Finance Q&A

Is CAD No More a Drafting Support Tool?

Q. I have monitored the comp.cad.autocad news group off---and---on over the past several years. Used AutoCAD Release 9, 10, 11, 12, and now R13. Guess that I am loosing my perspective about what is a computer aided drafting support package application and real world economic benefit from it's use. I almost---get---the---impression that CAD applications are controlling what at one time was the skill required by people in system engineering and detail design. From my perspective; I will never support purchase of another AutoCAD drafting support application......It appears that AutoCAD has decided to not maintain or update one PC drafting support application product offering for real world mechnical drawing support -v- A bunch of special versions for special prices that aid someone doing somthing to cause value added product results that are hopefully greater that the initial cost of the Autodesk software application. I also believe that if some sort of "object" open system and standard is to be adopted in the world wide computer aided drafting support PC applications it should be "public domain" or "free ware." Kind of like the document typesetting using worldwide, multilingual PC applications that operate on multiple hardware platforms various OS(s) such applications as TeX, LaTeX2e, and AMS-TeX. With such a open system approach actual system development, design, and implementation design may benefit world-wide; without discussions about who can read or edit what design documents without purchase of some limited use expensive computer aided design(CAD) software package. Would be interesting to see(a posting of economic benefits $$) what specific Auodesk application user(s) are getting with purchase/use Autodesk products. Return on Investment(ROI) -v- Now offered Autodesk multiple product PC drafting support products. We see posted within this newsgroup pay---for---preformance related to CAD operators......From some of the dollar amouts listed ; it appears that the skill must be in the software that some unskille operator is working with. I believe this can be the start of a interesting discussion. Kind---of---like: "Real world value added system development with aid of computer assisted drafting packages. Who does it, what worker skill, and what benefits back to/returned to providing and customer organizations?" I am open to the real---world realities; with my limited view I may have overlooked somthing really important related to a PC drafting support tool. Feel free to correct my perception of where the CAD/CAM PC application industry is headed.

A. Perspective of a 2d Mechanical Designer; The software vendors and developers will say that to sell their product. As I have stated many times, software is only a tool and a tool is only as good as the person using it. A good piece of software matched with a knowledgable user is a very productive tool. When mismatched, it is chaos. Example from a past job. A person was asked to assist with some CAD procedures based on having a word processing background. The only function was to plot drawings. With AutoCAD's new front end, the person would overwrite existing drawings when trying to load a file the first time. The Engineering manager did the same thing. The potential for this problem still exists in r13c4a. The fix is easy but Autodesk still has done nothing about it. Customizing is the key. That is why I feel AutoCAD is the best CAD package. Commercial add-on packages must be very generic to sell enough to make a profit. I don't need any more changes. There *amn few people who know how to use what's on the market now. Let's first decide which language is going to be used. Then we can decide how to phrase a question so that all cultures understant it. Then we can vote on an international unit of measure, everyone must accept the same system......... Then maybe we can talk about world-wide CAD programs. I would like to see this myself. If it was conducted using unbias scientific methods, there would be some bean counters walking around without heads.

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