The Best Software for Design and Planning
January 09, 2018
The Best Software for Design and Planning
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with AutoCAD
AutoCAD has been used in my organization for the design of social programs, specifically one dedicated to the construction of houses for people who live in neighborhoods at risk or ones that suffer natural disasters, such as landslides. The tool is used mainly by the Infrastructure department. Where infrastructure management has the responsibility to evaluate the terrain conditions and create the design houses for families of four members, with a limited number of resources and a low budget. This tools brings us the opportunity to do a design and constantly make the necessary changes. For this to be adjusted to a specific situation of the terrain and the materials to do the construction. Every design that we do is particular and specific measures to fixed points and to be built in that specific place.
- The features of AutoCAD for design are endless, you can virually manage all the details of a design, from the thickness of the walls to the locations of the pipelines. The interphase allows me to put in my design every detail that I need, with precise measurements and all characteristics that I need to add.
- The management of the layout features is another of its great virtues, you can handle simultaneously as many layouts as you want, this issue allows me to design every part in this case of a house in a separate way and have every part like floor, pipelines, walls, and any other spaces, in different layouts to consult and print whenever it needs to be.
- The AutoCAD tools for design are very useful because it allows you to modify color, thickness and any other attribute that you considerate necessary to modify, the easy way of managing their tools, allows to make changes quickly and make the things ready to print when all the features have been corrected.
- There are so many other features to talk about, like print options, the add of geographic coordinates, the interphase to make 3d digital models, and so many other things, but each one depends on you and the kind of work that you develop.
- One of the big problems for people that is not usual of the software is it being overwhelming because of the many tools and options that appear in front of your eyes when you open the software for the first time. This happens even with architects who manage other software. It is extremely necessary to have an introductory course of use for this tool, and sometimes that can be extra money that the company does not have the budget for.
- Another problem is related to the print options of the software for people who are not familiar with it. There are so many options for print and layout. I think this can be less complicated making a tool for printing more conventional like house prints or plotter prints, where you select in two or three options the dimension of the drawing and the size on the paper and everything is ready, for some people configuring a print in AutoCAD is a hard task.
- This software demands a big range of RAM memory and card video, sometimes this can be a problem because it is consuming all the resources of your computer limiting other processes. There must be an option for use of low memory range or something like that, one option that allows the use of only the features that you need and maintaining in suspension all of the processes that you do not need.
- This software allows me to make a perfect design for the projects that I manage, in that way I save money and time because a small group of people with the right preparation and knowledge can do the designs and make all the modifications through all the projects. In this case with AutoCAD you save money and time.
- The quality of the image and the level of details of the designs can be a great opportunity for a company to show its works and offer their services to many clients. This tool can help you to show your work, the quality of the projects that your company are involved in and that can make a great market to expand your company to many other places.
- The negative impact happens in the initial investment, it is a very expensive software and not every company has the opportunity to buy and manage this tool. If a company decides to buy it, it is worth it, but in some cases they only work with free software with all the limitations that it has.
- Librecad
AutoCAD is all over the free software for design and architects that exist in the world. This free software often try to copy some features and interphases from Autocad but they do not have the potential to do even half of things that you do with Autocad. One of the big problems of free software for design it is the inability to work in an effective way, they always lag, they turn off every time and the interphase in the most of cases are very, very outdated.