AutoCAD, a must in your production tool box
January 19, 2018
AutoCAD, a must in your production tool box
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with AutoCAD
AutoCAD has been our production tool of choice for many years and across various disciplines. It is a universal platform that works and integrates well with other industry leading software packages. It's compatibility with other platform file formats makes it ideal for prototyping and production. It is efficient for workflows specific to early diagrams that eventually make their way into Revit models.
- For engineering tasks, AutoCAD is excellent for functional and schematic diagram production.
- For project management, it provides a quick and easy way to export plans into sets usable by field operations, such as PlanGrid.
- Its adoption by the A/E industry at large make it easy to justify the investment in software and training.
- AutoCAD is typically improved by using third-party companion applications. It would be nice to have these additional sets of functionality included with the base software.
- Presets specific to certain industries are great (MEP, Electrical, etc.), however, there are some specialty industries that could benefit form custom presets not yet available.
- The learning curve for new features is relatively steep even for seasoned users. A brief video of "what is new" would be a welcome addition to new roll-outs.
- The investment and maintenance can be high, but is recovered due to its universal use across various industries that collaborate in the A/E space.
- It leverages the PC platform and Autodesk product suite.
- Its use encourages the IT dept to refresh technology and keep up with the ever-increasing computing power requirements.
AutoCAD works well with Revit and SketchUp. We have attempted to migrate to Revit-only, however, AutoCAD offers certain features that make it more efficient for production. Many experienced users have invested significant amounts of time learning and keeping with AutoCAD, also making it the choice for efficiency in production. SketchUp excels in 3D visualization, co-existing very well with AutoCAD.