Land Development Desktop is a pretty powerful Civil Software...we use it where I work at pretty much...yeah, and like Tom Church mentioned...we do get Cadd Files from different Architectural Firms mainly for the Slab info and Footprints, and those suckers are almost always in outer space somewhere with a totally diferent coordinate system...

ya'll seen this yet?
http://www.alibre.com/xpress/news/press-release.asp

100002

Yippy.

yup alibre blew it because the first confirmation emails had alibre.com in the mime headers

I think they may have a class action suit against them sometime in the future. Apparently the program isn't all they said it would be. I'll reserve final judgement until I use mine.

looks like its a "lite" version of Alibre Design 8.2

but there is really no grounds for a class action suit... we were not harmed, there was no loss of anything.

It's like they say, if you have to give it away it's probably not worth having.

Heck no. I bet it's sweet. 8.2 costs about $1000! I'll take a "lite" version for free!

The "free" version will have embedded Google text ads. Similar to Opera, you can remove the ads for $49.

Anyone have experience with Autocad 2006 or Architectural Desktop 2006?
My office will be upgrading very soon, and I wanted to know if its much different from ADT 2005?
Any new bugs to look forward to?
Any cool features?
Thanks!!

BTW.. Some of the demos that the big CAD companies offer are fully functional except for save and print, but have no imbedded ads or anything weird..

man, we are still finding bugs in Autocad 2005,we haven't even gotten 2006 yet...I'm pretty sure they will be alot of bugs in the 2006 version...

Hey, I got my email from X-cad today, They reached their goal, and they are going to email The Free X-Cad Software on August 1...anybody else get this email ?

Yeah, got mine today. Looks like they gave in a little and included shells. It doesn't matter if we paid anything. What if I said I was giving away a truck equal to an Xterra if you registered at my website and then gave you a crappy truck that you couldn't drive anywhere. Can't export 3D DXF files. If I can't convert it to G-Code it's of little use to me. I'm new to CNC so maybe there's something I can do with an STL file, but I've never heard of it. I guess after I retire I'll have to write my own open source 3-D modeler that exports directly to G-Code. Doesn't seem like it should be that hard;)

Word is that AutoCAD 2006 will be the first in a series of steps to phase out the command line It'll be there but not like what we know and love.

Tom

One of my buddies I went to school with works for a company that makes F-16 components. They have huge 150ft bed CNC mills. They use a 3D CAD program called Cativa (it may use a plug in program also)which writes all the code the CNC mills. It also shows you on screen whats being milled and with what tool. Its a very interesting program.

I'm on AutoCAD 2006 and I still use the command line. There is a new feature in 2006 called "DYN" that is next to OSNAP and OTRACK at the bottom. If you turn that off (like I do), everything's like normal and the way it's always been. If you turn it on, it's a new way to draw where the command line is practically pointless. I swear, they are out of things to add and improve. Instead of fixing all of the bugs, they're trying to fix things that aren't broken. :rolleyes:

Got the email regarding early release, etc..
It should be fun to play with.. I cant believe they ad advertisements and an internet connection is required for use..screwed up..
I wonder if there will be a crack to remove that.

Oh man.. Some of the older architects at my office will be pissed if they phase out the command prompt..Its going to be interesting..
Thanks for the headsup..

I saw that too... I wonder how many people will actually download it now that they realize how it's gonna be.

I'm not gonna bother with it, that's for sure.

just got my email to download it.

im gonna wait till i see what people think... im not a fan of adware

Yup..got mine too...Has anybody Downloaded yet ?

I don't use it, but support it, network license manager etc. for my office. We have had a lot less calls in regards to it over 2005 which was a buggy mess. Just my experience.

Well, I downloaded it and tried to draw a few things.
1. The tutorial has different screenshots from some other product, probably the full featured program we were promised but didn't receive.

2. Cannot save the files in a format that is useful to me.

3. Completely non intuitive.

4. Uninstalled it and left an angry message on their message board.

I guess it's easy to give something away for free if it is worthless.
I have an 11 year old hobbiest program called 3D Design Plus that I paid $39.95 for and it is much easier to use and exports DXF files. I found it in the junk bin at Walmart. I've used it to design and make several items over the years. I will just stick with it since I won't be buying anything from Alibre and can't afford anyone else's stuff at the moment. I'll soon have a year to work on my own program. Maybe I'll add some advertisements to it and trick 100,000 people into registering for it and then cripple it just to frustrate them. Then again, maybe I'll just give it away and put Alibre out of business.

i'd like to reserve my copy of "Xterrian 3D". Where do i sign up?

Like I said a couple of weeks ago.....