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The future of AutoCAD

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Re: The future of AutoCAD

#31

Post by fsloth »

specialist wrote: post #14
Jamerson wrote: post #2

AutoCAD is vast, recursive, and bloated. I really hope someone comes out with a lightweight version that does less, better.

The road to Sausalito is littered with the corpses of AutoCAD challengers. Generic CADD was pretty good. Bought and shut down. I also remember Visual CAD (which I don't think is the same Visual CAD a quick google search is turning up). I forget who bought them. There's a zillion others I no longer remember. Unbelievably, as bad as AutoCAD is/was, Bentley Systems' MicroStation was a hellspawn of turrible. I've never r…

"MicroStation was a hellspawn"

I think you mean is a hellspawn. I think they still have a solid foothold in some sectors.

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#32

Post by [deleted] »

haberman wrote: post #8
Jamerson wrote: post #2

AutoCAD is vast, recursive, and bloated. I really hope someone comes out with a lightweight version that does less, better.

What about SketchUp? I'm very new to 3d modeling, but I've been modeling my house over the last week or so in SketchUp and it seems pretty nice. Are 2d CAD and 3d modeling different kettles of fish?

[deleted]

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#33

Post by bluedino »

specialist wrote: post #14
Jamerson wrote: post #2

AutoCAD is vast, recursive, and bloated. I really hope someone comes out with a lightweight version that does less, better.

The road to Sausalito is littered with the corpses of AutoCAD challengers. Generic CADD was pretty good. Bought and shut down. I also remember Visual CAD (which I don't think is the same Visual CAD a quick google search is turning up). I forget who bought them. There's a zillion others I no longer remember. Unbelievably, as bad as AutoCAD is/was, Bentley Systems' MicroStation was a hellspawn of turrible. I've never r…

>> I've never really understood how AutoCAD and Office maintained their dominance.

Saying it's hard to write something that's 100% compatible would be an understatement.

Viewing the same document in Google Apps, Microsoft Word, or Open Office makes me think of QA'ing a website in 3 different browsers.

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#36

Post by pfranz »

chx wrote: post #3
Jamerson wrote: post #2

AutoCAD is vast, recursive, and bloated. I really hope someone comes out with a lightweight version that does less, better.

Isn't that like people wishing for a more lightweight Excel not realizing the "80% of people only 20% of the features" is true but it's not the same 20%? Could you even come up with a financially viable lightweight enough Autocad competitor?

I've been perfectly happy using Google Sheets for 10+ years even though I'm sure it's no substitute for someone in finance. (I don't think CAD software has the same wide appeal, though)

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#37

Post by fsloth »

frou_dh wrote: post #30

This probably doesn't count as full-blown CAD, but there exists a cool and mature desktop 3D modelling application written in _ERLANG_! How can you resist at least trying that? It's called Wings3D: http://www.wings3d.com/wp-content/uploads//SS01.png http://www.wings3d.com/wp-content/uploads//Amx141prscr.jpg http://www.wings3d.com/?page_id=84

3D programs target different domains.

Wings is mainly for creating renderable meshes.

A CAD software's main usage is in modeling physical structures.

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#38

Post by bluedino »

You would think, if you wrote a hosted CAD program that ran on large compute instances in AWS, you'd really lock the market down. No more buying expensive CAD workstations, way less graphics drivers, just fire it up. Need more power? Just pay more each month/day/hour. Plus you could host all your giant CAD files in the cloud, no more buying storage and easier to share across remote teams.

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#39

Post by zmix »

I hate webapps. What will happen to scripting, application automation? Just have a look, how dumbed down most webapps are when compared to their desktop parts or similare programs as desktop version.

Re: The future of AutoCAD

#40

Post by fsloth »

haberman wrote: post #8
Jamerson wrote: post #2

AutoCAD is vast, recursive, and bloated. I really hope someone comes out with a lightweight version that does less, better.

What about SketchUp? I'm very new to 3d modeling, but I've been modeling my house over the last week or so in SketchUp and it seems pretty nice. Are 2d CAD and 3d modeling different kettles of fish?

Sketchup is intended as a 3D "sketching" tool. The post to go this through in detail would be quite long but the gist of it Sketchup does not scale very far in terms of model complexity. You can model e.g. a factory floor or a complex office building in Autocad while still being able to navigate the model. Not so much in Sketchup.
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