Posted by gary veasy on January 08, 2000 at 22:50:32:In Reply to: Re: PowerCadd posted by ken kuuhlman on January 08, 2000 at 16:47:02:
Hi Ken
The reason why Autocad is so popular is not coincidental. Pc's are more popular on a unit sold/unit used basis and as such they were really the pioneers as I understand it. It is made only for Pc's and they diod introduce a Mac version a number of years ago (R12, I believe) but it was absolutely shunned by Mac users. They are a bit of an industry standard and icon, I am afraid, and you see people like ES and Artifice, amongst others, writing translators to read their file format. They are big, they are used by many, and driven I believe by engineers. Engineers are driving its sucess and unfortunately, in the past and still, the architects follow. Architects need to "communicate" with their consultants and they _think_ Autocad is the only way to go. _They_ are misinformed because there are many options, PowerCadd being only one.
I have personally never even used Autocad but all of the guys that work with me have. They thought they liked it until they got on the Mac platform. I believe many are hesitant to make the jump but if they do (or are "forced" to by an employer, perhaps) they wonder why they didnt jump earlier. All of my associates think PC and Mac is the way to go.
So a rather simple answer that perhaps others can expound on, is that they got in early and started their domination amongst engineers that the architects felt that they must follow. I believe it is changing however slowly and I think Autodesk is having problems (oh darn!) I do not believe there is anything ACAD can do that PC cannot except read an Autocad file without a tanslation. Oh, there IS one thing it can do...it can make a firm's cash flow look pretty bad due to its price! It _is_ really good at that!!
Take it easy Ken!
Looking forward to seeing some more of your renderings on the User Gallery soon!Gary