ACAD C3D 2012

There's no problem installing it.

As for moving to it for production work, you're on your own there. I'm not aware yet of any problems, but 2012 has only been out for about a week, so there hasn't been much time for people to find issues.

Just got ours and I am interested to see if they changed the format for the metes and bounds report now that I just learned how to modify it.

Do you know if 2012 changes the file format between 2010, 2011 and 2012 so that you have to export down to 2010 or 2011 to be able to open with that version?

No version of C3D is backward-compatible, even by a single version.

If you want to go back to ANY earlier version, you have to use "Export to Autocad", along with maybe a LandXML export of your civil info, and let the person with the older software recreate whatever they need.

Richard,

You are very knowledgeable of this software. Based on that, you may have some information on a question that has been on my mind for a while.

What is the reason for this drive by the company/software developers to set-up the program to be not compatible for the previous year. Here we are, April 2011, the 2012 release is out. The folks that will start to use the 2012 release will be kept from sharing (besides export to AutoCAD) information with colleagues & clients who run previous versions. I am not talking about 3 versions back, I am talking about the current calendar year, 2011.

What's the reason? I am curious, that's all. If it's a programming reason, I can say okay, that's the mindset of the program "move forward, never look back" fair enough. From a business point of view, I find it a bit surprising.

I had a bit of a situation last fall where I was using release 2011 (was test driving it). What surprised me was this "lock down attribute". I couldn't share the information with the client who was running an earlier version. What was I suppose to tell the client? (The guy who pays me) "hey man, you have to upgrade your software". Of course, I could export to AutoCAD, but then the marvel of the software is removed.

I may have to write to Autodesk and ask them. I am just curious. From a business point of view, it seems to be a strange thing to do. That's why I am thinking that there might be some programming reasons behind this drive.

I don't know.

:beer:

I'm not sure if I entirely believe this, but the best explanation I've heard so far from Autodesk was that every new version released so far includes significant internal changes to the program. Maintaining backward compatibility through these changes would require too much programming effort to be worthwhile, so they chose to not do it.

Of course nobody ever says that forcing everyone to upgrade to the current version each year is part of their business strategy - but judge for yourself.

I have learned over the years NOT to install any new version UNTIL the first patch comes out. They always seem to forget something, hence the patches.

I guess my question would be:

So when does a company decide to upgrade at the risk of cutting its links with colleagues and clients who decided not to upgrade just yet. This is a bit silly, on one hand, the product is fresh on the market (and may require a patch), on the other hand, not upgrading risk cutting links with colleagues and clients who did decide to upgrade.

They have the right idea with AutoCAD. Every 3 years, new version. 2004-2007-2010. Now businesses can plan, project and expect something new in 2013.

Software developers do wonderful things. One thing I know, those artists need to be closely managed. They sometimes think too much about the "Happy Hour" conversations and forget to keep an eye on the road and drift into silly ditches.

I don't install too quickly any new release. Usually I wait until the calendar date matches the release date. It's been working well so far. Release 2012, I install in 2012.

:beer:

Well, there's a bit of truth to that, but it's related to a whole series of design choices Autodesk made over the years. Some of those design choices may have even been good ideas at the time, given the state hardware was at, but now they are proving to be troublesome.

Basically, if Autodesk had made some significantly different design choices, they could put out new versions every year without creating the complete incompatibility problems. There would still be some issues, but they would be more along the lines of Office, where documents can mostly be transferred back to earlier versions intact, but you might lose some of the fancy new stuff, and some things might be broken.

Unfortunately, the way they approached things, they've gotten themselves into a situation where they can't really maintain backward compatibility very easily. So I think they're telling the truth, in that they are now at a point where they can't maintain backward compatibility without devoting lots and lots of effort to it, and that effort would slow new development. But that's not an inherent trait of software development - they could have developed things in a different way, and not gotten into that trouble. They just made years of design choices that didn't go in that direction, and now they can't really go in that direction.

The really disturbing thing is that they continue to put out new versions every year, even after they got themselves into this point where they can't maintain any level of compatibility for even a single year. That's the part that appears to be mostly driven by the marketing arm of Autodesk, which is the part of the company that thinks they need a new release every year, no matter how much difficulty and trauma that creates for their customers.

Some may ask why Autodesk does a yearly upgrade and the answer is because they can. They have such a large share of the market they can do what they want and they will keep doing it until they lose market share. This maybe sooner than later as I know of a couple of nationwide engineering firms that are planning a 5 year update cycle.

Autodesk has created a lot of upgrade and subscription envy in other markets, Leica for example with their yearly subscription for hardware updates and not supporting equipment after 4 or 5 years. Luckily Leica does not have a large enough share of the market to make this stick and you can function very well with the older software versions.

My previous version of Autodesk was 2008 and then I paid the premium (instead of the yearly subscription fee) to upgrade to 2011 and since they require a one year subscription to upgrade I ended up with the 2012 C3D. At around 16% of the new cost for a yearly subscription I won't renew again and then around 2017 see what deal they offer to upgrade. My guess is by then they will have found a reason to replace C3D with something with an equally difficult learning curve and require thousands to be spent in training and creating new templates and point descriptor databases.