Engineering the Enterprise

I ‘ve recently had opportunity to work with AutoCAD 2010 and the ProgeCAD 2008 clone. Here’s what I’ve noticed:

It takes a full 8 minutes for 2010 to start on my computer. The computer is a 2 processor workgroup server with 3Gb of memory and an advanced Open GL graphics card. I think that’s unacceptable. There are times when I think the program is hung, as nothing is happening. There are other times when I wonder what is going on, since the disk drives are thrashing away. By contrast ProgeCAD starts up in 30 seconds! I get the impression that Autodesk keeps loading more and more stuff into their software, trying to attract users, when they should be going the other way. They should be putting the application level features in add-on applications, not the base engine. Also, Autodesk keeps adding dynamic gizmos. All the updates going on slow things down even more. I find myself turning off features, because they become annoying. Lastly, AutoCAD still doesn’t have a built-in way to handle blocks. Storing one block per file is highly inefficient and difficult to manage. Management of such a fundamental feature should have been handled many versions ago. MicroStation has had cell management (cell libraries) from the start. Autodesk needs to look at its competitors and learn a few things.

Most users want a soild, functional CAD engine that can produce drawings quickly. I’m afraid that if AutoCAd keeps getting slower, it won’t fill the bill down the road. One shouldn’t have to go by a new computer everytime a new version comes out, just to get average performance.

Tags: AutoCAD, blocks, CAD, cells, Microstation