More and more architects, especially in Europe, are working on Macs using Vector Works as their main drawing software. The faculty of architecture in Zurich only uses Macs with VW and others wil follow. Will this be the end of pc and AutoCAD?
sure! give it 15 years...
dont forget the strong hold autocad has on all the types of consultants...
i would love it, but i think it is still wishful thinking, imho.
It depends........ If autocad could work on a mac....macs will take over. If VW would work as good on a pc as on a mac, pc owners would keep the pc and use a combination of autocad and vw.
well, its not as simple as that....mr. gates is re-writing windows operating to 'longhorn' to come out 2006 which as i understand will make all present software obsolete from their current xp/nt/2000/98/95 platforms [it aint going to work]. basiclly the sp2 [service pac 2] he wants to ram down our thoughts is a stop gap for the security flaws that the microsoft oper system have and the new longhorn will supposedly make it hacker proof. many claim macs dont get viruses but that is only because hackers choose the pc platform as they know where to put the most bang for the buck as too few folks go the mac route.
the way i look at it, my present machine is 2003 xp pro, so i am only going to upgrade it between now and 2006 and then make the decision then if i wish to continue in pc world. having worked in both, its the same except the macs are prettier by far and in some ways treat you like a baby with its graphic / screen icons moving in and out. ultimately, if i have to buy all new software anyway, i might as well make the swap. if you were waiting to buy a new machine in 2005, i would recommend holding off a year if you can do it as your machine will be obsolete!! thanks bill!!
and by the way, vector works is a real mickey mouse program for idiots. sorry to offend those out there!
Autocad is the Worst Program made today for Drafting/Designing.
It So bad I don't even want a bootleg copy.
I would rather go back to the pencil than upgrade
to 2004 or 2005 Architectural Desktop. Who ever came up with that Piece of Crap Flunked out his Second Year of Architectural School,
then he became a software design engineer.
Archicad 9.., still not that easy to learn but its the best out there.
Stick to the PC's..., Mac's are dead they have been dead,
its just that nobody told them they are dead .
i really can not see vw displacing autocad. i wouldn't mind it, but i can not see it happening.
WHY WILL AUTOCAD PERSIST?
autocad is a far superior PRODUCTION tool and is used by a vast majority of architectural consultants. vw does not translate to DWG very well. very buggy, totally different approach to drawing. did i mention that autocad is a better PRODUCTION tool?
WHY VW SHOULD DISPLACE AUTOCAD?
because its a design tool that was created with architects in mind. its not a production tool, it allows you to be sloppy and sketch within a drawing, to work intuitively and therefore doesn't create as big a gap between designer and design. its not as precise and that's its advantage... do we really need to be drawing to a precision of 0.0000001??? even if you change the tolerance(?) in autocad, it still draws to so ridiculous level of precision that only a machinist needs...
i forgot to add... that ultimately, its all comes down to the benjamins for a majority of architects... and getting the most production, the most seamless transition between archs and consultants saves a firm money...
Its a pain in the Ass.
I could write A Book on AutoCrap.
Come on.., even the Salepeople admit it's Crap.
They Really fuck up a good Program. When they went to Architectural Desktop. See The Designer of the program has no cule how Architects think or Draw.. As an Architect you just want to shed lead baby.
Now you have to come up with all the wall types,doors, windows.
I just want to draw...., and not program a wall detail.
God have mercy on AutoCrap.
tectonic, i think that there are only better things out there. agree archicad is good and really isnt that hard to learn and does work well in pc and mac word [you get the same disk with the little toggle]. very quick and simple build up of buildings v. lines polys. etc. adt tries to be what archicad is but what i find that although many people have adt, they still use the basic line clip commands and dont build the project up as builidng bits like archicad. i am a bit unfair with vector works; it is easy to use but i still will know it as 'mini-cad' which is what its previous name was and is perhaps equivalant to acad lt. if you ever tried 'lt', you know vector works. its got limits that once you a very good at acad, you would find vector works very limiting and clumsy.
autocad vanilla is a different animal from desktop, never used desktop and never want to. so do you want to explain your criticism of cad or are we left your negative comments about nothing?
my critism to 'vanilla' is that i like to build 2d data as building parts, wall, windows, doors, etc. verses lines, double lines, etc. the walls, doors, etc. have 'intelegent information' associated with them v. a dumb line. change 5" walls to 8" walls thoughout a project is one command. change relationship of window opening in one command. schedules can be created from the data. cost estimates can be generated from the data. both archicad / adt think in that way.
and actually, while yor building 2d walls, it actually is building a 3d model.
we architects think in 3d and $$ terms i hope we all agree.... that could be a good parameter to evaluate whatever software u like to use...i dunno if acad sucks...i use acad, and i found it very good for what i use it, but also im aware that some other good stuff could be out there...it all depends on how ur office works, and where in the world u work at...example, is not the same how arch offices and construction offices works @ the states and how they work @ latin america (the 2 places i know already how it works), so i think that has a lot to do on what software will prevail, and which one is the right one for u...
and is a fact...acrhitectural consultants would be stuck on acad for several years yet.
I learned AutoCAD in college because people were saying the same things then that I hear a lot now: "It's the industry standard", "all the consultants use it and the other applications don't translate well", "you won't be marketable without it...."
