Migrating 2002 to 2006/ Getting Training for it.

[denrich71]

Well, just this morning, I kindly reminded the boss that Autodesk will be retiring Autocad 2002 at the end of the year. He said he knew and knows that we need to upgrade to 2006. I also mentioned that we should probably attend some type of training for the new features, at least one day. He said he didn't think anymore training was in the budget. Have not had any type of training in forever. The one training class I am attending next week is a GPS based training class. My question is this: How difficult will it be to migrate from 2002 to 2006. We basically have three workstations plus a laptop on our network. Another thing, I have pretty much taught myself everything I know about Autocad. Once again, no money for training. I have been using Autocad since release 11. Any help and rants would be appreciated.

Dennis Rich

[glee.94356]

Uh,
It's modus operandi in the AEC world for smaller to mid size firms. I think larger ones have some kind of trainning budgeted for.
I'm on vanilla 2004. We jumped from R14 to 2004. (bought the upgrades but never bothered to migrate). Now looking to jump to 2006. There's more functionality in 2006 that I'm learning about just by perusing the threads. Dynamic blocks being my biggest lesson of the day.
The good thing in a firm like yours is that you're probably the CAD guru, right? Makes you the defacto CAD manager if it helps any.
Maybe do the training on your own (plus reading the threads here)and one day asks the boss for the title of CAD manager. No extra perks, no bonuses, just the title. Tell him it's easier to deal with vendors and network related business.
Why? It looks good on your resume. Then move to a firm where it might help your career.
Hell, I convinced my old firm to put Director of Digital Technology on my business cards once.
Received a lot of free IT and CAD magazines for years just on that. It was just a name to them, so no skin off their noses. Plus it did open more doors whenever I had to deal with IT stuff for the firm.
Sometimes a negative can be turned around to a positive for you.

[Wanderer]

Well, just this morning, I kindly reminded the boss that Autodesk will be retiring Autocad 2002 at the end of the year. He said he knew and knows that we need to upgrade to 2006. I also mentioned that we should probably attend some type of training for the new features, at least one day. He said he didn't think anymore training was in the budget. Have not had any type of training in forever. The one training class I am attending next week is a GPS based training class. My question is this: How difficult will it be to migrate from 2002 to 2006. We basically have three workstations plus a laptop on our network. Another thing, I have pretty much taught myself everything I know about Autocad. Once again, no money for training. I have been using Autocad since release 11. Any help and rants would be appreciated.

Dennis Rich

Dennis, I am going to move this from the CWC forum to the acad 2006 forum, where, hopefully, users who have gone through this transition can give you good advice on this matter.

thank you.

[treb]

AutoCad is AutoCad.
no matter what version your using.

2002 to 2006 isn't a huge leap, just has some extra bells and whistles.

[glee.94356]

Oh, yeah. Should have added that.
If you keyboard the majority of your commands, no problem.
I'm not sure what happens when migrating CUIs from 2002 to 2006. Especially old lisp.

[Wanderer]

AutoCad is AutoCad.
no matter what version your using.

2002 to 2006 isn't a huge leap, just has some extra bells and whistles.

well, it MIGHT NOT be a huge leap for most people. But, it could be if you start using fields and sheetsets. If you don't keyboard everything like some of us dinosaurs, tool pallettes can greatly affect the way that you would want to work also.

The biggest thing with upgrading is the New Features Workshop. You can choose which release you are migrating from, and it will tell you all of the new features since then. There are tutorials and explanations and demonstrations associated with the new features.

So, in short, you'll be able to draft pretty much like you always have. But, there are more in-depth features on top of the bells and whistles that could take a while to get a handle on. I hope they can find a way to squeeze in some training, if they can't/won't, take the initiative to call up your local reseller and have them host a demonstration on 2006 features, which they have done for many Local User's Groups over the years.

Good luck!

[Opie]

extra bells and whistles.

Can someone point out these. I haven't heard any bells or whistles while using AutoCAD. Sorry, couldn't help myself. I'm joking.

[Glenn Pope]

Can someone point out these. I haven't heard any bells or whistles while using AutoCAD. Sorry, couldn't help myself. I'm joking.

I don't know about a bell or whistle, but can get AutoCAD to beep

(vlr-beep-reaction T)

[david_peterson]

I don't know about a bell or whistle, but can get AutoCAD to beep

(vlr-beep-reaction T)

So is that like the windows blue screen of death?

[Glenn Pope]

So is that like the windows blue screen of death?

No it actually makes the computer make a beep sound. You can use it in a lisp routine to get the users attention when an error occurs.