Is AutoCAD Obsolete

[PRSS]

Hello everybody

Has AutoCAD become obsolete with the advent of BIM softwares? Is buying Full AutoCAD worth it? (I don't mean AutoCAD LT). Are there people who still do modelling in AutoCAD?

I have one Full AutoCAD 2013 and Five AutoCAD LT 2009 for my SOHO Office. Am I doing something wrong using plain AutoCAD? BIM has not really taken off in India, because of its complexity and a steep learning curve and also lack of teaching centres (I mean teaching centres who teach BIM as BIM and not as an easy tool for crating a 3D model just for visualisation). Should I wait till India is really for true BIM and then transition to BIM like REVIT?

I am really confused. Please somebody help.

Thanks in advance
PRSS

[jaberwok]

Has AutoCAD become obsolete with the advent of BIM softwares?

Assuming that you work in architecture - in the long term - yes.

Is buying Full AutoCAD worth it?

For some, yes but mainly in engineering.

Are there people who still do modelling in AutoCAD?

Yes, but they will become an ever-reducing minority.

[jodi_sherrell]

In my experience, people are really, really fighting to move to 3D. So it goes without saying that moving to BIM is being fought even more. I've been working in the manufacturing industry for about 4 years now and the two companies I've worked at barely know how to use AutoCAD LT. But I saw many job openings for AutoCAD Inventor too.

Most likely the world of CAD will completely switch over to BIM and/or 3d modeling software. I am not sure how long it will take. But my advice to you is to be ahead of the competition. Its going to happen eventually. If you go ahead and get over the learning curve now, you will be that much further ahead than others who are putting off the switch for the same reasons. This will give you a great competitive advantage over others who have delayed doing so.

[Ed Jobe]

It also depends on who your customers are. Are you just giving them "drawings"? If so, the faster you can produce them, the better. But if you are doing contract work for others that expect dwg files from you, then you may be tied to AutoCAD. However, both Revit and Inventor allow you to generate dwg files.

[cadtag]

until carpenter's hardhats come equipped with full virtual-reality capabilites, with terabyte wireless and drive by wire hammers, there will be an ongoing need for 2d construction drawings, ones that can be scribbled on, marked up, stuffed into an evelope. Losing the ability to create legible, comprehensive, and useful construction drawings is something to avoid.

Mind you, my 'product' is the thing that gets built from my design., the drawings are a tool I use to communicate design intent, where modeling enhances that communication, it's great. but modeling for the sake of making spiffy models is a waste of resources.

[duhvinci]

In my experience, people are really, really fighting to move to 3D. So it goes without saying that moving to BIM is being fought even more. I've been working in the manufacturing industry for about 4 years now and the two companies I've worked at barely know how to use AutoCAD LT. But I saw many job openings for AutoCAD Inventor too.

I'm wondering if you meant "fighting the move to 3D. If so I would agree with you. It is unfortunate, 3D provides so much more. The problem with 3D adoption has been the cumbersome 3D tools that have been supplied in AutoCAD, but I think that is changing. From what I've seen the newer versions of AutoCAD have made improvements in that area so now the challenge is to modify the user conceptualization of tool usage. I find it shocking when I talk to a number of people that don't even realize that AutoCAD is capable of 3D solid modeling. It's been there for a long time and I still use AutoCAD r14 to do all my modelling work enhanced by a custom set of tools that make things really efficient.

I've been trying my hand at Inventor Fusion to attempt to get up to speed on some of the newer techniques and I find it to be a difficult transition. There are some nice tools in I.F. and I realize there are more so in Inventor. But in my mind the workflow is still very cumbersome when I compare it to my customized work environment. Speaking of which that is one of AutoCAD's greatest assets.

So, is AutoCAD obsolete? No. I hope it never becomes so.

[cadtag]

I'm wondering if you meant "fighting the move to 3D.....

In my experience, both are true -- that is, a set of people are fighting to move from 2d to 3d modeling, and concurrently a different set of people are fighting against that move. Neither is unambiguously right or wrong, different strokes and all that.

[dgorsman]

AutoCAD is as obsolete as a sketch pad and pencil; there will always be a place for low tech, easy to use means of generating napkin sketches. Regardless of the high-horsepower 3D modeling, automated drawing extraction, data management, etc. there is still a great need for tools to convey information in a simple and precise manner. Not everything is better in 3D, either - schematics and diagrams of all sorts can do a much better job of representing flow and conveying overall information. Consider that working out the wiring for a house can be done faster with 2D sketching than trying to wrangle all the 3D representations into place, not to mention training to use the software, proper hardware, and having the house modeled in the first place. If you were doing a 30-story office tower with telecom, heating controls, security systems, etc. then AutoCAD is certainly *not* the tool for the job but may still be a good start for recording first-pass ideas.

In some respects, this is similar to digital multimeters in the electronics community. When they first came out in numbers the initial impression was analog meters would no longer be necessary. But soon operators were demanding an analog ( ) to the dial because they weren't looking at just numbers - relative values and trends are much easier to see on an analog dial than raw numbers on a digital readout. So now multimeters include not just numbers but a bar scale or digital dial.

[PRSS]

I suppose that the move to BIM is inevitable as most of you say. In India, transitioning from AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT to BIM is not only highly time consuming but is also very expensive considering the cost of Software and the training cost also. Even if one is willing to do this, there do not seem to be enough competent people to teach real BIM here. Self learning these seem to be a far fetched idea. Well, I guess that if this is going to happen in India very soon, then certainly such BIM teachers would evolve - hopefully. But the cost of having multiple copies and keep upgrading at prohibitive costs (for us Indians) is discouraging.

With best regards
PRSS

[cadtag]

You can replace 'india' in that statement, with just about any country/locality.