buy application vs custom programming

[Anonymous]

How often have you recommended just buying an application for AutoCAD instead of doing custom programming.

Or never recommended buying application , that would put me out of work ?

What are the extra costs of custom programming , writing manuals, only one source for support etc.

Any examples of what appliction you may have started custom programming then later purchased application.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Maximo

[Anonymous]

>>Or never recommended buying application , that would put me out of work ?

I would be out of work if this is how I approached this decision.
--
Bobby C. Jones
http://www.acadx.com

[Anonymous]

Its a case by case, company by company decision. I lean towards programming
in-house, but then I am a masocistic sob.
The danger of in-house programming can be that programmers get bogged down
with details unless guided with a strong hand or good self discipline. The
beauty of in-house programming is the tweaking that can save days of manual
entry when something just left of centre arises.

Playing Devils Advocate? Sure, because every case is different.

Good luck

Jon
wrote in message news:5069304@discussion.autodesk.com...
How often have you recommended just buying an application for AutoCAD
instead of doing custom programming.

Or never recommended buying application , that would put me out of work ?

What are the extra costs of custom programming , writing manuals, only one
source for support etc.

Any examples of what appliction you may have started custom programming then
later purchased application.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Maximo

[Anonymous]

Maxima10,

For me it boils down to the cost benefit of the programming against what we
are going to save in labor every time this routine is used. additionally I
also look at
if we are saving x amount of labor with a program and it's done accurately
every time (another benefit) we can have our engineers working on other task
because of the time savings. It's a win win if you can identify the tasks
that can or need to be automated, you also don't need to automate everything
in order to get huge gains in production time. Identify the weak areas and
reverse engineer the tasks that need automating. When you first see the
quote your heart might skip a beat or two depending on the task but I can
tell you we had a programmer after a LOT of work on my part with our owner
write a program that inserted hyperlinks from data in our designs drawings
to MS Access and then linked hyper links to a web page, when done by hand
took it was taking us about 10 links per hour with all the typing and
checking and we normally need around 300-500 links, with the program we were
able to achieve the 300-500 links in 5 mins. now that is a cost saving even
the owner could live with.

Hope this helps.

John Coon


"Jon" wrote in message
news:5070264@discussion.autodesk.com...
Its a case by case, company by company decision. I lean towards programming
in-house, but then I am a masocistic sob.
The danger of in-house programming can be that programmers get bogged down
with details unless guided with a strong hand or good self discipline. The
beauty of in-house programming is the tweaking that can save days of manual
entry when something just left of centre arises.

Playing Devils Advocate? Sure, because every case is different.

Good luck

Jon
wrote in message news:5069304@discussion.autodesk.com...
How often have you recommended just buying an application for AutoCAD
instead of doing custom programming.

Or never recommended buying application , that would put me out of work ?

What are the extra costs of custom programming , writing manuals, only one
source for support etc.

Any examples of what appliction you may have started custom programming then
later purchased application.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Maximo

[Anonymous]

>>>Or never recommended buying application , that would put me out of work ?
>
> I would be out of work if this is how I approached this decision.

Out of work today, but flooded with it in the future.

Clients value honesty - not inferring that you're not honest, Bobby 😃

Best, proven advice is to treat their money like it's yours. If you *think*
there is a better product available then something you can write, or more
cost prohibitive, give the potential customer both options up front.
Include the pros and cons botth ways and let them decide. Even if they
choose to buy it now, they'll come back to you again and again so you'll
more than make up the lost initial revenue.

-- Mike
___________________________
Mike Tuersley
___________________________
the trick is to realize that there is no spoon...

[Anonymous]

Hey Mike,
What I meant to say was, don't exclude 3rd party apps for fear of putting
yourself out of work. I have applications currently running on our systems
that I have purchased from 3rd party vendors. Not necessarily because I
couldn't write them myself, but because it was the best decision.

And I may or may not be honest, I'll never tell 🙂
--
Bobby C. Jones
http://www.acadx.com


"Mike Tuersley" wrote in message
news:5071411@discussion.autodesk.com...
>>>Or never recommended buying application , that would put me out of work ?
>
> I would be out of work if this is how I approached this decision.

Out of work today, but flooded with it in the future.

Clients value honesty - not inferring that you're not honest, Bobby 😃

Best, proven advice is to treat their money like it's yours. If you *think*
there is a better product available then something you can write, or more
cost prohibitive, give the potential customer both options up front.
Include the pros and cons botth ways and let them decide. Even if they
choose to buy it now, they'll come back to you again and again so you'll
more than make up the lost initial revenue.

-- Mike
___________________________
Mike Tuersley
___________________________
the trick is to realize that there is no spoon...