AUGI Home Page Poll: What Version of AutoCAD Are You Using?
Thank you to the 431 members who chimed in on this month’s home page poll: What version of AutoCAD are you currently using?
Half of the users (of vanilla AutoCAD and its vertical products) who responded to the question are on the current release, 2012.
Picking software is like driving a car—we all have our needs and preferences and limits… and many folks drive more than one. However, in the name of simplicity, only one answer was allowed.
Personally, my office uses 2012 (AutoCAD/Revit MEP Suite for me, a couple of LT seats and quite a few of TrueView), and I keep us on the current release because it helps with my budgeting. Having that one line item there for subscription is so much easier than the mountains of paperwork that would be needed if I upgraded only every three years or so. Additionally, almost all of our drawings are created by outside firms, no telling what release.
Designer and CADD Coordinator Kae Calloway says, “We have to use AutoCAD to accommodate vendor files and use release 2005 for that; however, our management system and plotting processes were written in-house and designed for MicroStation.”
Every office is different, so I spoke to some other users to share their views with you (thank you to Leanne Zaras and Kyle Nishioka for their insightful comments). Hardware and/or operating system upgrades are not currently an option, so why tax an old system with better software? The older versions of AutoCAD have just the features some users need, inspiring no desire to upgrade for other features. Another reason might be that they have add-on software packages that haven’t been modified to work with newer releases. User training, testing and roll-out time, customization, etc are all other factors to take into consideration.
Thank you again to everyone for taking part in our monthly home page poll. Please chime in during the month of March to report if you are currently conducting a job search. Go to www.augi.com and take the poll in the right-hand column.
Melanie Stone is a CAFM/ IWMS Specialist & System Administrator supporting and writing about ARCHIBUS, FMInteract, Tririga, Revit, AutoCAD, BricsCAD or similar. She served as an AUGI Director/Officer for over 6 years and is currently involved with the STLRUG. Melanie can be reached at mistressofthedorkness@gmail.com or found on Twitter as @MistresDorkness on YouTube or on her Mistress Of the Dorkness blog.
