My thought here too is that omcusnr has touched onto a sore spot with me and brought out a bone of contention. He hit on something which new CAD users seldom think about, and I have been trying to express. Hardly do you get to learn 60% of the capabilities of one software version, when along comes the next. The software vendors are fighting with each other trying to sell another new feature, when good old version five or six does everything we need. It may take five minutes longer to do it, but is fully compatible with the $10,000 plotter sitting in the next room, and I sure don't want to buy another of those.

Along the line of his other point. Back in the early 1980's (pre-Autocad) I was doing plans on a system called Vango. Besides the basic software which the business purchased, there was a 40 hour long familiarization course taught to a few employees. After you got loaded up and going, they then had a monthly "maintenance charge" to deal with. This included updates, new pages to the thirty pound manual, and storage of inactive projects. (Remember, the one meg computer had yet to be out on the market at this time) The daughter of the boss, a $3 an hour employee, was charged with printing out the new manual pages as received via the fast 2400 modem, then ripping out the old pages and inserting the new into the three ring binder. If a telephone call came in, things stopped and may be forgotten. Thus the manual I always had seemed to be obsolete. As mentioned by omcusnr, before any new manual or aide can be printed, the software has been revised or a bug fixed which changes everything you read inside it. Since then I ahve had little faith in software manuals.

In all this was the geek in the other room who did not develop plans (nor make money for the company) but persisted in tormenting those who did by reinforcing their lack of knowledge of the monthly varying functions of the system. If he forgot to mail in the monthly maintenance charge, an update may come along which we then missed. Once paid, the whole system in the office went through a 1/2 hour upgrade and it changed the appearances of the drawings that were just finished yesterday, but only needed plotting. Surprize! The "Re-buy every year subscription" as omcusnr has mentioned is about the same thing we experienced with Vango, but on a less frequent basis. The current software vendors seem to be going this direction once again. Instead of spreading the base and getting more users, they are trying to hook in harder those they already have. If you are not current with all the options of the latest version, you get lost just trying to get familiar, instead of making plans.

An example of non-compatibility is the spreading use of CUSTOMIZATION now. Last year I received a plan from someone who had customized their software such that it affected the drawing and my standard loading. This affected it so the drawing could not be turned off, nor close the CAD software, nor even exit Windows. I had to re-boot the computer to get going again.

CAD ain't simple, nor is it a magic button and just when you think you have a partial handle on it, a different version comes out.


Wm.