Likelihood to Recommend I think AutoCAD is great for creating precise site plans that show the layout of buildings, roads, parking lots, and other features on a piece of land. you can use it for designing roads and highways, including lane configurations, intersections, signage, and pavement markings, as well as for designing utility systems like water, sewer, and stormwater drainage. Engineers can create detailed layouts and profiles for these systems. However, I think it is less appropriate for advanced 3D modelling tasks compared to dedicated 3D modelling software, BIM (Building Information Modelling), advanced geospatial analysis.
Read full review Easy to use, one-stop for all construction-related tasks. The best thing is the split-screen, during the Bill of Quantity verification users can see for what part of the design Bill of Quantity is generated. Auto-updating of Design is another good feature.
Read full review Pros The tools are easy to use and the learning curve is fairly minimal to be able to create blueprints. The 3D application is very fun to use and it is nice to be able to see your product instead of having to imagine what it will look like. The speed and accuracy in which students can create plans is a huge bonus. Students can plan their industrial art projects out and use their own set of plans to build them. Read full review Allows multiple users to work on the same estimate at once. This is huge!! Not only can we team up on a project that has a quick deadline but we can also simultaneously collaborate on database updates. Performs your takeoff on CAD drawings or vector PDFs. Your typical takeoff software does takeoff on an unintelligent PDF. I say unintelligent because the process you go through is simply to trace the boundaries of your shape. This is time-consuming and can lead to mistakes. With CostX your cursor will stick to the line lines and takeoff the exact measurement. This has cut our takeoff time by 75%. The best part is that this is done in the same software as your estimating software. There are a few software's that have takeoff and estimating in one but CostX is the only one the provides CAD smart takeoff. CostX is a lot like Excel. You have the flexibility to set up your workbooks the way your project team thinks. For example, ours is set up to evaluate labor in two ways; productivity (man-hours per widget) or crew hours (3 guys for two days for a given activity). Reports are very flexible and the report writers is much easier than Crystal reports. If you subscribe to the full version of CostX this provides the most powerful feature of them all......Auto-Revisioning. This function will compare two sets of drawings, identify the changes on a color coded drawing, ask for you to approve the changes and then update your estimate and takeoff. You can even use this to produce custom print outs for RFI's show your design team what changed. Your estimating workbooks are live-linked to your takeoff. As you make adjustments to your takeoff your estimate updates accordingly. The workbook has color coded text to hep your team understand whats behind your estimate; Black = manually input, Blue = rates linked to database, and Green = quantity linked to take-off. Full integrated subcontractor comparison. We use to do this in excel to compare multiple bidders across every division. This is also color coded for a streamlined review process; green = quote, blue = estimate, purple = plug, and orange = other. Built in error checking notifies you if you forgot to normalize an item on your subcontractor comparison. In the near future the software will be available online allowing you to use remotely. Read full review Cons It needs more help in 3D world, eventually some parametric support Better connection with Revit or Inventor Dynamic blocks could get some updates Parameters can be more developed; excel capabilities could be added Sheet set could be more evolved to support a workflow involving data management Read full review iTwo Costx has 3D features that may require enhancement in terms of Look and feel perspective. The eye Function section view feature may require enhancement. But I am not sure how much more we can bring it to scale Not seen Cloud base service. So that easy to use from any where. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Because rarely we [would] rather wait for a whole year to update, sometimes the new updates don't bring many new features and we are still ok with the current version. Also the change of interface is always something that takes time for every partner in the company to get comfortable with. So those are the main reasons we may want to keep the same version.
Read full review Usability Is an extremely usefull and accurate software , yo certainly can do almost every task requiered to document a project drawings and specifications , the only is that to be confortable with it you need a little of practice and to be familiarized with the commands and the core functioning to get expected results.
Read full review Support Rating AutoCAD has the issue of crashing or slowing down the design procedure once a heavy design that includes several disciplines or multiple families/blocks is involved. Customer services gets the feedback from the crash reports but this issue seems like it has never been addressed in the software updates past several years.
Read full review Implementation Rating the implementation was realy easy , to set up our workstation we pay for the licenses we are about to use , there was a little bit of delay to get the payment processed to receive the serial but after that the install runs without any problem , so you can fell secure there will be not issue with the implementation.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have experience with
Autodesk Maya , and am familiar with their user interface with creating 3D objects. AutoCAD while from the same family, requires a steeper learning curve and more in-depth knowledge of the software.
I have experience with this software because it is the industry standard in the jobs that I applied to, and was required to the company that I interviewed for. Part of the interview process was a proof-of-work test to create a mock solution for a client, which would demonstrate knowledge and skill with using AutoCAD.
I have little experience with
CorelCAD , but I found AutoCAD to be more in-depth with your options and what you could create.
Read full review We are not aware of another software that has fully integrated take-off, subcontractor comparison, estimating and reporting besides CostX.
Read full review Return on Investment AutoCAD has helped our smaller firm produce lots of finished products matching that of a much larger size firm. With its many features, we have been able to do so much more and meet deadlines that much faster. Since we do use AutoCAD, we're able to work with many other engineering firms to collaborate together to complete various building projects. We have many clients now who expect us to provide for them at the end of a project not just printed construction drawings but also the digital AutoCAD drawing so they can in turn use it for future modifications themselves. Read full review Easy to Collaborate Between the Team members. Saves a lot of work Integrate with multiple types of data drawing which saves efforts in converting the design. Bill of Quantity export can be done based on the Design section and can share with contractors for Quotes. Instead of just downloading the whole report and then editing for the required pack. Read full review ScreenShots