Doing Simple Stuff in AutoCad 2012 1

[zdas04]

I recently "upgraded" to AutoCad 2012 and so far I hate everything about it. The stuff that hadn't changed in 10 releases that I could do automatically (my last version was 2008) now seems to be impossible.

For example, at 8:00 am I realized that the object-snap default was not to snap to mid point (which has been the default for a long time, I always have to change it) and I needed to find the Drafting Settings dialog box. It is now 9:37 and I still haven't found it. The help sucks (what ever happened to being able to limit help searches to the user manual?) and I can't find the keyhole into the drafting settings screen (I've seen screen prints of it several places but the starting point of the help doesn't get back to how to open the dialog box).

I have a very large scree, but I can't seem to find any way to adjust the icons on the bottom of the screen big enough see them. Does anyone find this crap to be useful?

I guess I'm going to have to take a basic course 25 years after I started using this stinking program.

David

 

[soiset]

Mike has me interested in looking at Turbocad. My work is all 2D structural and civil, mostly structural - and no BIM or 3d required. Back when I learned Autocad, it was version 11, and I found the improvements through 2000 to be easy to learn coming from 11 forward. Even 2006 wasn't that bad, and I played around with the 3D on that.
But I've been using, or attempting to use, 2010 LT for a good while now, and my productivity has dropped, and my frustration levels have gone through the roof. I don't know about you ME's, but I draw lines, some arcs, circles, letters, and arrows. THAT'S IT. Why the heck should drafting civil or structural be so much more complicated than putting a pencil to paper? When the product of civil/structural engineering (plans, that is) has changed so very little in 50 years, why the heck do they so desperately need to introduce major changes to the process every couple years? Why should someone that knows how to draft perfectly well have to take a week or more of expensive classes just to keep drafting, on the off chance that if they really take to the amazing new gizmos, that their productivity will improve enough to make up for the time lost and expense of taking those classes?
I think Autodesk makes these changes with drafting technicians, not engineers, in mind. It's not nearly so expensive to keep re-educating a technician every few years, and besides, they generally spend at least 25% of their time at work with nothing to do, and they can dick around and learn all the new gee-whiz buttons and interfaces during that time. That's often a fair assumption on Autocad's part, I guess, because I'd assume the majority of users are just technicians, not engineers.
Anyhoo, that's my rant. Maybe I'm just getting dumb now that I'm 40.

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Soiset -

You can buy TurboCad on E-bay way cheap - even new in the box. Buy odd versions number - like 11, 13, 15, 17.

For some DUMB reason - it seems that the even numbered ones were never any good - WHY - I have no clue. V18 seems pretty good!!!

They are up to V18 - but I still use 11.1 almost everyday. But it can only read up to Autocad 2004 or so. V18 can read up to AC 2012 plus about another dozen or so formats and can save them in those formats!! See if AC can do that!!

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Soiset -

BTW - I use it for 2D structural work only - although 3d is available. Perfect use for this program....

NEVER had to reload - it may crash twice a year (esp if you have like 8 other apps running) - versus about twice a day for ACAD and I can hear my engineers screaming about it

 

[chicopee]

The problem with Autodesk ACAD is that they have at least four ways of drawing excluding LISP and this program is or is becoming a dog unless you have more powerful computers. The funny part about these drawing program is that the ACAD technicians would be inept at drawing oblique and auxilliary views, unfolding views and the like.

 

[rollupswx]

...can read up to AC 2012 plus about another dozen or so formats and can save them in those formats!! See if AC can do that!!

 

[zdas04]

Soiset,
I think your assumption is incorrect. Engineering Technicians (I hate the concept of "just a technician") are no more adaptable than engineers, in fact most of them hate change even more than we do. The changes are not to satisfy technicians. The changes are to satisfy PROGRAMMERS. The business model is that a new release every year is required to keep cash flow positive. Programmers stopped being able to find useful changes about V11, and most of the changes since have been useless to anyone doing drafting at all. In order to turn out the new release every year the programmers look at other products (like Office 10 and Windows 7) and just assume that everyone has gone to those stupid programs and want AutoCAD to look the same. Then they talk to other programmers (who have also gone to the new stuff) and get confirmation.

Autodesk is absolutely out of touch with their base and their bottom line shows it.

MikeTheEngineer,
Even numbered programs sucking is a common occurrence. The development cycle is about 2 years. Historically, intermediate releases were mostly bug fixes. So V8 might be a new version with a lot of gee whiz features and a ton of bugs. V9 would be an accumulation of bug fixes to make the gee whiz work. Then V10 would be buggy again. I've seen it with MathCAD, AutoCad, Acrobat, PhotoShop, and back when Microsoft tried to come out with a new Office Suite every year they did it too. I'm not sure why the buggy version tends to generally be the even numbered versions, but it keeps happening that way.

I started this thread in late January. Six weeks later, I've gotten to the point that I don't open the Help screen before I open my drawing. There is no way that all of the combined "upgrades" that they've made since 2009 would ever be worth the time that I've wasted hunting for the stuff that used to be at my fingertips.

David

 

[francesca]

zdas04, I agree about the business model being a new release every year... however, if you go near the AUGI forums and their wish list, you can see that the customers do indeed demand new features every year. Maybe if you're stuck in 2D CAD world you don't need anything new, but around the 2010 release, AutoCAD got the 3D modeling engine of 3ds Max. If you do anything in the 3D world, need to do some light rendering, and need to deal with a point cloud (in other words, if you are doing 21st century engineering), then you do indeed find the new releases useful and deficient in some functionality!