Now I wish I hadn't wasted the credits, because more than 10 years went by, along with jobs in 7 firms (some were student jobs) and not one of them used AutoCAD. (They used MicroStation, VectorWorks, ArchiCAD, and Arris.) These firms ranged in size from 3 people to over 100 people and none of them had any major problems with compatibility with consultant's drawings. I'm using a combination of VectorWorks and ArchiCAD now and not experiencing any major complications.
I'd estimate that I interviewed at 35 firms over the course of my internship and only 3 that I can remember used AutoCAD.
Because I had AutoCAD on my resume I used to get a lot of calls from recruiters looking for AutoCAD production workers at large firms. I was never interested in those jobs in the first place, so eventually I removed AutoCAD from my resume. The result of this when I was job-hunting was that I received fewer calls for these CAD production type jobs, but no fewer callbacks for jobs I actually wanted (design positions or overall design/associate/project manager types of jobs.)
These days if I were making up a resume I most likely wouldn't list AutoCAD because it's been so long since I've touched it that I'm sure I can't claim to be proficient.
One big difference between the AutoCAD firm interviews and the non-AutoCAD firm interviews that I noticed:
in the latter the interviewers nearly always took the tone that whatever software they were using was learnable, that they'd provide training, and that software proficiency was a secondary (or tertiary) consideration in their hiring process and priorities.
In the AutoCAD firms there were usually a lot of questions about how good I thought I was at AutoCAD, and a CAD manager type was often lurking in the wings waiting to test my speed, my conformity to layer standards, and (it seemed) my general willingness to mold my work habits to the idiosyncracies of AutoCAD.
yes, the age of autocad is nearing an end. all of the useless add-on programs different companies have been coming out with point toward its obselesence. i don't however, think vectorworks will be the next big thing in the US. its already been around for a while, and it hasn't caught on. the same could be said for archicad, another design program usually associated with macs. that said, the rumor i heard was that revit was purchased by autocad's parent company, and they were planning on unilaterally phasing out autocad as their primary design program. i bet in ten years you'll still be able to get a version of autocad similar to what you can get today, for probably about 20 bucks.
as ludicrous as it is, the main reason everyone uses autocad is just because everybody uses autocad; so there's no reason to believe any one of the much better cadd programs out there will shove it aside on its own. the end will come from within.
This consultant compatibility thing keeps coming up,and I'm not sure why. For most projects, consultants only use architects drawings as an overlay - a mechanical or structural engineer could do their work on top of a pdf instead of a dwg without much consequence.
We use VW for design phases, and ACAD Desktop for production, and I freaking hate it. While theoretically Desktop would allow you to draw things 3 dimensionally in 2d, and automatically generate schedule data and elevations, it doesn't really work. Two objects of different types (a window assembly and a wall, for example) if placed immediately adjacent to one another will not display properly in 2d, unless the window assembly is drawn smaller than its actual size, which means that your schedule data isn't accurate. Overall, desktop is very buggy, and not well suited to teams with more than 2 people working on them as a consequence of the program containing numerous places to change the same object attributes, some of which will override others, some which don't, and none of which operates consistently across object types.
Desktop's greatest benefit is that it exports to 3dsmax easily, but now we are using FormZ and Sketchup more often, I think for our office its days are numbered.
the compatability issue, if you could call it that, isn't just a function of what type of software consultants use. a lot of draftsmen only know autocad. most firms don't use macs, and in most firms today it is still the case that the guy who runs the firm doesn't know how to use a computer at all, and since autocad was the first thing on the block it just keeps getting renewed every year.
A lot of firms do use macs. Besides which, ArchiCAD has been available for pc for at least 5 years if not more.
The issue of the computer-illiterate principal is still valid, though in that type of firm these decisions are often in the hands of a senior CAD or technical manager.
It's true that firms don't like to switch software once they've implemented something. That's as much an issue of being able to access and work fluidly with old files as it is a cost or training issue. The cost to archive old projects in a relatively universal format all at once is huge (which is one reason this ought to be done on a project-by-project basis each time a project ends - but that's another thread.)
The issue of draftsmen and other employees who know only AutoCAD is not such a big deal AS LONG AS THESE PEOPLE ARE OPEN-MINDED ABOUT LEARNING NEW SOFTWARE. When we hire we expect that it will take a week to two weeks of fulltime training for someone to get up to speed with our non-AutoCAD software in general, as well as ongoing training in our office methods and standards. If someone seems willing to tackle this switch to new software it is well worth the time to train them. If they seem inflexible then we don't hire them. The most annoying thing is when we start someone new and two days into learning our software they're constantly comparing it negatively to AutoCAD - even though they don't know what they're doing yet.
