Compare Efficiency - AC 2005 v. R13

[hansenjc]

I am a homebuilder buying design and drafting services from an architectural firm. They have various versions of AC including 2005 and R13. They choose to use R13 for our work. I don't believe that I am getting fair value from having our work done on such an old version.

Can you reflect on the improvement of the efficiency for draftsmen that would be derived from using the current version of AC over the old version R13?

Thanks.

John

[paulmcz]

You are being ripped off. They could save you at least 20 minutes if they'd choose Acad 2005 for entire design of your house. But you should compensate them for their upgrades. They had to pay more than $5000 to get from R13 to 2005.

[srsherrill]

There are undoubtedly some improvements and enhanced features in r2005 over r13 and probably even some that would save some time. There may be some other considerations, however. Are they going to be using a design software package along with AutoCAD? If so, the additional software that works with r13 may not be available yet for r2005 and there is nothing yet available that works with r2005 that would be ideal for your project. Also it is possible the employees that specialize in projects such as yours may not yet be proficient with r2005 as it is still a very new product. The finished drawings will show very little difference between r13 and r2005 unless you have specified complicated renderings as part of your requirements.

My work is residential subdivision design. I used r13 based design software and AutoCAD for 10 years before we changed to r2005 and different design software last year. Many things with it work a little faster, but most of the time, I can still do the same tasks with my old r13 software with better results in much less time because I know the how the software works. I work with two other drafter/designers who have about 3 years total experience between them. Both started out using 2004 while I finished out our active project with r13. They were ahead of me in knowing how to use 2005 when we switched over. Would you have preferred one of them to do your work over my 28 years experience based only on what version of AutoCAD was going to be used?

Stephen R. Sherrill
The Dinosaur

[Steve_Bennett]

Dang. I didn't know R13 was still actively being used! On windows 95/98, R13 was constantly crashing. I have no idea how stable it is on XP or 2000. If it is as unstable on the newer platforms, then they could be losing time from system freezes also. I've always been of the mind set to keep moving forward with software releases. Not knocking it, I have a sweet spot for R13 - thats the version I first learned acad on way back in 1992... Man I'm starting to feel like a dinosaur too...

[srsherrill]

My current system:
AMD XP+ 2500 Barton 512mb memory
Windows XP professional
Windows 2003 server

It is not cutting edge, but easily runs LDDT 2005 and Civil 3D 2005. R13 runs and plots through this network with fewer problems crashing than LDDT. If you ever have a chance, install r13 on a newer system and compare the speed with an r20** version of AutoCAD.

The Dinosaur