AutoCAD: I Hate It.

[Peter.Steele]

I'm an Autodesk Inventor guy. I managed to skip almost entirely over using AutoCAD, except for a project a couple years back using AutoCAD P&ID, which doesn't depend on drawing at all - you just click and drop valves, pipe segments, etc.

Well, now that's coming back to bite me. I've got a project to do now that has to be done in AutoCAD. Can't do it in Inventor, not no way, not no how. Inventor simply doesn't have the tool set to do it.

I'm getting a whole week's worth of learning packed into - so far - 40 hours (out of the past 48) of ****ing with this horrid piece of **** software. Things like isometric dimensions, that are just completely automatic in Inventor - those took me 36 hours to figure out how to do in AutoCAD.

Who the **** thought that it was a good idea to require someone to memorize 50 bajillion keyboard commands, none of which seem to be less than 5 characters? Every time I want to change the orientation of a dimension line, for instance, I actually have to type DIMEDIT, then hit enter, then click (yeah, you can click for this part, after entering a 7-character command!) to tell it what orientation I want, then pick two points to actually set the orientation.

Gah. I'm not saying I'll necessarily turn down gigs like this ... but I'll sure as **** bump my rate if I have to use AutoCAD again. **** this ****.

[skisly]

Your pain is real.

I would say that about the time you get comfy, they will change the program.

[Zarovich]

So now you can opensource all sorts of gun parts for 3d printing

[bigbearbear]

Some of my customers prefer products like SolidWorks. Perhaps try that one?

[Peter.Steele]

Your pain is real.

I would say that about the time you get comfy, they will change the program.

I have zero intention of ever getting comfy with AutoCAD. It is an enemy, to be fought at every turn.

So now you can opensource all sorts of gun parts for 3d printing

I could do that already with Inventor, which is MUCH better for that sort of thing. My day job occasionally involves getting stuff I've made with Inventor 3D printed, so I'm not unfamiliar with how to make that stuff happen.

Some of my customers prefer products like SolidWorks. Perhaps try that one?

Nah, Solidworks is ... unpleasant as well. I've got probably 8,000 hours on Inventor (which is SW's main non-Dassault Systemes competitor) over the past 4 years, and it suits 99.9% of my needs perfectly. The situation I'm dealing with now is piping isos. Inventor will create FANTASTIC piping systems, no problem. The routed systems module does amazing work ... problem is, it won't do P&ID's or standard piping iso drawings. For that I need AutoCAD Plant 3D ... except that the stuff that I'm doing is all VERY non-standard, apparently, so it's not included in ACP3D's libraries of parts, so I can't make use of the relatively automated procedure for creating the iso drawings ... and that means I need to actually draw this crap from scratch.

Piss on AutoCAD. Inventor is supposedly their flagship design product, so why don't they have P&IDs / iso drawings available there? Oh, sure, it can generate a .PCF file for ISOGEN ... but you can't buy ISOGEN. You have to get it as an OEM component of another software package ... and AutoCAD Plant 3D - which includes the ISOGEN code - can't import .PCF files!!!!!

As much as I love Inventor (and I really do!), right now I'm really pissed at Autodesk.

[10mm]

I took a begining autocad course in college. After 2 days I was like f#uck that. I dropped course and never looked back. Good luck I'm sure you'll figure it out since it seems you have technical knowledge and experience.

[VegasND]

Interesting to read your comments.

Last summer I spent 2 weeks being trained on Inventor and Revet. Cool programs.

I've heard AutoCad is a lot harder to use.

[CSACANNONEER]

MICROSTATION!!!!!!! Enough said! Seriously, look into micostation. You can even work on .DWGs in it or, you can convert .DGNs to .DWGs when you're done.

[Bobby Ricigliano]

I'm just not spreckety your linggity here. I just learned 'msconfig' and I am feeling pretty good about that. Computarded here.

[thatsteveguy]

The last time I used AutoCad was about 8 years ago and I used it the prior 13 years doing design/engineering work. I remember that the later versions of Acad at that time were more icon oriented than the earlier versions but I was able to configure the earlier versions I was working with to use one and two stroke commands, for example "dimedit" would be "de". It really speeded up drawing times. I took a course to learn Acad initially and like anything, the more you practice, the better you'll likely get. Now though, it's been 8 plus years since opening up any .dwg file and I'm sure the Acad has gotten more cumbersome. I'd likely be in the same situation the OP was in if I tried now.

[thespy]

I havent used ACAD in about 5 years but once you learn the keyboard commands its cake.

[nanoc]

Had to take a engineering graphic course a few semesters back, final project was creating a pipeline in AutoCAD. At first I swear I could do most of the work by hand faster but as the semester went on we got extremely fast, once you memorize the keyboard commands it shouldn't be that big of a problem.

[jeffme]

AND......

MICROSTATION!!!!!!! Enough said! Seriously, look into micostation. You can even work on .DWGs in it or, you can convert .DGNs to .DWGs when you're done.

It worked well with Caice for 3-D modeling (pretty pictures, x-sections, profiles, supers, drainage, quantites, etc)!
Not that i really care these days.........retired!!!!

[Simply115]

Aw yeah, Autocad.

[Blue]

I'm not the only one. SWEET. I'm showing this thread to my boss tomorrow LOL