TED:
If you're still thinking of Vecorworks in terms of MiniCAD, then I think you need to take another look at the software. Thats like comparing R14 to 2002 (please forgive my AutoCAD examples, not overly up-to-date with its releases anymore). Vectorworks/Renderworks has made great strides from the MiniCAD days...
pixelwhore, did use the latest v-works for about 2 months [v5 or 6?] last nov/dec on a comp in uk. it is dead simple to learn but i thought had some very odd bit regarding changing scales etc. dont remember everything i didnt like about it.
probably the fact they have a toggle just like archicad makes it much less likely to reproduce like rabbits as versions of acad does. i am not an acad fan -- liked a system developed by som/ibm called aes which a few firms like ghery used to use, a unix based platform and very powerful particularly when you are designing huge projects with lots of people working on the same building. the unix base allow spontaneous scripting which everyone did. [never could get into lisp writing] archicad has similar structure to aes to some regards where you are allowed to reference pieces [such as exterior wall or core] of a building on multi floors via a matrix vers xref which is done with acad. the matrix of archicad and aes allows a greater flexibility and systematizing of the drawing organization without having someone be the cad monitor [i have found acad xref has everyone just doing their own thing, sometimes what ever is the easiet, someone does xclip, etc. etc.] on a big team, it sucks if you have to have a monitor. and unfortunately, you never find out that someone screwed up until the 11th hour. i still sense vectorworks is good for the smaller project / 1 - 2 person team and certainly the price is right compared to adt which if i am not mistaken is about 5k / seat. i used microstation for about 4 months, thought it was no different than the acad vanilla version.
my second computer [i had a comodore thingy for my first] was a mac se which i paid i think 3000 pounds in uk back in '90 if i remember with its little bitty 8-10" diagonal screen. i had mini cad on it[it was very appropriate]. nothing done seriously as at the time i was at skids rolling on one of there ibm rs6000 unix platforms that really rocked.
Ted: the latest version of Vectorworks is version 11.0. Also, newer versions of VectorWorks do not have a toggle. The latest version has viewporting, which can make scale changes uneccessary entirely if you prefer to work that way, and allows the type of referencing you're talking about.
It sounds to me as though the version you were using recently was actually several years old.
We have used VectorWorks on some very large projects - it does have a layer sharing/referencing capability for large team projects, though this is a fairly advanced feature that takes some know-how to set up. It is totally uneccessary for anything that would involve a smaller team and/or project.
it was probably the lastest version [these guys only set up there office and bought new system during 2003 and they added 2 machines / seats while i was there]. it was a uk office on pc so the toggles may just be from that side of the pond and they had network seats v. stand alone installations on each machine [everyone could have a toggle but it knew how many logged in]. it worked for them[they did have a 16 story highrise with only one person on it though] and they were happy. and acad, even adt is not really for large projects. archicad better. but the unix base system had +100 a+e working on the same information on one project at one time.
clearly with only 2 months on it, i am not an expert at v-works and we were doing a competition so we were only taking some drawings so far then either going to 3dmax or photoshop. it was very quick to come up to speed.
everybody has layering, etc. but archicad + aes you split the layers directly out of the drawings and can use common layers though various floors without physically 'referencing' it as you do with v-works / acad. just different and much more direct.
TED: you can use the same classes or/and layers in various drawings and floors in VectorWorks too. Actually it can be set up to work in nearly exactly the same way as ArchiCAD's "layer configuration" feature - it's just that the terminology is different. For example you can set up your demo plans, floor plans, electrical plans, etc. to all use the same "existing walls" class or whatever, and you can use the same class or layer on different floors.
We have a 5-station license with 5 serial numbers but no dongles. The network does know how many people are using it though. I'm sure you're right about UK vs. US versions.
I do think you probably didn't have the version with the viewports, because (here at least) this was not available until spring of 2004. That feature made it much easier to work at one scale - similar to what most MicroStation firms do.
As I said above, we have both VectorWorks and ArchiCAD. The main reason for this is legacy files from 2 combined firms. But the only features for which I much prefer ArchiCAD are that it has slightly better/faster abilities to create one's own parametric library parts and it also seems to me to be easier to reposition objects that are already placed within walls (for instance to relocate a window) - fewer clicks involved.
the price of vectorworks is very hard to beat at $1700 for architect + renderworks. and clearly i didnt use it enough to get into it. i do remember we passed around the toggle things to connect. maybe as they had a wireless network, the toggles [dongles] were required. i am presently using adt1/acad2000i and have no intention of upgrading even though i think acad said after the end of the year you must buy a new full licesnse if you dont upgrade by then -- [i dont like to be threatened and i see no advantage to 'the upgrade'].
will definitely look further into vectorworks for my next purchase which wont be until 2006 when gates screws us pc users and switches to longhorn, perhaps i will do a double switch and get one of those real pretty macs and go vectorworks as i the dell laptop i have is the ulimate oxymoron as it weighs a ton and i am begining to lean to the right when i walk [physically that is -- still lean to the left to balance my physical to mental warping caused by dell and republicans].
isnt it nice to pull politics into a debate about the future of vectorworks and macs?
maybe there are better computer geeks out there [i am only a casual geek and dont read that sstuff generally]. i only became aware of longhorn after listening to the radio one night in the last month on the problems of sp2-service package 2 for xp [by the way, it is recommended not to upload sp2 on your machines until after halloween as sp2 is still not compatible with many programs and it could cause your machine to freeze]. it was during this discussion where the speakers, one a pc guro, one mac, spoke of longhorn and how all programs will need to be rewritten and resturctured for this operating system; although clearly people like adobe, autodesk, etc. upgrade there programs to new window os, generally you can still run all programs on all win platforms from 95 on. it were these lot who said users will need to buy new versions of these softwares. 18 months is a long time and computers will probalby double in speed by that time. i have some older programs like project that i run on my 95 machines, some others on my 98 etc. where clearly i will be able to by an upgrade version of photoshop as i own the latest version, because i choose to keep my happy older versions keep running in there happy elder states, i will have to buy the new versions. perhaps my gateway 95 will find its spot in my computer museum garage next to my dusty old mac se.
an article in pc today article gives some guidelines about what type of machine you should think about buying a computer that could run it. they emphasis 9800 radian pro video cards.
autocad is a 'dumb' program in that it is basically just for 2D drafting, but i'm not always so sure what all the fuss is about. you can make some beautiful CD's in autocad if you know what you are doing.
