topic Re: Residential drafter trying to select new cad software in 3ds Max Forum

topic Re: Residential drafter trying to select new cad software in 3ds Max Forum https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-forum/residential-drafter-trying-to-select-new-cad-software/m-p/5546655#M89853 Most definitely seems like we have a bunch of Elephants to eat at this point (haha I've never heard that phrase before I love it).  As far as which one is most important at this point, actually I think being able to draft stuff is most important at this point due to something that I left out earlier.  My boss wasn't exactly the smartest when it came to purchasing Autocad LT 2012.  He was looking around online, saw it advertised by someone (I don't know who) for $800 and they told him it would work on as many computers as he wanted, he would just have to call them every time he wanted to load it on a new computer.  Well, his computer crashed and when he went to load it on a new computer that I built for him, the key obviously wouldn't work.  So we called and the phone number is disconnected, called autodesk and they don't recognize the serial number, so obviously there is nothing they can do for us either. So right now we are running on a trial of 2015 CAD LT.  And so the most important thing for us right now is to get on a real copy of whatever software we decide we are going to go with.   That's why we are pretty serious about trying to see how many elephants we can eat at once.  If we are going to have to learn a new drafting software like Revit LT then now is the time, the new office/presentation room will not be finished until later this year (I'm guessing august/september) so that should give us some time to get comfortable with revit, sketchup, or softplan, and then start taking on 3dsmax, or Lumen RT.  I know its a pretty tough situation we are in, and I've already lectured my boss about making sure he knows the source that he is purchasing software from.  But that is all in the past now and we are trying to focus on the future.   I'm going to be chatting in person with an autodesk representative that is going to be in town on Thursday.  And hopefully he can give me some more good suggestions.  One of the reasons I wanted to ask these questions in the forum is so that I could have more questions for him when I talk to him.  I needed to know what I needed to be asking him.   Now one additional question, I feel like at this point we are leaning towards purchasing 2 copies of Revit LT for mine and my bosses computer, so that we can maintain our current work (we would get the version that comes with autocad LT as well for $1700 total per PC).  This would give us the ability to learn Revit LT with the option to fall back on Autocad LT when times get hectic and we just need to hurry through a design.  Once we get like 2 months away from moving into the new office I would order the parts and build the new computer for the showroom (would probably be a 6 core xeon cpu, 32gb ram with option of adding more, and either the new Titan X that is coming out or a quadro k4200).  Then we would buy the design suite for that computer.  I would spend the next 2 months learning and putting together a project through 3dsMAX using an existing Revit LT project that we have already finished (It would be nice to be able to display something to our builders on our grand opening even if it isn't the photo quality stuff that I've been seeing).  This is where I have the big question, is this something I'm going to be able to do with Revit LT?  I keep seeing people post on Revit and not Revit LT.  Should I be looking at Revit, and not Revit LT?  It was my assumption that on our drafting computers Revit LT would be just fine to use.   Thanks again for all the help guys, its been educational, and intimidating when talking about the elephants haha.  Also greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my longer posts (I can get kind of long winded from time to time).  Jeremy Wed, 18 Mar 2015 15:11:07 GMT Anonymous 2015-03-18T15:11:07Z