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Good Autocad Alternative program?

jkulpa
Participant

Good Autocad Alternative program?

jkulpa
Participant
Participant

Anybody know of a good alternative program than AutoCAD for doing engineering/drafting work, not related to the autodesk family? I'm tired of all their non-updates every year. My program shouldn't be crashing 5 times in a day, when I have a single file open that is less than 3 MB in size! This $hit is ridiculous. Crashes during autosaves, crashes when rendering, crashes when trying to edit materials in the material library. I WANT A PROGRAM THAT WORKS!!!!!

 

I have a brand new computer that exceeds all of their recommended specs for this program and yet every day I have to send multiple error reports, regardless of what year or service pack I have run.

 

-Corei7, 3.4 Ghz, overclocking to 3.9 Ghz

-16GB of RAM

-SSD

-Quaddro videocard (BTW most of my drawings are in 2D, so this shouldn't even be a factor)

 

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jkulpa
Participant
Participant

@TheCADnoob wrote:

 


I just pegged the OP as a very young member as being overtly hyperbolic and negative and one not really seeking answers but looking for a pound of flesh. I agree there is a breadth of knowledge here,  I've got 4 different CADs on my machine and i didn't have to be nasty to get that information. 



I am looking for answers, maybe you shouldn't be so condescending and try to offer up some help like @Anonymous and @Alfred.NESWADBA have. I've answered everyone's questions as to what I have been running and uploaded a drawing that I stated crashed on me just yesterday.

EDIT: I also run 3 CAD programs, the other 2 having a narrow scope, so I don't use them as often as CAD.

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Pointdump
Mentor
Mentor

J,

 

@Alfred.NESWADBA put his finger on the likely problem:
"...PDF is a performance and memory killer when you use them in that way..."

 

I can't get your drawing to crash, probably because I don't have all those PDF's:

 

AutoCrash.png


Dave

Dave Stoll
Las Vegas, Nevada

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jkulpa
Participant
Participant

@Pointdump wrote:

J,

 

@Alfred.NESWADBA put his finger on the likely problem:
"...PDF is a performance and memory killer when you use them in that way..."

 

I can't get your drawing to crash, probably because I don't have all those PDF's:

 

AutoCrash.png


Dave


Thanks Dave, it gets frustrating when I need a single page from all those different pdf files to reference in the drawing. Even being un-referenced still causes problems? I only had the one that's 'Not Found' actually open at the time of all the crashes yesterday. And it always crashed during what I would consider a fairly low-resource-intensive command.

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qnologi
Advisor
Advisor

Someone wrote this in an earlier post:

 

The best way I've found to workaround this problem is to SAVE AS the raster PDFs to JPEG or TIFF format, then do an image reference instead.

 

Maybe this might help, or have you tried this already...

qnologi
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TheCADnoob
Mentor
Mentor

@jkulpa wrote:

@TheCADnoob wrote:

 


I just pegged the OP as a very young member as being overtly hyperbolic and negative and one not really seeking answers but looking for a pound of flesh. I agree there is a breadth of knowledge here,  I've got 4 different CADs on my machine and i didn't have to be nasty to get that information. 



I am looking for answers, maybe you shouldn't be so condescending and try to offer up some help like @Anonymous and @Alfred.NESWADBA have. I've answered everyone's questions as to what I have been running and uploaded a drawing that I stated crashed on me just yesterday.

EDIT: I also run 3 CAD programs, the other 2 having a narrow scope, so I don't use them as often as CAD.


This was in response to jgreth not you. 

If you were here for answers it wouldn't have taken a page an a half to get you to come close to posting something substantive to work with. Not to mention your pre-concluded answer sits in the title of this thread post. As you described them, your problems started with years of crashing, updates, materials, and it not working. The tone of your comments have been negative so in total if you find that my apt description of your activities thus far as being condescending to you, then can i take it that you too disagree with your behavior?

Look Ive been there and been pissed off. I've even engaged in flame wars with bad service providers on twitter. but all i was looking for was for you to bring it down a notch and try to let us help you off the away from the cliff. This is why i asked what it was you had done thus far to solve the problem. Your answer to me was that you had IT set up the system to run CAD. If this is so, they owe you some money cause its not working. 

