reviewing of AutoCAD

Reviewing of AutoCAD

AutoCAD is software that applies the users to design and drawing in a computer. It is the most important software for civil engineering field. All the basic drawing and design will be punched into AutoCAD and saved in computer. Also it could handle the 2D and 3D design in this software. There are a lot of versions now. Today I will review the AutoCAD 3D for Civil Engineering.

As my experience in these few years, almost all the designs of the courses in civil engineering program will use AutoCAD for sure. Even though it is not the most important software we used in a design, but it is still the one we can’t forget. It is easy to use, and has better interface to access. I did a lot of works with AutoCAD before, and I found that it is the best software that I used before for basic design and 2D design ever. Also it can do the most accurate design with different as real design. There are so many tools we can use in AutoCAD, and almost satisfied all the need we probably will use in design.  

But the AutoCAD is still not the perfect software, and lots of customers complain issue with AutoCAD. The part that I hate most should be the drawing procedure. There are two ways you can draw the basic line in AutoCAD. It is easier to draw a line by the mouse or just punch the coordinate number in the data bar. Even there are two ways we can draw the line, but they all have the problems when we try to draw something.  As the first one, directly use mouse to draw, we cannot easily measure the length that we drew. Also, the direction is another issue we can’t control by mouse. If we draw by typing the coordinate number into access bar, it can solve all the problems happened in first way, but we will have more calculation than before. That means we will have heavier work than we expected.

There is a real issue happening in NDSU that every civil engineering students complain with.AutoCAD has bad compatibility with different version. In all the computer clusters in NDSU have the AutoCAD with Version 2013, but in CE computer cluster, the entire PC has the 2012 version. When we design with 2013 version, save the file, it can’t be opened in 2012 version. That means, if we design in library and are not finished yet, we can’t continues to work on the design in the CE cluster.

The bad situation I met before with AutoCAD is when I finished the design and I tried to save the file into computer, the AutoCAD just crashed. Everyone knows the drawing design will be based on so many calculations by the software and computer. When we finished a design, the software will apply a million times calculation in the backstage. It will easily crash.  It is the worst feeling definitely. And the AutoCAD doesn’t supply the auto save, so we have to remember to save when we finish each stage of design.Doing this will protect your design better.

There are a lot of issues that will happen when you deal with AutoCAD. It is not the perfect software, but also it is a good software compare with others. It still is the software desired by the civil engineering field in the future.