upgrading, do I really need to?

We use AutoCAD 2000.
We draw only in 2d and have an in house designed add on program for
architectural drawings.
Do we need to upgrade??
I would appreciate any thoughtful insight. This is a huge expense
for our small (8 people) office.

Thanks,

j

 

You're too late. The deadline for upgrading to 2005 was yesterday. Now
you'll have to pay full retail for your "upgrade." $3K is quite a bit to pay
for the ability to put tabs in MText.
___

 

The time has come to stop using the word UPgrade! Lets just call it a
"transfer" from one version to another.

A true story:
When R13 was released, I went to a conference where several Autodesk
developers presented the "greatest Autocad yet", and included a glossy
brochure that "proved" how much better it was. Autodesk claimed to have
scientific proof that R13 was a guarranteed way to make more
money--they gave a real architectural design project to 2 companies-one
using R12, the other the new R13, and timed how long it took to produce
the final product. The brochure was incredibly detailed describing the
projects (for example, it emphasized that the Xrefs provided to each
architect by the land surveyors were located in different directories,
and had to have their paths re-defined.) And surprise, surprise, the R13
company won the contest, made more profit and changed the planet earth
forever.

But we all know that R13 was the biggest disaster in Autodesk's history.



Some upgrades were worth it--R12 vastly improved R10, and R14 vastly
improved R12, because the world switched from Dos to Windows.

But today, Autocad does everything that you need in 2D, and the only
people who need upgrades and "improvements" are the shareholders , not
the customers.

Ask yourself, and ALL of your autocad-using clients--have you made more
profit since upgrading? Have you completed more projects this year than
last year, have you hired new personnel?

The only reason that it might be worthwhile to "up"grade is that you
only pay about $500 instead of $3000. And you avoid compatibility
problems with clients who forgot to save back to your version.

 

Just curious, I have a R12 that runs in Windows not DOS.
Is it different versions of R12?
Tomas

 

Yes, there was a separate release of R12 specifically for Windows.
___

 

version.
after a few versions go by, you can't save back to x version, & you can't
upgrade for 500, you must pay the 3k & start over.This about the only valid reason I see.

 

My dealer purchased more than he needed and is still able to offer me the
upgrade.

Thing is, in our office..one thing leads to another.

Upgrade to AutoCAD 2004
Upgrade all out windows 98 machines to pro so that they work with 2004
upgrade outlook so that it works with windows
upgrade SBS small business server (exchange) to work with the new outlook
that the client computers are using.
At this time, it looks like we are going to take the upgrade and shelve it.
j

 

on average , how much time do people in your office spend on downtime? like
fighting printer drivers & incompatibility with clients, ect...

 

1%...really very little.
Most of the folks I deal with outside of my firm
use 2000 or lower. I have yet to have someone
have a compatibility issue.
We have the same old designjet 600 we have had for 100 years.

Our other BIG issue is that we use an "add on" program for layer control and
such
that will NOT be upgrading to 2004, it will just fade away. When that
happens, we are left
with AutoCAD "out of the box". Architectural desktop adds another $4000 per
system pricetag.
ouch.

j

 

actually i was more referring to the windows 98 issues.. I had that on my pc
& home & it locked up all the time,.

 

Oh, AutoCAD 2000 seems to work just fine with windows 98 (at least in our
office)
j

 

You can still save back to R14, which tons of people are still using.
With support ending for 2000 though, if you do much file exchange you will get
increasing numbers of files in later versions, and you will spend increasing
amounts of time asking partners to send you "old" versions.

Progress or not, there's no way around it. You don't necessarily have to
follow every single burp from Autodesk, but by the time you're three versions
behind it gets to be a pain in the behind!

G Faris