Ive looked into you file as well and its behaving for me. I too did find several missing xrefs. I also found there are several regapps and several small drawing sized blocks that arent referenced. If you delete everything out of your drawing there are around 600 ghost items in there as well. I would try cleaning up the drawing (purge, overkill -purge regapps and potential a few more purges to get anything that was still hanging out) to only the elements that you need and then WBLOCK it out and see if it helps. 

CADnoob

EESignature

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jkulpa
Participant
Participant

@TheCADnoob wrote:

@jkulpa wrote:

@TheCADnoob wrote:

 


I just pegged the OP as a very young member as being overtly hyperbolic and negative and one not really seeking answers but looking for a pound of flesh. I agree there is a breadth of knowledge here,  I've got 4 different CADs on my machine and i didn't have to be nasty to get that information. 



I am looking for answers, maybe you shouldn't be so condescending and try to offer up some help like @Anonymous and @Alfred.NESWADBA have. I've answered everyone's questions as to what I have been running and uploaded a drawing that I stated crashed on me just yesterday.

EDIT: I also run 3 CAD programs, the other 2 having a narrow scope, so I don't use them as often as CAD.


This was in response to jgreth not you. 

If you were here for answers it wouldn't have taken a page an a half to get you to come close to posting something substantive to work with. Not to mention your pre-concluded answer sits in the title of this thread post. As you described them, your problems started with years of crashing, updates, materials, and it not working. The tone of your comments have been negative so in total if you find that my apt description of your activities thus far as being condescending to you, then can i take it that you too disagree with your behavior?

Look Ive been there and been pissed off. I've even engaged in flame wars with bad service providers on twitter. but all i was looking for was for you to bring it down a notch and try to let us help you off the away from the cliff. This is why i asked what it was you had done thus far to solve the problem. Your answer to me was that you had IT set up the system to run CAD. If this is so, they owe you some money cause its not working. 

Ive looked into you file as well and its behaving for me. I too did find several missing xrefs. I also found there are several regapps and several small drawing sized blocks that arent referenced. If you delete everything out of your drawing there are around 600 ghost items in there as well. I would try cleaning up the drawing (purge, overkill -purge regapps and potential a few more purges to get anything that was still hanging out) to only the elements that you need and then WBLOCK it out and see if it helps. 


You're talking about me, to jgreth, so it is pertinent.

 

I did come here for answers, my question, plain as day, is in the subject line. I am looking for an alternative program, because apparently to get this program to work properly on a 3MB file it takes a village of computer specialists. There wouldn't be over a million posts on this forum if it worked as it should.

I'm frustrated with this program because it crashes, on a small file, when doing essentially nothing. For instance, if I simply click on the edit materials button, it immediately gives me a fatal error and kills the program. This has been happening now every time I try to edit a material, not once have I actually been able to edit anything.

If I was running a >25 MB file size, with 3D shapes and everything else that I have done before with a subpar computer, then yea, I understand the crash. A <5MB file, in 2D, when all my resources, according to the Performance Monitor are well under 50% utilization? That's ridiculous.

 

I know one of you mentioned you've never had it crash since version R14 or something. Well I would like to know how you did it. In every office I've worked in, CAD is always the butt of a joke or cause for a scene when someone loses whatever they'd been working on since their last save. It would be nice if Autodesk pushed their new releases back to every other year and actually give themselves time to work out the bugs before releasing. I just read that there have already been 3 hotfixes and an upcoming service pack for 2017. Instead of new features, I want stability.

 

 

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dgorsman
Consultant
Consultant

To be honest, some (more and more it seems, these days) will be satisfied with nothing less than "SteveCAD", or "BobCAD", or whatever configuration is geared to their own personal desires regardless of other users.  So having a goal of satisfied customers, while laudable in theory, doesn't always work well in the real world.

 

If this was an independent forum such as theswamp.org or cadtutor.net there would be zero issue with a thorough discussion of competing products.  But to do so on a vendor forum can be considered "bad form".  Not to mention easily degenerating into baiting, flaming, trolling, and all sorts of other unsuitable behavior.

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


JDMather
Consultant
Consultant

jkulpa wrote: 

I did come here for answers, my question, plain as day, is in the subject line. I am looking for an alternative program, .... 


I've never used this one - but you might give it a try.

http://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/free-download/


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autodesk Inventor 2019 Certified Professional
Autodesk AutoCAD 2013 Certified Professional
Certified SolidWorks Professional


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pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend

Very dramatic LOL but I feel your frustration.

