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I'm not sure if you've ever heard about this piece of software.
Absolute and legal chinese copy of autocad.
same icons, shell and everything else
the price is 1/10 of full autodesk autocad
ZW CAD




hurry;)
if this message was some money saver, you can buy me a beer;)

edit: http://www.zwcad.org/cad-software/compare-autocad.html

...maybe someone should tell autodesk about them...

It LOOKS like autocad... i've to test if it feels like autocad too.

...and WOW - great NEW "feature" announced: Aerial View Window ...this groundbreaking function i've last seen in autocad LT95 before the scroll wheel had been invented

This is just one of the numerous flavors of Intellicad which exists for many years already. It is legal and in fact even inbuilt in SolidWorks DWG-Editor.

polyxo:

you're totally right
but keep on mind that ZW is the one that is an exact copy of autocad.
it's like the only difference you get is ZWCAD instead of AUTOCAD in the windows bar;)
and that's what makes it an alternative.

I'm not trying to dis autocad, but imagine having to buy 10 AC licences.
For that price you get ~100 zwcads;)

and most of all, do architects (I am one) do use 100% of autocad or more or less close to 5-10% ?
there are better tools for architecture that you can spend money on, so is there any reason other that 'trend'?

in my eyes, most CAD programs are overpriced. especially AutoCAD.
Take ArchiCAD as an example. It's far from perfect, has a lot of flaws in its workflow, many bugs and almost costs a five digit value. Compared to a great program like photoshop (which also is quite expensive) the price is just ridiculous.

They have to cover the cost of R and D. Not to mention all the damn pirates out there.

Bubbaloo wrote:They have to cover the cost of R and D. Not to mention all the damn pirates out there.

What do you mean by R and D, Bubba?

Research and development. I imagine they pay their employees well.

Thanks for the clarification.

There are other software as Rhino, which is way better than autocad and its prize is 1/10 autocad's prize.

From my point of view Acad is very very overprized and "out of date"

I would love to see how Rhino can create a set of architectural construction documents. There's a reason why Acad's the most widely used cad program (and the most copied). It is it's flexibility through custimization. They have done a pretty damn good job at keeping up with changing market trends with ADT and it's 3d capabilities. The architecture and construction industries wouldn't be the same without it. Not saying that it can't be knocked off but for now it is still THE cad program, at least in my industry.

You can recreate just the same 2d architectural construction documents within Rhino. I'm in the same field as you (well, still a poor architecture's student), but I've used autocad a lot and a know it. I'm not saying that is a bad software for 2d drawing, but its prize and its very very poor 3d tools makes autocad middle range cad software, at least for architecture field. I would like to know what can make autocad than Rhino couldn't make. Rhino has a few handy tools than autocad doesn't have like _Orient command , _Scale1D, _FlowAlongCurve, sublayers.......

I would recommend you to take a look at rhino just for fun, in fact you will feel like in house because its interface and command lines are pretty similar to Autocad.

Ok, to be fair, I'm mostly talking about Autocad Architecture. I love it.

I tried Rhino about a year ago and just couldn't get into it. Maybe I will give it another shot. But if our firm changes software anytime soon, it will be Revit that we will use. We are already taking training classes.

Ahh, you are talking about BIM software! That is other league. I must say I'm not a big fan of BIM software, I´ve used Archicad but I find that when you want to make something out of standard, workflow complicates a lot,and I'm not talking about organic modeling. Seems like Revit is a bit more advanced than Archicad in that field but still a bit limited from my point of view. I'm waiting to vectorworks 2010 to give a second try to BIM software, but for now I'm very happy with Rhino+Cinema4d work flow.

Rhino for 2D work?

Fernando Tella wrote:Rhino for 2D work?

Yes it has a paperspace and page-layouting options. But it is by far not as feature-rich in this field as AutoCAD.