I'm interested to know where all these firms are that don't run AutoCad. Personally I've interviewed and been in many offices all across this country and most run autocad. Some have run Microstation and just one ran Arris.
I only use Autocad for pumping out CD's, and it does just as good of job at that as any cad program I've ever seen. For designing and 3D work I would never use cad. If there is some great flaw in the software that makes it ineffective at drawing something as mundane as a reflected ceiling plan I'd like to know what it is. Otherwise I'm ok with using it for CD's.
A: I interviewed in non-AutoCAD firms throughout the Northeast including NYC and Boston, in the greater DC area, in Chicago, and in a variety of cities in what I'd term the "near Midwest." The only AutoCAD firms I encountered along the way were 1 in Ohio and 2 in Chicago.
I've never interviewed west of Chicago.
I also have not interviewed anywhere in 3 or 4 years, so if perhaps there is some huge trend toward AutoCAD right now I wouldn't know.
I want to make it clear that I have NEVER specifically targetted firms based on what software they were using because I just don't see this as anywhere near the top of my priority list when choosing jobs. I do think at this point that before I'd interview with an AutoCAD-using firm I'd want to sit down with a book and the software for a crash course.
I don't know why it is that I've mostly encountered firms that weren't using AutoCAD - perhaps it has some connection between the working methods of these firms and their being the types of firms that would choose me as someone to interview: for one thing I have been teaching for several years in curriculums that utilize 3D modeling and freehand drawing extensively and I have a good amount of examples of my own and my student's work of this sort in my portfolio.
Or perhaps it's just a coincidence/completely atypical interviewing history.
I do think that if a person was specifically targeting non-AutoCAD firms in their job search they'd have little problem finding quite a lot in pretty much any mid-sized or larger city east of Chicago.
My resume does not say AutoCad but does list CAD experience. I do agree that software platforms mean very little. That's why I'm always confused at all the Autocad bashing, etc. Is it just part of the love affair with disliking whatever is biggest?
I haven't shopped it around recently but from 2+ years ago when I was interviewing the only place where I really ran into firms not using Autocad was in Philadelphia, where they were using Microstation and Arris. In Chicago everyone was either 100% Autocad or multiplatformed with Autocad as a primary. Same goes from my experiences across Texas and amongst friends in Seattle, Portland & Denver.
Had an old classmate move to Boston a number of years ago and the firm there asked him which software he liked. Since in college we were all fed the "learn Autocad" line he said that's what he knew. They apparently were looking for a new software. What I'm told is that's how Autodesk got their grip on the market - by getting college students to learn it. I'm not sure I completely agree with that given Apple computers utter failure with that idea.
i dont know why the autodesk assholes have had no significant (by which i mean SIGNIFICANT - not stupid shit like better access over the LAN etc) addition since autocad 2000.
I might be wrong but i have used 2000i, ADT, 2004 everythign but still come back to 2000, since its light and never crashes on me.
ive not used revit, but yes, ive heard that autodesk is planning to phase out autocad and promote revit instead
i think the cad managers at offices should read this page...
-- very odd bit regarding changing scales etc.
i once used minicad (v7?) i was only revsing dwgs. hte gy who drew them knew acad, so his first minicad dwgs had problerms. :)
some layers i the first dwgs were in odd scales. after i realized the repercussions, i gave up trying to fix that.
my first acad class was r9 on DOS. r10 was the 1st version with 3d (draggable i think) My next acad class had r13. other than the win UI (a big improvement, imo), r13 didn't seem much different. i didn't explore the less basic functions (attributes?) until r2000, so i may have missed some functions that had been added between r10 and 2000.
it seems acad should have been replaced by 1990, by a newer generation of cad, much as word perfect was replaced about 1991. But cad must be harder to code than word processors.
speaking of stubborn obsolescense...
Similalry, Photoslop should have been replaced by the mid-90's except that image editors must also be difficult to code. And, I guess PDF is still around because printing companies are locked into postscript?
does that really work, they tried to implement tri forma at my old firm but it never proved very convincing/ effective. can you reallistically go from a 3d model to a consistent full set of 2D drawings with proper line weights, drawing conventions, title blocks etc. i'm told CATIA does just that, can anybody confirm??
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The end of the autocad age
More and more architects, especially in Europe, are working on Macs using Vector Works as their main drawing software. The faculty of architecture in Zurich only uses Macs with VW and others wil follow. Will this be the end of pc and AutoCAD?
sure! give it 15 years...
dont forget the strong hold autocad has on all the types of consultants...
i would love it, but i think it is still wishful thinking, imho.
autocad is the lead holder and triangle of the digital world.
