Dotson
and Owen Wengard and countless other lisp routines generously shared by so
many on this peer to peer network.
I said productivity improvements in billable hours. Granted there is
generally always something to do in a design office but improve standards,
migrate an upgrade, a new project or update a resume are not "billable"
hours. What I'm trying to say is that for there to be a gain in
productivity and hence the income benefit, the 8 hours really needs to be
moved to something that produces income. If the project is a lump sum fee -
great, then the 8 hours saved on Project A and moved to another billable
Project B is money ahead or as you said, one can reduce the CAD fee by 20%.
Since CAD is only a portion of a project, it would make no sense to reduce
the total fee 20%. If the project is an hourly fee basis, then you have
lost 8 hours of billable time and it "cost you to upgrade to boot" so you
are actually losing money by upgrading in that scenario.
I've also worked with and for some of the largest firms in the US as well as
the largest bureaucracy (the VA) in our federal government and the
inefficiencies astounded me. They are almost like the government. What I
observed at most of them is that they have clients willing to pay for
projects at hourly rates set by the firm and generally those projects don't
have a maximum so productivity is not an issue. Since there's a profit
factor built into each hourly rate, the more hours the better!
"OLD-CADaver" wrote in message
news:27827457.1082651214184.JavaMail.javamailuser@localhost...
> >>There are only so many hours in a day that can be devoted to a project
so any reduction in CAD hours needs to be filled with other means of
productivity otherwise the increased productivity is lost to non-billable
hours. <<
>
> I was right there with ya' until this. You seem to be saying that if now
it takes 40 hours to complete a drawing set and increased production means
it only takes 32 hours next week, you gonna lose 8 hours to non-billable?
>
> If that's the case, you can reduce your fees by 20% which will makes sales
a load easier. I dunno, I've worked for large companies and places where I
was the only guy in my dept. And I don't care how fast we got it out, there
was always something to do. Developement, improve standards, migrate an
upgrade, a new project, or a resume to update.
![Autodesk Design & Make Report](https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/1350519iCB55845EBFC43016/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999" "Autodesk Design & Make Report")