(first, my apologies to the general population of dopers–this is a boring question,-unless you are an engineer, architect or somebody who uses Autocad software)
Do you resent the policy of forcing us to upgrade constantly?
The Autodesk company keeps phasing out its older versions, trying to force us to upgrade, so they can make another $3000 of raw profit
They keep their sales secret-- But I have a feeling that a lot of people out there are still using R14. In your office, how many of the .dwg files you receive from others in your field are version R14, and how many A2000 or A2002?
Autodesk always promises us that the latest version is God’s gift , and we cannot live without it. But I want to see an honest survey of the industry!!Who actually buys each new release?
In my business (small land surveying firm ) over half of my clients still use R14. Can anybody tell me if this is common?
If over half of your clients are still using R14, I’d say AutoDesk is doing a pretty poor job of forcing upgrades.
I’m a draftsman for a small structural engineering firm and, although we still have a few clients using R14, the large majority seem to have settled on A2000. Myself, I’ve been pushing to upgrade from 2000 to 2004 but that’s only because I like new toys and I wouldn’t have to pay for it.
However, I’ve noticed that 2004 cannot save DWG files in formats any earlier than 2000 and this may be an example of the kind of behaviour to which the OP is referring. I must admit that it kind of ticks me off, as well. If our office ever does upgrade, I’d have to export 2004 dwgs to DXF if I wanted to share files with any of our R14 using clients.
Unfortunately, this type of behaviour is typical in the software industry, especially when a company has virtually cornered the market, e.g., Microsoft has stopped supporting Win95. The price we pay for a defacto industry standard means is that we’re subject to the whims of the company creating the goods.
