CAD UPGRADE-Put a stop to it.

[Jimbobidybone]

Yes there are obsene amounts available, but only ones really usable at a proffessional level are, autocad, archicad, vectorworks and microstation, all cost obsene amounts, as do the upgrades. any others currently available are either very restricting, or very irritating to learn and perform very slowly, hence costing profit.

Hope that explains ;p

[88]

I have a small office with 5 seats, each seat costs about $7500. To upgrade yearly it cost about $1000+ per seat, and this is not including any new training to learn the "newer and faster interfaces" or any hardware upgrade to meet the new softwares specification. To coordinate with my consultants, I need to upgrade . To make my office internally coordinated, I need to upgrade all seats, not just one seat. So this will cut into demisnhing profit margins, smaller architect offices might have to close down or use pirated softwares....and CAD industries will have to mark up all the fees even higher for the remaining who still can afford to pay.

[O-Archy]

It is interesting to note that the Architecture forum has the most posts, followed by the Powercadd® forum... and then the Student forum.

A lot of talk aboot the market dominating applications, and the trend towards a 3-d design tool, mostly to 'wow' the client. I see the frustration inherent in trying to convey an idea to people who (mostly) don't 'read' graphics very well, and to that end, newer and more user-friendly methods are utilized. Another thread discusses whether or not hand drawing skillz are necessary, I believe when working thru a concept, it is crucial to be able to quickly render a thumbnail sketch, something CAD will never be able to do. Remember, CAD is a tool, and is only as good as the hands and mind guiding it. Most professionals are using several applications to polish up a presentation product, but the real bulk of work goes into the 2-d set of working drawings, which are tangibly used in the field. Certainly we will gradually move to a digital base of operations, but the budget of the large projects will be carrying that water, not the smaller ones.

Cheers,
Mike