Adoption rate of latest release?

[RGrandmaison]

Some industries seem to move more quickly than others to incorporate the latest Autodesk release into their practice. I've been using AutoCAD for more than 30 years and have been a CAD manager at a structural engineering firm for most of that time, as well as a licensed architect- working for several architectural firms. The firms I've worked for in the AEC (emphasis on the A/E) arena were usually very aggressive about upgrading. Subscriptions made that even easier.

From what I'm hearing from my current colleagues, at least in this local area, the Civil Engineering firms are slow to adopt the latest release. While 2017 has been available for a while, many are still running on much older versions of Civil 3D. Is this typical throughout the industry? Or, is it that just a few "key players" in an area can really drive the adoption of software locally? I'm wondering if it's also something to do with the hardware-software linkage between the two. Civil Engineers are really tied into very expensive hardware that may, or may not, be tied to firmware/software upgrade cycles that relate to the Autodesk release cycle. So, the cost to do regular upgrades may be heavier for those firms do to incompatibility issues with legacy hardware playing well with Autodesk software. So, is it a cost issue? I lived through AutoCAD r13 and remember it well, so I understand the "let's wait for the SP1...or SP2" mentality. But, I'm very curious as to what drives the adoption rate of, in particular C3D, in other geographical areas.

So, I guess my questions are:

What part of the country/world are you in?

Which version of the software does your firm use?

Is your situation typical of the other professionals in your area?

[tcorey]

I deal with clients large and small. Smaller firms tend to move to new releases sooner than larger firms because it's not such a large undertaking. They dodge and weave, so to speak, better than bigger firms.

2017, in particular, has been resisted by some firms because the Civil 3D objects do not save back to previous releases. On the other hand, new features, like being able to create corridors using feature lines as baselines, make users want 2017. In the larger firms, it can become a shoving match. Users wanting the new features, IT not wanting to go through upgrading seventy-five, or two hundred, or however many users.

[_Hathaway]

We typically implement upgrades every two years...and are currently using 2015.  With the huge changes in 2017 and backwards compatibility we'll probably wait until 2018 now.  No one I know is using 2017 except one small agency that accidentally implemented it and 'then realized' there was no backwards compatibility.  He is wishing he stayed on 2015.