AutoCAD user base per version

[derekjarvis]

I am developing a few plugins and I am curious if there are any version statistics available to developers. Is there somewhere that will show the breakdown of AutoCAD versions to the percentage of licenses active? 

Basically, I want to target the most popular versions and minimize compiling multiple versions. So, if I could find numbers showing that about 70% of the users are on 2010 or above, I would know exactly which SDKs to use to support the majority of the users.

Do any resources like this exist?

[khoa.ho]

I think Autodesk should have the statistic numbers of uses of AutoCAD versions through Autodesk Licensing Manager. We can check acad.exe connects to internet network on AutoCAD startup for Autodesk reporting. This statistics is very important for Autodesk sales and marketing.

Google may be a simple and dirty way to check how popular an AutoCAD version is. By typing "AutoCAD xxxx" on Google (xxxx is 2015 or 2014...), I have the following results:

AutoCAD 2015: 595,000
AutoCAD 2014: 939,000
AutoCAD 2013: 943,000
AutoCAD 2012: 795,000
AutoCAD 2011: 601,000
AutoCAD 2010: 939,000
AutoCAD 2009: 437,000
AutoCAD 2008: 532,000
AutoCAD 2007: 581,000
AutoCAD 2006: 471,000
AutoCAD 2005: 400,000
AutoCAD 2004: 482,000
AutoCAD 2002: 883,000
AutoCAD 2000: 1,340,000
AutoCAD 14: 243,000
AutoCAD 13: 76,800
AutoCAD 12: 97,100

AutoCAD forums by versions can give some hints about active users at the link: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD/ct-p/8

AutoCAD 2013/2014/2015: 125 new (by the time of this post)

AutoCAD 2010/2011/2012: 40 new

Those above numbers are not really correct, but they do somehow to reflect how popular an AutoCAD version is. We can guess AutoCAD 2010 may be the most popular, 2013 may be the next as it just only two years old.

AutoCAD SDK did not make a big change on API. We can still use most of functions from AutoCAD 2009 on 2015. Therefore, we can make a big shared class for multiple versions and some very small classes for group versions. You can make plugins for .NET 3.5 (AutoCAD 2010, 2011) and .NET 4.0 (AutoCAD 2012 -> 2015) to cover all most popular AutoCAD versions recently. AutoCAD 2015 is still too young and fine to use .NET 4.0.

Khoa

[kdub_nz]

Your logic is a little warped.

The google references just indicate how many questions have been asked,

or how sucessful the media saturation campaign is ,

or how much time bloggers have to spare,

or any one of 100's of possible causes.

This thread has added another couple of reference counts to each build because of your list. 🙂

[khoa.ho]

I think Autodesk Licensing team should know the answer. But it is not sure a confidential information or not. Otherwise, we have to play around with Google to find the answer somewhere.

Yes Google counts everything on the web. It will be a good tool for analytics based on search results. The logic of most used AutoCAD versions is not equivalent to the most frequent “AutoCAD xxxx” sentences on internet. But it can tell something like how popular an AutoCAD version is. Many users use AutoCAD everyday but not telling to the world, and even not mention the year version when talking on internet. Therefore, the search results are not really correct to say the most used AutoCAD version.

But the Google result list can give some hints for prediction. I see AutoCAD has three top picks in 2000, 2010 and 2013/2014. Those years may be the most successful versions of AutoCAD. AutoCAD 2015 gains big numbers because of marketing and fast growing up of information recently comparing to few years ago.

[derekjarvis]

Thanks for doing the legwork on the Google results. I have to agree with Kerry though - I don't think these results would be an accurate indicator. The older the version of Autocad, the more hits it will have because time is on its side. Also, Google strives to show "Relevant" articles, so they are probably doing some filtering of their own.

I think we are all in agreement though - we need someone from Autodesk to give us some numbers on the user base of each version. I would be happy with just a percentage though. For example, just to know what percent of the users would be covered by each SDK would be enough for me. I'm not looking for Autodesk to give away their financial numbers for everyone to see. I'm just looking for some help in targeting the largest audience.

[dgorsman]

You can't count on AutoDesk numbers either.  Many are "sitting" on the latest releases while running something a few versions back, for a variety of reasons.

Ultimately the only way to find an approximate number is to stay active in the various communities and gauge from there.  Best bet would be to follow the AutoDesk support methodology and support the current version and last three releases.