It depends........ If autocad could work on a mac....macs will take over. If VW would work as good on a pc as on a mac, pc owners would keep the pc and use a combination of autocad and vw.
well, its not as simple as that....mr. gates is re-writing windows operating to 'longhorn' to come out 2006 which as i understand will make all present software obsolete from their current xp/nt/2000/98/95 platforms [it aint going to work]. basiclly the sp2 [service pac 2] he wants to ram down our thoughts is a stop gap for the security flaws that the microsoft oper system have and the new longhorn will supposedly make it hacker proof. many claim macs dont get viruses but that is only because hackers choose the pc platform as they know where to put the most bang for the buck as too few folks go the mac route.
the way i look at it, my present machine is 2003 xp pro, so i am only going to upgrade it between now and 2006 and then make the decision then if i wish to continue in pc world. having worked in both, its the same except the macs are prettier by far and in some ways treat you like a baby with its graphic / screen icons moving in and out. ultimately, if i have to buy all new software anyway, i might as well make the swap. if you were waiting to buy a new machine in 2005, i would recommend holding off a year if you can do it as your machine will be obsolete!! thanks bill!!
and by the way, vector works is a real mickey mouse program for idiots. sorry to offend those out there!
Autocad is the Worst Program made today for Drafting/Designing.
It So bad I don't even want a bootleg copy.
I would rather go back to the pencil than upgrade
to 2004 or 2005 Architectural Desktop. Who ever came up with that Piece of Crap Flunked out his Second Year of Architectural School,
then he became a software design engineer.
Archicad 9.., still not that easy to learn but its the best out there.
Stick to the PC's..., Mac's are dead they have been dead,
its just that nobody told them they are dead .
Ted good to see you back
Missed your insight.
What's wrong with Auto Cad?
i really can not see vw displacing autocad. i wouldn't mind it, but i can not see it happening.
WHY WILL AUTOCAD PERSIST?
autocad is a far superior PRODUCTION tool and is used by a vast majority of architectural consultants. vw does not translate to DWG very well. very buggy, totally different approach to drawing. did i mention that autocad is a better PRODUCTION tool?
WHY VW SHOULD DISPLACE AUTOCAD?
because its a design tool that was created with architects in mind. its not a production tool, it allows you to be sloppy and sketch within a drawing, to work intuitively and therefore doesn't create as big a gap between designer and design. its not as precise and that's its advantage... do we really need to be drawing to a precision of 0.0000001??? even if you change the tolerance(?) in autocad, it still draws to so ridiculous level of precision that only a machinist needs...
i forgot to add... that ultimately, its all comes down to the benjamins for a majority of architects... and getting the most production, the most seamless transition between archs and consultants saves a firm money...
Its a pain in the Ass.
I could write A Book on AutoCrap.
Come on.., even the Salepeople admit it's Crap.
They Really fuck up a good Program. When they went to Architectural Desktop. See The Designer of the program has no cule how Architects think or Draw.. As an Architect you just want to shed lead baby.
Now you have to come up with all the wall types,doors, windows.
I just want to draw...., and not program a wall detail.
God have mercy on AutoCrap.
tectonic, i think that there are only better things out there. agree archicad is good and really isnt that hard to learn and does work well in pc and mac word [you get the same disk with the little toggle]. very quick and simple build up of buildings v. lines polys. etc. adt tries to be what archicad is but what i find that although many people have adt, they still use the basic line clip commands and dont build the project up as builidng bits like archicad. i am a bit unfair with vector works; it is easy to use but i still will know it as 'mini-cad' which is what its previous name was and is perhaps equivalant to acad lt. if you ever tried 'lt', you know vector works. its got limits that once you a very good at acad, you would find vector works very limiting and clumsy.
Let all get together and burn our Autocad programs.
How liberating would that be?
autocad vanilla is a different animal from desktop, never used desktop and never want to. so do you want to explain your criticism of cad or are we left your negative comments about nothing?
my critism to 'vanilla' is that i like to build 2d data as building parts, wall, windows, doors, etc. verses lines, double lines, etc. the walls, doors, etc. have 'intelegent information' associated with them v. a dumb line. change 5" walls to 8" walls thoughout a project is one command. change relationship of window opening in one command. schedules can be created from the data. cost estimates can be generated from the data. both archicad / adt think in that way.
and actually, while yor building 2d walls, it actually is building a 3d model.
we architects think in 3d and $$ terms i hope we all agree.... that could be a good parameter to evaluate whatever software u like to use...i dunno if acad sucks...i use acad, and i found it very good for what i use it, but also im aware that some other good stuff could be out there...it all depends on how ur office works, and where in the world u work at...example, is not the same how arch offices and construction offices works @ the states and how they work @ latin america (the 2 places i know already how it works), so i think that has a lot to do on what software will prevail, and which one is the right one for u...
and is a fact...acrhitectural consultants would be stuck on acad for several years yet.
I learned AutoCAD in college because people were saying the same things then that I hear a lot now: "It's the industry standard", "all the consultants use it and the other applications don't translate well", "you won't be marketable without it...."
