How did you choose your CAD software?

[PaulMunford]

I was discussing the merits of various CAD packages with my buddy the other day, and I was thinking about why I use the CAD software I do (AutoCAD & Inventor).

I have a question for the group - why do you use the CAD software that you do?

Did you get to examine a number of different CAD packages before you made your choice?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Paul

[AllenJessup]

Really. It's always been just the software that my employer used. The first place I worked started with a Wang programmable calculator and all plotting was done by hand. When that was replaced is the only time I actually made the decision. I reviewed different Survey programs and chose one called Sierra Cybernetics. That would plot point markers and numbers on a dotmatrix printer with registration marks so they could be taped together and traced over.I guess that might qualify as primitive CAD.

The next step was getting COGO software based on the original Sells COGO. That didn't display points on the IBM AT screen but would operate a window shade plotter based on batch file commands.  My boss's son worked for Sells for a while so he chose that.

The first on screen CAD was an inexpensive one called ProDesign. We had some discussion of that but it was mostly that this was one they could afford. The Sells COGO would output a DXF file to import. The cad was pretty much manual drafting on a computer. There were no osnaps available so everything was by eye. It looked good on paper but you couldn't calculate anything in it. Then my boss's son bough AutoCAD and that's what we stuck with.

When I moved to may current jog they were using AutoCAD and DCA (pre Softdesk/Land Desktop). One of the reasons I was hired was because of my familiarity with AutoCAD.

So, in my case, the decisions were mostly made by others. We occasionally talk about switching software. But the original investment would be high both in $ and learning curve.

Other than a brief history of CAD I don't have much to contribute to your original question. Hopefully it will stimulate others to share.

Allen

[pendean]

Way back in the day... my employer had two CAD systems in use as they both were considered the cutting edge choices: AutoCAD and CADVANCE.

They already had one drafter who new Cadvance and had recently lost the last that knew AutoCAD. Being a gung-ho architect that I was (well, I think all architects are like that) I decided instead of waiting for the company to hire a "new guy" I would just do it myself. Spent weekends and evenings reading the giant book that came with the program (R9-Dos3.3), exprimented, started slow, learned to use the pen plotter, figured out how to back up on the giant Bernoulli disk drives "just in case", and stuck with it.

Within two years I had the entire office of professionals using AutoCAD (R10-386, DOS 5) full time, we dropped Cadvance (after converting all those files), and we dropped all drafters too (I convinced the bosses that paying two staff for one set of drawings was crazy).

[PaulMunford]

That's greta stuff 🙂

So - do you keep an eye out to see if there is other CAD software out there that might give you a competitive edge?

[pendean]

We have REVIT in the office for specific projects (required software) and while I'm not ready to label myself proficient on it I am in the process of teaching myself how to use it more. But REVIT does require a commitment from the ownership, client, and design team as a whole and we just don't see that level of forward thinking in the marketplace as a whole. It's still isolated, not prolific..

[Mistress0fTheDorkness]

It's what my daddy and grandaddy used before me...


(sadly enough, that's true. of course, my great-grandad had to do it by hand.)

[graeme.robinson]

I use Inventor and Autocad as all of my customers do...

If I get a customer that uses solidworks then I will buy that too....

Graeme