Comments on: CAD Upgrades – the Double Jump

By: Owen

Owen — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:23:02 +0000

We typically jump years, but not always. We did upgrade from ’06 to ’07 to keep up with the DWG format change. It turned out that ’08 was a better fit for us, so we jumped again, but ’09 is probably going to be skipped. I would like to coordinate the training for the ribbon-based GUI with our transition to Office 2007. Despite being a subscription company, the feature set of 2009 was not compelling enough to warrant the change. I, too, am expecting another DWG format change in the next year or two.

By: Andrew Male - NZ National CAD/GIS Coordinator

Andrew Male - NZ National CAD/GIS Coordinator — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:35:31 +0000

We call it hop scotch. Release 10, 12, 13 (ohh back to 12) 14, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007, then 2008 Civil3D, though 2009 civil3D is better, so we may go up to 2009 as soon as possible. just as soon as Bentley Projectwise gets 2009 intergration!!. We have quite a lot of customisation and add on packages so hence why we skip a release. we are also on subs and have over 215 users to upgrade…….

By: Donnie Gladfelter

Donnie Gladfelter — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:29:08 +0000

Being a CAD Manager of a relatively large civil firm (approx 350 employees), our general rule is to upgrade every-other year. I say general because it’s not a hard-drawn line saying that upgrading every year is out of the question.

Fundamentally, our mentality is that to stay competitive in the market, we really can’t afford to work on a release any older than 2 years. Generally this gives us a nice balance of having most of the new features, while also keeping a handle on costs.

Upgrading on a yearly basis is not out of the question if we feel the new features in a particular release can essentially cover the cost of upgrading. In the civil industry the improvements to C3D 09 were substantial enough in nature to justify upgrading to from 2008. On the other hand, verticals aside, it personally doesn’t seem overly beneficial to upgrade from ACAD 08 to ACAD 09.

Another thing I consider is the potential for DWG format changes. While I don’t know for sure, the historical trend from Autodesk has been a DWG format change every 3 years. Under that pretense I am personally expecting a new DWG format in the 2010 release.

By: kemp

kemp — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:01:47 +0000

I have kept my firm up to date with current releases until 2009 came out. Before I distribute a new release I test it and document all the things my users need to be aware of for the switch.

This release simply causes so many new bugs for me that I don’t think I will have solutions for everything within a year so I have chosen to skip it. It does not even address the bugs I am currently dealing with related to Annotations so I’m waiting for 2k10

By: Jonathan Bolich

Jonathan Bolich — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:46:44 +0000

My company is on a thought process that the odd number releases are bad. So we make the jump every other year. This comes from the group of cad users here and not wanting change.
Funny thing is that when you look at the older numbering system (r13, r14) we currently are on r17.
My hope is that soon we will be able to upgrade every release so that there isn’t that big jump in the learning curve.

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:42:09 +0000

When I started at my company we were on R14. We upgraded to 2002, then to 2006. We bought Civil 3D release 2006 and since that was only available through subscription, we got 2007 when it came out. We let the subscription lapse so we’re still using 2007 products.
The mindset at my company is “use it until it wears out, fix it and use it some more”, so it’s difficult to justify upgrading software that still works perfectly well on a 3-year-old workstation. Heck, our plotter is more than 11 years old now (purchased in February 1997). It still can kick out a D-size plot in about 10 minutes.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:17:53 +0000

My company did not have a CAD Manager prior to me – and they skipped releases. However, moving forward, I don’t believe I will be skipping any releases – since I’m here to support the transition. Being on subscription also helps “motivate” the need to upgrade. I just wouldn’t feel right having the company paying for the subscription and new software just sitting here not being used.

By: Robin Capper

Robin Capper — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:04:26 +0000

Is waiting for the service patch a 1.5 jump?

Depends on the benefits. Currently it’s Revit 2009 (RMEP Spaces & new Render justified that) & AutoCAD Architecture 2008 here as didn’t see enough in ACA 2009 to justify the change. Probably will go to ACA2009 SP1 if it improves things.

The only one that hasn’t made it to production at all was 2007 but that was because of hardware/infrastucture changes delaying things till it was worth going straight to 2008

By: R.K. McSwain

R.K. McSwain — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:13:42 +0000

We skipped 2004, 2007 and now 2009.