In 2015 and higher: start GRAPHICSCONFIG command and turn off all settings on the pop-up. Your video card appears to not be able to cope.
Manually QSAVE and set Autosaves to something like 15 and never rely on it, and also ensure you do not use MOVEBAK or relocate the BAK file creation, but leave it on at the default settings/locations.
In 2016/2017 also turn off HPQUICKPREVIEW.
PUBLISH can crash for many reasons, you've not given enough info so I can't help there.

I crash once a week or two, AutoCAD is up 6-8hours a day, 5-days a week. Win7 and Win10, 2016-2017. Very drama free.

 

Thanks for the DWG file: I replaced your missing PDFs with mine (letter size, not sure if that's your method). With that many PDFs the file is slow but it's not crashing 2016 here. PLOT and PUBLISH are not crashing either. Is this a file you ORBIT in realistic mode to get to crash?

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RobDraw
Mentor
Mentor

So, even though it has been pointed out that when AutoCAD is used in a manner that is known to cause issues, you still blame the program? AutoCAD and PDFs have never had a good relationship. Those of us that have been around for a while see the use of the in drawings as a convenience and not a part of our normal workflows. Use anything in a manner that it was not intended and it is likely to break. Since you like analogies, it's like using a nailing hammer for demolishing a concrete slab. It might work for a while but will more than likely brake at some point. It might even get the job done but it will take a lot longer than it would have if a jack hammer was used.

 

A user on another forum is having major performance issues because of polylines that are being generated programmatically. The polylines are generated from 10s of thousands of points. Hundreds of them within an inch of plot. Now keep in mind polylines have been around a very long time and are a part of many people's everyday usage of AutoCAD. This user is taking a reliable tool and using it in a fashion it was not intended and can't even select one of them without having to wait several minutes for the selection process to finish. It took many posts to convince him that he couldn't fix the issue in AutoCAD because the heart of the problem was the process being used to generate the polylines.

 

This is a classic case of PEBCAK. Use the program properly and crashes will not happen.


Rob

Drafting is a breeze and Revit doesn't always work the way you think it should.
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rkmcswain
Mentor
Mentor
RobDraw wrote:

.... AutoCAD and PDFs have never had a good relationship. Those of us that have been around for a while see the use of the in drawings as a convenience and not a part of our normal workflows. Use anything in a manner that it was not intended and it is likely to break.

I'm not sure if your second and third sentences are still referring to AutoCAD and PDF files, but I have to disagree on your first sentence.

Sure, back in the 2005 era, Autodesk was pushing DWF and ignoring (and quite frankly, criticizing PDF), but they have since come around to realize that PDF is the de-facto standard for document sharing, especially when sharing with non-technical types. We've printed everything exclusively to PDF for years with no more or less issues than we had printing to PLT files or directly to a hardcopy device.

R.K. McSwain     | CADpanacea | on twitter
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RobDraw
Mentor
Mentor

You're missing the point. I was not referring to printing to PDFs and I'm not sure how that even fits into the topic. Working with PDFs within AutoCAD took a long time to happen and now that it can be done, it doesn't work well. The best thing about it is easy and decent conversion to .dwg. As pointed out earlier, they are resource hogs and other formats are much more manageable to work with.


Rob

Drafting is a breeze and Revit doesn't always work the way you think it should.
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RobDraw
Mentor
Mentor

2D Alternatives

 

http://info.cadalyst.com/cadalyst-report-dwg-cad-software?utm_campaign=LQL+2015&utm_source=hs_automa...


Rob

Drafting is a breeze and Revit doesn't always work the way you think it should.
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cadwomen
Collaborator
Collaborator

@

 

 

 

"I have NEVER had one of my drawings crash. (This is going back to R14 in the 1990's.) "

 

sorry , my time go´s back to R11 and i meat a lot of People work with ADSK in the past 25years

 

so you are a real lucky Person ( some of them i meat ) or you just playing around with and stay at 75%

 

cu cw

 

 

If my post answers your question, please mark it as an Accepted Solution, so that others can find answers quickly!
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cadwomen
Collaborator
Collaborator
meat = meet
can´t edit the post
cu cw

 

 


 

If my post answers your question, please mark it as an Accepted Solution, so that others can find answers quickly!
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