Dear Autocad,
I brought you onto my computer in your current incarnation yesterday. You came with a bunch of strangers that are now spread out on my desktop like a bunch of passed out sorrority girls – mudbox, sketchbook pro and a bunch of others as well as you and your buddy Inventor.
When I opened you up I saw that you’ve been hanging around with MS Office ‘way too much. You’ve got your own ribbon, although it toggles pretty easily, and you’ve done something with my command prompt. You’ve got strange notions about making bills of materials kind of like Inventor does, although you can’t really do that because you’re not 3D. (Not really. Sorry.)
You’ve got all kinds of fancy image tools now, and a host of other things. When you and I parted ways you were trying to have model space and paper space and do solid modelling. You tried to dress up like a constraint based solid modelling package with Mechanical Desktop, which I actually thought was pretty cool and worked well enough, although it was anything but seamless.
When I met you, you were on Release 10. You were also my last, best hope for a decent career. I spent my last dime and a few more to learn to drive you. Almost immediately I discovered that what I had bought was access to you – the instruction was a joke. So we went round and round. I learned, just type what you want to do. Line? Line! and then lots of options. Circle? Circle! and then more options then really advisable. Then there’s arc, but I used linelinecircletrim faster than I could negotiate that one.
And when it came time for dimensioning, holy crap! Who knew there could be a thousand system variables associated with putting a dimension on something.
Then there was AutoLISP. Lost in stupid parentheses. I spent more time than I should have trying to automate everything, but came up with some pretty cool stuff too. Everybody had their little stash of routines.
We drew everything full size, and made our border big enough to fit what we drew, then set up the plotting to get it back onto a piece of paper.
And when we could draw everything that we could draw with a pencil, including isometrics with your cool iso snap options, we played around with your 2 1/2 D. Lots of faces, origami “solids”. Some weird stuff with meshes. But then we got back to work.
We could construct anything because of your infinite (well nearly infinite) precision. You were a 2D drawing machine.
Of course you would crash without warning, so I learned to save often, and enough people did the same that you grew autosave.
So because we went through so much together I feel like I can tell you, stop putting on airs and pretending you’re something you’re not. What you are is the most awesome computer mechanical drawing tool ever invented and one of the few still standing. Nobody can touch the tools you evolved for drawing stuff in 2D. Inventor, for all its power, still can’t make a reasonable rectangle – to – round transition pattern. That’s for you and me to do. So, be that. You can’t beat Inventor or Solidworks at their game, or Photoshop or Illustrator at their game. But they can’t touch you at yours.
And now if I can just get you to turn my spreadsheet into lines and text like you used to before your 30 day visit is up, I’ll be happy.
Best of luck,
Bill
Rantings and Recollections 