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@elw21597 wrote:such as if you want to copy something you would have to enter a ridiculous amount of keys and clicks to finally do something, then God forbid if you are in a command and you mess up, then you have to go through 10 different processes again. It is not user friendly to say the least.
Click an object, enter in a grip and hit C
I guarantee it is fast.
My opinion is that you don't know much about what you are talking about 
Autocad is a 2D tool that can perform modeling.
Forget about your compares
Or try to make a good coloured of anything in 2D with one of your softs... before comparing 3D abilities.
About time consuming, I beleive that it depends on the teachers together with the goal(s). On on your own homework too. Make exercices to see how many ways exist to copy an object, more or less fast. And let's talk.
It all depends on where you start from, I have used Autocad for many years, and I attended an evening course for both Inventor and Revit, give me Autocad anyday WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet), why on earth would you want planes and sketches and extrusion that become yet more planes then a parameter manager then a family manager then a group then off to the vault, you need a dozen screens just to keep track of all the different dialogues and toolpalettes.
I want a line I type "l" and it's ready to go and I can place the end anywhere I want right now without having to think if I'm in the correct editor or can draw the other end just there without having to try and hunt down some little known icon on a wierd tab on the ribbon that changes it's contents every two seconds depending on what it feels like and what someone else thinks I am trying to do - yes I do want that point just there and I don't want to waste time telling the program why I should be allowed to do that.
Or you could just realise that it is a different approach to the workflow of producing the same thing, but indeed some tools are quicker at doing that than others.
sounds like a homework deadline might be approaching, Are you sure its not procrastinating that you are really upset with? #beentheredonethat 
Joking aside, i get your sentiment.
Compared to the ease and capability of 3D modelers AutoCAD does seem like an archaic throwback, but you cant compare AutoCAD to 3D modelers. Yes AutoCAD can do 3D models, but that's just a capability where 3D modelers were built with the intent of modeling. The reason Autodesk has both Inventor and AutoCAD is because the tools serve different purposes and needs.
As far as learning it, after about two and a half or maybe three days of working in it you could probably be on par with most other users out there. There is a learning curve but once you get a few rudimentary elements down the rest kinda falls in place. That's not saying AutoCAD is the most efficient way to design for all projects though.
One of the reasons we still have AutoCAD is that we have 30 years worth of drawings created in the platform. Some of those will need to be maintained and updated. If a company created a widget in the 80s that needs no further engineering to maintain profitability, they are not going to spend the time and money to update it to the fancy new 3D modeler just because. There are still tons of hand drawn drawings out there too and some of those are still actually updated by hand. If you wanna talk about obsolescence, hand drafting is extremely time consuming and expensive, but often its cheaper than shifting an entire engineered set of drawings to a new format.
One reason you might be learning it as well is that your professor might have a sweet spot for the program. As in they are comfortable using it over others. I would agree that this is a really bad reason to learn it, but academia doesn't always operate on the best interests of the students.
Another reason that this software is still relevant is that flat simple 2D diagrams are still really important in many applications. Im currently employed in the petrochemical industry. On a day to day basis the 4 most important drawings (P&ID, PFD, INSTRUMENT/Electrical, PLOT PLAN) are all simple 2D drawings. Just for the company im working for these drawings command millions of dollars worth of activity. When building the multi million dollar facilities which will make up significant portions of the US's GDP one of the first drawing produced is a block flow diagram (simple 2D), Next would be a Process Flow Diagram (simple 2D) and then a P&ID (simple 2D) at this stage in their design process it s an easy feet to have millions invested. This is just the petrochemical industry, i'm sure there are several other examples in other industries.
I get the frustration of seemingly inefficient tasks in AutoCAD, but thats because you are playing with some of the most basic building blocks. I get that you can create a model quicker in inventor, but the real value (as i believe was alluded earlier in this thread) is the capability of the AutoCAD platform for customization. Ont of the things i do is create things that turn 100 clicks into 1. These routines are often very specific for my companies goals. Its unfortunate but generally school level applications of AutoCAD will not be able to show you this feature. That said if you get your hands on an AutoCAD vertical like Architecture and see how long it takes to create a house plan. It can be done in a very short interval and that system is built on AutoCAD.
I get the frustration but that part of what schooling is. In calculus you have to learn the fundamental therom of calculus even though most people will only use the power rule after that. You may never need AutoCAD, but it can be a fundamental to design and is still very powerful.
CADnoob
I can agree from a school level type of project stand point Revit seems 1000x better and easier than autocad. In a school project for a building you are drawing probably 2-5% of what is actually needed (drawing wise) to actually build that building in real life. Once you get a job drawing EVERY part of something that needs built you will see that a whole new set of complications come to the surface trying to draw it with Revit. Problems and complications come with any software. That is also why there is different software because it's for different things. I can draw a building using Microsoft paint for free so why pay for autocad or other software. Because Paint isn't made for that, just like Revit isn't really made to draw 2D and autocad is so you can't really compare them.
Judging how good a software is by what it can do on a school level project compared to a real life project isn't a good a good comparison either. Example: Right now I have a very little project I'm working on. It's a municipality garage. It has 1 garage door, 2 regular doors and a single person bathroom. It's just a rectangle building with a few alternatives for bids. Pretty simple right? If this was an assignment in school it would be 2 sheets maybe, 3 if your professor was good and made you do extra parts. Because in real life so many more dots and T's need to be crossed off, I think my drawings are up to like 13 pages. Yes that is insane for what the building is, but that is the nature of the business. Sure I can draw 4 walls, a bathroom, throw in some fixtures and doors in Revit in 5 minutes and have a nice fancy model of that garage, but no one can actually build anything from that. There's much more too it and that's where you will see the same types of frustrations that you have with autocad in a program like Revit when you get into the finer details.
Plus if you want to see overly complicated you haven't seen anything yet until you try and use autocad architecture. haha You can do anything you can in Revit with it and somethings better, but a lot of things IMO could be simplified to be more user friendly.
Autocad is every where because they had the best marketing ever back in the day. They gave the software to schools for free so that is what the schools taught. Companies used autocad because that's what the students new how to use. It was genius and that is why autodesk has the biggest market share. IMO archicad is better than autocad or revit for buildings. You probably never even heard of archicad because they suck at advertising. I had professors that never heard of it when I was in school too.
Nick DiPietro
Cad Manager/Monkey
![Autodesk Design & Make Report](https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/1350519iCB55845EBFC43016/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999" "Autodesk Design & Make Report")