 

[zdas04]

If you compare the new feature list between 2010 and 2011, you'll see that they added a bunch of new stuff in 2010, and that the stuff they added in 2011 feels like the stuff that wasn't quite finished for the 2010 deadline and there is a lot less of it. 2012 again had a bunch of new stuff. Most of it feels more "pretty" than "useful". I was quite happy in AutoCAD 2006, not so much since.

As to "21st century engineering", for my discipline that seems to get done in Pro-E and Solidworks. AutoDesk is just standing in the traffic dazed by the lights. I had to purchase an add on (CadWorx) to even be able to lay piping out in AutoCad. The render and light source stuff is pretty, but it is a whole lot more about interior design types than 21st century mechanisms.

David

 

[zdas04]

Based on advice above, I purchased "AutoCAD 2010 Update for AutoCAD 2008 Users" training course from Ascent a few weeks ago. I haven't had time to open it till this morning. I just worked through the entire course and there is not a single change mentioned in the course that represents an improvement to the way I do my job. Not one.

Every user of a program as complex as AutoCAD picks a subset of the universe of commands that work for them. In 2008 and earlier, I could put the things that I needed and used on the side of the screen and click them as needed. Now if I want a command that I use ALL the time (like "break") I have to know that it is on the "Modify" ribbon, but in the extended version so I have to hit a drop down under modify to get to it. I use that command far more than I use "stretch", but "stretch" is on the main list--some programmer thought that "stretch" was more important than "break". Maybe in the grand scheme it is, but in my workflow if I want to stretch something I drag a grip. I break construction lines many times an hour.

From my point of view, I feel even stronger about my statement that annual enhancements of this program are more about programmers talking to programmers than actual end-user needs.

David

 

[jmcoope3]

Being a recent graduate in industry I feel your pain, most of us fresh-outs have never seen AutoCAD (they're too busy teaching us Pro-E and Solid Works).

I know i'll get rammed for this, but for a lot of my 2d and 3d details I use Google Sketchup now... the interface is a bit easier to use (like a heavily crippled Solidworks), it imports/exports just about anything (DXF, DWG...), and you can do anything you want in its Layout Program (Paperspace on steroids). I used to get a lot of shit for it around the office, but it saves a licence of 3d cad and I've rarely had anyone notice the difference on a submittal.

 

[zdas04]

Doesn't sound as dumb as Visio, and I know a lot of engineers that use that.

David

 

[francesca]

There is an IFC2SKP extension... SketchUp is a bonafide engineering tool!

 

[rollupswx]

As to "21st century engineering", for my discipline that seems to get done in Pro-E and Solidworks.

If you are comparing AutoCAD (this is an AutoCAD forum) to Creo (Pro/E is gone) or SolidWorks you are not informed about 21st century solutions.

Autodesk Inventor is the Autodesk product equivalent to Creo or SolidWorks.

Why are you using AutoCAD if your discipline is mechanical?

 

[zdas04]

Mostly because I started using it on mini-computers too long ago to be beleived. The reason I stayed with it is CadWorx piping layout tools. I'm a mechanical guy, but I mostly don't design mechinsims. I do a lot of piping and P&ID stuff that CadWorx does really well.

David

 

[transmissiontowers]

One of the ME guys I used to work with did pipe stress analysis for steam power plants but I can't remember the package but it might have been Caesar. We were an ACAD shop but it was all in 2D drawing for piping and all the controls that are required to run a 600 MW unit.

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I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.

 

[zdas04]

Caesar is a component of CadWorx. I've done 2D in AutoCAD forever, but since 2008 I've been doing 3D piping layouts instead of iso's (one client made me go back and convert the 3D models that looked like photographs into traditional isometric drawings that looked like crap, CadWorx did it with a couple of clicks).

David

 

[transmissiontowers]

It came to me after I posted that it was Coade, IIRC.

I do structural steel for transmission towers (hence my unimaginative handle) and steel columns for substation structures. Not many things intersect at 90° angles. I'm self taught on ACAD and started in ACAD-LT with the very first edition. I do mostly 2D but am trying to learn more 3D.

_____________________________________
I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.

 

[francesca]

"3D" is easy to learn if you're using the right product. Trying to learn 3D in AutoCAD is like trying to eat cornflakes with a backhoe. It's possible, but nobody's going to enjoy it. Proper 3D products do the leg work on drafting & annotation.

 

[transmissiontowers]

When we detail towers, it is rarely to scale for the individual pieces which is called knocked down. When I am trying to see what fits on an old tower, I do everything to scale in 2D. When it comes time to send details to a fabricator, we often have a 2x2x1/4 angle that is 30 feet long with 2 holes on each end and 3 or 4 holes roughly equally spaced. If drawn to scale, there is lots of white space and the gage lines for the holes and outstanding leg are on top of each other, so we shrink the white space down and make it look proportional.

What I would like to learn is to draw an angle in 3D and punch holes in it and make it a solid object and do this for several pieces that fit together, then assemble them to make a tower.

But back to the main topic. We upgraded to Acad 2012 from Acad LT 2006 and got some network versions of 2012. I was fairly decent at 2D and knew where the buttons were. 2012 had gone to the ribbon and I struggled for quite a while but I am getting better.

I took a beginners and intermediate class on ACAD 2012, and was hoping to learn where all my buttons went in 2012. The beginner class was a waste but I learned a couple of things, such as Control -Right Mouse to bring up the snap menu. The intermediate class was a little better and I learned some things about blocks. The problem was that it was done on the weekends and the instructors were old CAD hands that used typed commands to do ACAD that they had been doing for 20 years. I really wanted to get the ribbon down, but I got a couple of books that have step by step instructions on 2012.

It just takes practice and since I don't have to produce sheet after sheet of drawings, I can learn at my own pace.

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I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.