AutoCAD for Mac

[Steve Mercer]

Hi Henry,

Though that sounds like a tempting offer, a user must evaluate the TCO (total cost of ownership)  When you factor in the Maintenance/software Update contracts.  It is still not as good a deal as the BricsCAD/LandFX is.

 

s.

[Thomas J. Johnson]

Not bad! If you go with the basic Land F/X and AutoCAD that’s like getting AutoCAD for free… approx. $4200 total. If you go with the Irrigation F/X it would be closer to $5700 for the package. Still a money saver if you don’t have to sub-out irrigation plans at +/- $600 a pop. Now if I sell my car, my touring bicycle, a kidney and donate plasma weekly for the next year I might be able to get a single user license. Or, if you have a .edu e-mail address you can download Land F/X and Irrigation for Free! Another reason to follow Rodney Dangerfield’s advice;

And so,
to all you graduates…
as you go out into the world
my advice to you is…
don’t go!
It’s rough out there.

 

Stay in School and get free software for life…

Land F/X License		$1,995.00
Land F/X license includes 1 year of updates and technical support. License can either be installed on a standalone machine, or onto a server for network license management. A Trial version can be upgraded to a full version license, and an existing server installation can have additional licenses added.
Irrigation F/X License		$3,495.00
Irrigation F/X has all the functionality of Land F/X, as well as full Irrigation capabilities.   AutoCAD 2011 Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 Compatible – $4,425.00 – $4,445.00 – $3,975.00 – $3,995.00

[Steve Mercer]

Hi Matt,

 

That is the strengths of doing business with a vendor that has control of both the hardware and the OS that it sells, fewer technical glitches (with an emphasis on “fewer”).  The disadvantange is the price, Apple will ALWAYS be more expensive!  These are the facts and they are undisputable.

 

s.

[Matt Sprouse]

Steve,

 

I do agree with you that Apple will continue to be the more expensive option.  I have also seen glitches in MacOS, but fewer than those in a Windows environment.  The one exception that I have experienced in the ‘fewer glitches vs cost’ evaluation you mentioned is with a Linux system. Linux = free+rock solid stability.   Unfortunately, it is an operating system that way out of the mainstream for most and just beginning to be recognized by those more innovative companies (Vectorworks and Bricsys).  They are also relatively virus free for the moment.

[Steve Mercer]

Hi Matt,

 

Don’t assume that Linux is any more secure than any of the other OS’s on the market,  A number of years ago my computer tech started and ISP and he chose Silicon Graphics Hardware to run his ISP.  SGI ran on their own flavor of Unix.  (Linux is a derivative of Unix)  One week about 3 or 4 years into his business a bunch of russian hackers broke into his server.  As fast as he patched the holes they had broke through in they were creating new wholes to operate out of.  Even the US Treasury was involved.  Needliess to say the service was down for a week and it put the company under.  The problem with open source software is that  the source code is available to anyone who wants it.  It is like issuing a road map for thieves to find your company.  Because it is free you will find a much higher usage overseas.  And there are a lot of really smart hackers out there.

 

s.

[Steve Mercer]

hincky? what was it doing Henry? or what were you doing when it started acting up?

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I found that i did not like some of the very subtle ways that Bricscad behaved differently than Acad in how it handled things that did not work with my habits. This goes back two or three years, but I particularly did not like how I could not control survet points that were in existing drawings. There were a few other things that had to do with going against what I was used to. It was enough that I paid three times as much for Acad Lt rather than buying the full Bricscad (for my side business). Part of it is that I’m in Acad all day and consistency is important to me going from one to the other. If I did not have those issues, any of the Intellicad brands is a huge cost savings and so close to Acad that it has to be considered.

 

[Chad Shaw]

Walleye Whiz- Sunday mornings at 4:30  hehehe

[Mark Sanford]

I agree with Thomas, mac is just  big headache

[Steve Mercer]

Hi Andrew,

The issues with BricsCAD are usually temporary.  There is a lot of development happening with BricsCAD.  It is critical that you keep the very latest updates installed on your computer.  For example, Though BricsCAD has its roots in IntelliCAD,  It is no longer a IntelliCAD product.  After release 7 they did a major rewrite of the program and it is no longer a IntelliCAD compatible program.  They are constantly upgrading and patching the program as issues develop.  You may find a few quirks but they rarely last past a quarter.  By then the issues are fixed.  For the price difference I find I can put up with a few quirks here and there!  I suspect as the product matures the quirks will be less of an issue.  Though any product that has to mimic the commands of another program will always be a little quirky because they have to adjust their program everytime AutoDesk changes theirs.  You have to see it for what it is,  it is not AutoCAD perfectly… but it is close!

 

Best wishes,

 

s.

[Steve Mercer]

Try to be patient Henry,  remember the motivation to using BricsCAD is a much lower TCO (total cost of ownership)  That in these trying economic times should be motivation enough to be patient with the program!

 

best wishes… IT wise AND healthwise.

 

s.

[Andrew Spiering]

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I can’t argue with any of that, but I personally found that I was willing to go the Acad Lt route and drop the extra cash not to deal with the differences. I also had no need of the full Autocad  (or full Bricscad), so it made sense to me to bite the bullet when I did at the beginning of 2008. I demoed three or four Intellicad programs and each one had just enough differences that I felt that I would end up buying the Acad Lt afterwards anyway. Again they are great and cost effective, but my ways of using viewports and layer management made them awkward for me …. if you drive on the right side of the road it does not mean that a car made to drive on the left is not perfectly good. …. just not good for me.

[Steve Mercer]

Hi Joshua,

 

From your description of why you use Mac’s it sounds to be like you should be running a PC instead…

 

As the Mac pertains to a LA

 

Color Management   (N/A  not applicable)

Graphics (ie Adobe suite) LA may use some PhotoShop but it is not the primary tool of choice – ( limited application)

Video editing (N/A)

Better able to handle multiple programs at once-  not as much an issue as it use to be with 64 bit os’s and 4+ gigs of RAM MS Windows has improved greatly

getting our of your way?  HUH?  Some would say that the new AutoCAD for the Mac gets in your way a LOT more so than the way it operates on a PC.

Yes Mac runs PC programs  (well sort-of )  I wouldn’t  recommend you call up Revit with a 4 gig model and try to run that under bootcamp….YeooH!

Windows better at CAD…Yeap you bet cha!

3D Games Yeap though most LA’s (that are working don’t have time to play games on their CAD station (N/A)

Much greater range of software to choose from?  If you are talking software that pertains to an LA’s daily work I would say the PC has got the mac bet hands down because of all the add-on software products for AutoCAD alone.

Customaization of the OS… well windows has a lot of options- but even if the mac is more customizable, who cares.  The OS is not where an LA spends their time anyway!

wasting time with dialog prompts,  well the mac is not immune to its own spate of technical issues from time to time.

Linux is ideal for : 3D rendering… maybe so but you can still use your pc as a rendering Cow on a Rendering Network in addition to all those Linux servers.

 

The MacOSX Os  is built on Unix … more robust than Windows,  maybe if you could harness the full power of OSX but very few appilications in the LA’s tool box run on the Mac OSX so does it really matter?  Computer science folks swear by Linux/Unix because it is a programmers program language.  If your no a programmer it will make no difference at all.

 

🙂  Merry Christmas!

 

s.

 

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