Now I wish I hadn't wasted the credits, because more than 10 years went by, along with jobs in 7 firms (some were student jobs) and not one of them used AutoCAD. (They used MicroStation, VectorWorks, ArchiCAD, and Arris.) These firms ranged in size from 3 people to over 100 people and none of them had any major problems with compatibility with consultant's drawings. I'm using a combination of VectorWorks and ArchiCAD now and not experiencing any major complications.
I'd estimate that I interviewed at 35 firms over the course of my internship and only 3 that I can remember used AutoCAD.
Because I had AutoCAD on my resume I used to get a lot of calls from recruiters looking for AutoCAD production workers at large firms. I was never interested in those jobs in the first place, so eventually I removed AutoCAD from my resume. The result of this when I was job-hunting was that I received fewer calls for these CAD production type jobs, but no fewer callbacks for jobs I actually wanted (design positions or overall design/associate/project manager types of jobs.)
These days if I were making up a resume I most likely wouldn't list AutoCAD because it's been so long since I've touched it that I'm sure I can't claim to be proficient.
One big difference between the AutoCAD firm interviews and the non-AutoCAD firm interviews that I noticed:
in the latter the interviewers nearly always took the tone that whatever software they were using was learnable, that they'd provide training, and that software proficiency was a secondary (or tertiary) consideration in their hiring process and priorities.
In the AutoCAD firms there were usually a lot of questions about how good I thought I was at AutoCAD, and a CAD manager type was often lurking in the wings waiting to test my speed, my conformity to layer standards, and (it seemed) my general willingness to mold my work habits to the idiosyncracies of AutoCAD.
yes, the age of autocad is nearing an end. all of the useless add-on programs different companies have been coming out with point toward its obselesence. i don't however, think vectorworks will be the next big thing in the US. its already been around for a while, and it hasn't caught on. the same could be said for archicad, another design program usually associated with macs. that said, the rumor i heard was that revit was purchased by autocad's parent company, and they were planning on unilaterally phasing out autocad as their primary design program. i bet in ten years you'll still be able to get a version of autocad similar to what you can get today, for probably about 20 bucks.
as ludicrous as it is, the main reason everyone uses autocad is just because everybody uses autocad; so there's no reason to believe any one of the much better cadd programs out there will shove it aside on its own. the end will come from within.
This consultant compatibility thing keeps coming up,and I'm not sure why. For most projects, consultants only use architects drawings as an overlay - a mechanical or structural engineer could do their work on top of a pdf instead of a dwg without much consequence.
We use VW for design phases, and ACAD Desktop for production, and I freaking hate it. While theoretically Desktop would allow you to draw things 3 dimensionally in 2d, and automatically generate schedule data and elevations, it doesn't really work. Two objects of different types (a window assembly and a wall, for example) if placed immediately adjacent to one another will not display properly in 2d, unless the window assembly is drawn smaller than its actual size, which means that your schedule data isn't accurate. Overall, desktop is very buggy, and not well suited to teams with more than 2 people working on them as a consequence of the program containing numerous places to change the same object attributes, some of which will override others, some which don't, and none of which operates consistently across object types.
Desktop's greatest benefit is that it exports to 3dsmax easily, but now we are using FormZ and Sketchup more often, I think for our office its days are numbered.
the compatability issue, if you could call it that, isn't just a function of what type of software consultants use. a lot of draftsmen only know autocad. most firms don't use macs, and in most firms today it is still the case that the guy who runs the firm doesn't know how to use a computer at all, and since autocad was the first thing on the block it just keeps getting renewed every year.
A lot of firms do use macs. Besides which, ArchiCAD has been available for pc for at least 5 years if not more.
The issue of the computer-illiterate principal is still valid, though in that type of firm these decisions are often in the hands of a senior CAD or technical manager.
It's true that firms don't like to switch software once they've implemented something. That's as much an issue of being able to access and work fluidly with old files as it is a cost or training issue. The cost to archive old projects in a relatively universal format all at once is huge (which is one reason this ought to be done on a project-by-project basis each time a project ends - but that's another thread.)
The issue of draftsmen and other employees who know only AutoCAD is not such a big deal AS LONG AS THESE PEOPLE ARE OPEN-MINDED ABOUT LEARNING NEW SOFTWARE. When we hire we expect that it will take a week to two weeks of fulltime training for someone to get up to speed with our non-AutoCAD software in general, as well as ongoing training in our office methods and standards. If someone seems willing to tackle this switch to new software it is well worth the time to train them. If they seem inflexible then we don't hire them. The most annoying thing is when we start someone new and two days into learning our software they're constantly comparing it negatively to AutoCAD - even though they don't know what they're doing yet.
