Starting Up

[dougurquhart676895]

Hi,
I am starting up my old drafting business. I currently have AutoCAD 2002 and will purchase 2015 when I have the money. Until then ... is there any software available to translate current versions down?? Also ... I have heard Autodesk has a monthly rental (cloud) version available. Has anyone used that?? Any problems with it?? This may be a short-term solution until I can purchase a seat outright??
Any ideas are welcome ...

[Jmurphy]

Tru-View should do it and it's free to d/l and use.
http://www.autodesk.com/products/dwg/viewers

[cadtag]

Also, there are more modern work-a-likes. Draftsight is free to use for commercial purposes - adequate for 2d drafting, and both Graebert and Bricsys have pretty full featured applications that work with DWG files. As well, there's the Intellicad variants at various price points and feature lists.

Not to mention AutoCAD LT. Any of those choices would be more efficient on modern hardware (Win7, 64 bit) than Acad 2002, and Graebert's Ares Commander package and Bricsys' BricsCAD handle LISP and other programming customization. dunno about Dynamic Blocks -- that may be an Acad/AcadLT capability.

If you're running on a Windows 2000 machine, then your Acad 2002 is going to be just fine. I suspect though, that True-View will not like that platform.

[p.delacdut676951]

Ares Commander from Graebert uses DWG as its native file format, so you can create or modify any DWG drawing. You can download a free trial from . At the moment they got a 20% discount on the full version. That's valid until July 25 with the coupon code SUMMER20. Maybe that's something you want to check out.

[rkmcswain]

Hi,
Also ... I have heard Autodesk has a monthly rental (cloud) version available. Has anyone used that?? Any problems with it?? This may be a short-term solution until I can purchase a seat outright??

Not sure what you mean by (cloud) in this context, but the "rental" versions of AutoCAD (named "Desktop Subscription") are no different that the normal perpetually licensed versions other than the length of time of the licensing, which can be monthly, quarterly, or annually. The application does "phone home" every so often to verify licensing, but it's still installed and run locally on a PC or MAC.

As to your last question, yes.

[jaberwok]

Not sure what you mean by (cloud) in this context, but the "rental" versions of AutoCAD (named "Desktop Subscription") are no different that the normal perpetually licensed versions other than the length of time of the licensing, which can be monthly, quarterly, or annually. The application does "phone home" every so often to verify licensing, but it's still installed and run locally on a PC or MAC.

As to your last question, yes.

There are problems with it?

[rkmcswain]

His last question was "This may be a short-term solution until I can purchase a seat outright??"
I should have quoted I suppose.....

[jaberwok]

His last question was "This may be a short-term solution until I can purchase a seat outright??"
I should have quoted I suppose.....

I read it as a statement despite the "?". All's well then.