TED:
If you're still thinking of Vecorworks in terms of MiniCAD, then I think you need to take another look at the software. Thats like comparing R14 to 2002 (please forgive my AutoCAD examples, not overly up-to-date with its releases anymore). Vectorworks/Renderworks has made great strides from the MiniCAD days...
pixelwhore, did use the latest v-works for about 2 months [v5 or 6?] last nov/dec on a comp in uk. it is dead simple to learn but i thought had some very odd bit regarding changing scales etc. dont remember everything i didnt like about it.
probably the fact they have a toggle just like archicad makes it much less likely to reproduce like rabbits as versions of acad does. i am not an acad fan -- liked a system developed by som/ibm called aes which a few firms like ghery used to use, a unix based platform and very powerful particularly when you are designing huge projects with lots of people working on the same building. the unix base allow spontaneous scripting which everyone did. [never could get into lisp writing] archicad has similar structure to aes to some regards where you are allowed to reference pieces [such as exterior wall or core] of a building on multi floors via a matrix vers xref which is done with acad. the matrix of archicad and aes allows a greater flexibility and systematizing of the drawing organization without having someone be the cad monitor [i have found acad xref has everyone just doing their own thing, sometimes what ever is the easiet, someone does xclip, etc. etc.] on a big team, it sucks if you have to have a monitor. and unfortunately, you never find out that someone screwed up until the 11th hour. i still sense vectorworks is good for the smaller project / 1 - 2 person team and certainly the price is right compared to adt which if i am not mistaken is about 5k / seat. i used microstation for about 4 months, thought it was no different than the acad vanilla version.
my second computer [i had a comodore thingy for my first] was a mac se which i paid i think 3000 pounds in uk back in '90 if i remember with its little bitty 8-10" diagonal screen. i had mini cad on it[it was very appropriate]. nothing done seriously as at the time i was at skids rolling on one of there ibm rs6000 unix platforms that really rocked.
Ted: the latest version of Vectorworks is version 11.0. Also, newer versions of VectorWorks do not have a toggle. The latest version has viewporting, which can make scale changes uneccessary entirely if you prefer to work that way, and allows the type of referencing you're talking about.
It sounds to me as though the version you were using recently was actually several years old.
We have used VectorWorks on some very large projects - it does have a layer sharing/referencing capability for large team projects, though this is a fairly advanced feature that takes some know-how to set up. It is totally uneccessary for anything that would involve a smaller team and/or project.
it was probably the lastest version [these guys only set up there office and bought new system during 2003 and they added 2 machines / seats while i was there]. it was a uk office on pc so the toggles may just be from that side of the pond and they had network seats v. stand alone installations on each machine [everyone could have a toggle but it knew how many logged in]. it worked for them[they did have a 16 story highrise with only one person on it though] and they were happy. and acad, even adt is not really for large projects. archicad better. but the unix base system had +100 a+e working on the same information on one project at one time.
clearly with only 2 months on it, i am not an expert at v-works and we were doing a competition so we were only taking some drawings so far then either going to 3dmax or photoshop. it was very quick to come up to speed.
everybody has layering, etc. but archicad + aes you split the layers directly out of the drawings and can use common layers though various floors without physically 'referencing' it as you do with v-works / acad. just different and much more direct.
TED: you can use the same classes or/and layers in various drawings and floors in VectorWorks too. Actually it can be set up to work in nearly exactly the same way as ArchiCAD's "layer configuration" feature - it's just that the terminology is different. For example you can set up your demo plans, floor plans, electrical plans, etc. to all use the same "existing walls" class or whatever, and you can use the same class or layer on different floors.
We have a 5-station license with 5 serial numbers but no dongles. The network does know how many people are using it though. I'm sure you're right about UK vs. US versions.
I do think you probably didn't have the version with the viewports, because (here at least) this was not available until spring of 2004. That feature made it much easier to work at one scale - similar to what most MicroStation firms do.
As I said above, we have both VectorWorks and ArchiCAD. The main reason for this is legacy files from 2 combined firms. But the only features for which I much prefer ArchiCAD are that it has slightly better/faster abilities to create one's own parametric library parts and it also seems to me to be easier to reposition objects that are already placed within walls (for instance to relocate a window) - fewer clicks involved.
the price of vectorworks is very hard to beat at $1700 for architect + renderworks. and clearly i didnt use it enough to get into it. i do remember we passed around the toggle things to connect. maybe as they had a wireless network, the toggles [dongles] were required. i am presently using adt1/acad2000i and have no intention of upgrading even though i think acad said after the end of the year you must buy a new full licesnse if you dont upgrade by then -- [i dont like to be threatened and i see no advantage to 'the upgrade'].
will definitely look further into vectorworks for my next purchase which wont be until 2006 when gates screws us pc users and switches to longhorn, perhaps i will do a double switch and get one of those real pretty macs and go vectorworks as i the dell laptop i have is the ulimate oxymoron as it weighs a ton and i am begining to lean to the right when i walk [physically that is -- still lean to the left to balance my physical to mental warping caused by dell and republicans].
isnt it nice to pull politics into a debate about the future of vectorworks and macs?
ted... can you spare us some insight how's longhorn gonna affect all pc user?
maybe there are better computer geeks out there [i am only a casual geek and dont read that sstuff generally]. i only became aware of longhorn after listening to the radio one night in the last month on the problems of sp2-service package 2 for xp [by the way, it is recommended not to upload sp2 on your machines until after halloween as sp2 is still not compatible with many programs and it could cause your machine to freeze]. it was during this discussion where the speakers, one a pc guro, one mac, spoke of longhorn and how all programs will need to be rewritten and resturctured for this operating system; although clearly people like adobe, autodesk, etc. upgrade there programs to new window os, generally you can still run all programs on all win platforms from 95 on. it were these lot who said users will need to buy new versions of these softwares. 18 months is a long time and computers will probalby double in speed by that time. i have some older programs like project that i run on my 95 machines, some others on my 98 etc. where clearly i will be able to by an upgrade version of photoshop as i own the latest version, because i choose to keep my happy older versions keep running in there happy elder states, i will have to buy the new versions. perhaps my gateway 95 will find its spot in my computer museum garage next to my dusty old mac se.
an article in pc today article gives some guidelines about what type of machine you should think about buying a computer that could run it. they emphasis 9800 radian pro video cards.
autodesk, bentley and graphisoft form the axis of evil.
I suggest attacking them in a premptive strike before something nasty happens.
God have mercy on AutoCrap
I must say I use it purely for its production value. I don't use software to exercise 3d possiblities - takes long.
autocad is no different than a pencil, dont see why all the fuzz
autocad is a 'dumb' program in that it is basically just for 2D drafting, but i'm not always so sure what all the fuss is about. you can make some beautiful CD's in autocad if you know what you are doing.
I'm interested to know where all these firms are that don't run AutoCad. Personally I've interviewed and been in many offices all across this country and most run autocad. Some have run Microstation and just one ran Arris.
I only use Autocad for pumping out CD's, and it does just as good of job at that as any cad program I've ever seen. For designing and 3D work I would never use cad. If there is some great flaw in the software that makes it ineffective at drawing something as mundane as a reflected ceiling plan I'd like to know what it is. Otherwise I'm ok with using it for CD's.
We still use feet and inches over here in the heartland. It may be a while . . .
haha where did you go all this time dc
A: I interviewed in non-AutoCAD firms throughout the Northeast including NYC and Boston, in the greater DC area, in Chicago, and in a variety of cities in what I'd term the "near Midwest." The only AutoCAD firms I encountered along the way were 1 in Ohio and 2 in Chicago.
I've never interviewed west of Chicago.
I also have not interviewed anywhere in 3 or 4 years, so if perhaps there is some huge trend toward AutoCAD right now I wouldn't know.
I want to make it clear that I have NEVER specifically targetted firms based on what software they were using because I just don't see this as anywhere near the top of my priority list when choosing jobs. I do think at this point that before I'd interview with an AutoCAD-using firm I'd want to sit down with a book and the software for a crash course.
I don't know why it is that I've mostly encountered firms that weren't using AutoCAD - perhaps it has some connection between the working methods of these firms and their being the types of firms that would choose me as someone to interview: for one thing I have been teaching for several years in curriculums that utilize 3D modeling and freehand drawing extensively and I have a good amount of examples of my own and my student's work of this sort in my portfolio.
Or perhaps it's just a coincidence/completely atypical interviewing history.
I do think that if a person was specifically targeting non-AutoCAD firms in their job search they'd have little problem finding quite a lot in pretty much any mid-sized or larger city east of Chicago.
My resume does not say AutoCad but does list CAD experience. I do agree that software platforms mean very little. That's why I'm always confused at all the Autocad bashing, etc. Is it just part of the love affair with disliking whatever is biggest?
I haven't shopped it around recently but from 2+ years ago when I was interviewing the only place where I really ran into firms not using Autocad was in Philadelphia, where they were using Microstation and Arris. In Chicago everyone was either 100% Autocad or multiplatformed with Autocad as a primary. Same goes from my experiences across Texas and amongst friends in Seattle, Portland & Denver.
Had an old classmate move to Boston a number of years ago and the firm there asked him which software he liked. Since in college we were all fed the "learn Autocad" line he said that's what he knew. They apparently were looking for a new software. What I'm told is that's how Autodesk got their grip on the market - by getting college students to learn it. I'm not sure I completely agree with that given Apple computers utter failure with that idea.
i dont know why the autodesk assholes have had no significant (by which i mean SIGNIFICANT - not stupid shit like better access over the LAN etc) addition since autocad 2000.
I might be wrong but i have used 2000i, ADT, 2004 everythign but still come back to 2000, since its light and never crashes on me.
ive not used revit, but yes, ive heard that autodesk is planning to phase out autocad and promote revit instead
i think the cad managers at offices should read this page...
--
very odd bit regarding changing scales etc.
i once used minicad (v7?) i was only revsing dwgs. hte gy who drew them knew acad, so his first minicad dwgs had problerms. :)
some layers i the first dwgs were in odd scales. after i realized the repercussions, i gave up trying to fix that.
my first acad class was r9 on DOS. r10 was the 1st version with 3d (draggable i think) My next acad class had r13. other than the win UI (a big improvement, imo), r13 didn't seem much different. i didn't explore the less basic functions (attributes?) until r2000, so i may have missed some functions that had been added between r10 and 2000.
it seems acad should have been replaced by 1990, by a newer generation of cad, much as word perfect was replaced about 1991. But cad must be harder to code than word processors.
speaking of stubborn obsolescense...
Similalry, Photoslop should have been replaced by the mid-90's except that image editors must also be difficult to code. And, I guess PDF is still around because printing companies are locked into postscript?
layers, scale etc will be redundant.
i have seen the light and it's parametrics.
triforma / revit
does that really work, they tried to implement tri forma at my old firm but it never proved very convincing/ effective. can you reallistically go from a 3d model to a consistent full set of 2D drawings with proper line weights, drawing conventions, title blocks etc. i'm told CATIA does just that, can anybody confirm??
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