This probably belongs in the "Everything Else" forum, but I know most people don't look at that. It also should probably be an "Idea" but I'd like to see if anyone else is interested before bothering with that.
I would love a discussion forum here where people who are more familiar with AutoCAD could get more targeted responses by the "bilingual" folks who can "speak" AutoCAD to better help them understand their issues AND those of us who are primarily MicroStation users might be able to get some advice on which AutoCAD functions will do what we can easily do in MicroStation.
I have to work in both softwares, and it is incredibly frustrating to figure out how to do certain things in AutoCAD. I have posted before on the AutoDesk forums, but nobody there "speaks" MicroStation. It is very hard to explain what I am asking. I always love the answer "What are you talking about? Why would you want to do that?" (Because I do it every day).
I would love to find some place where I could explain in MicroStation terms what I want and have someone answer in AutoCAD. Or even if I can speak AutoCAD, I'm honestly more comfortable with you folks over here :-)
Or would it be against the MicroStation forum policies to ask the occasional "In MicroStation I can...How do I in AutoCAD?Thank you.
There are a few things I really do appreciate when I'm working in AutoCAD, but I will always be a MicroStation devotee.
They do both have strengths and weaknesses. MicroStation reference file capabilities are way beyond AutoCAD's. I really like AutoCAD Note elements (Multileaders) much better than MicroStation's. But it depends on what you are used to. There are things that appear to be impossible (and I don't know the workaround) in AutoCAD, and there are things that may be impossible without a workaround in MicroStation.
MaryB
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I'm sure a lot of our grumbles come from our own capabilities as a user of the software. As our comfort and experience goes up then we become more confident and push the software more to it's capabilities. We as users then switch to the other brand and bash it because we're not as comfortable and familiar using it and therefore, don't use it to it's full potential.
I really hated AutoCAD as it legitimately crashed all the time, fresh out of the box. The way it networks is really poor as well. I had a case using AutoCAD electrical where before it opens a DWG it searches through the last 10 projects opened by 'project manager' and hung up while it tried to search through a project that was stored on an employees computer that was on holiday and therefore switched off. It would take about 4 minutes just to open a drawing unless you happened to know the system file to, go and open up and delete that project out of the last 10 projects list.
Michael Leeson said: I've always found MicroStation to be a solid product that was perhaps a little locked down. Whereas AutoCAD can pretty much do what you want it to.
That's an interesting take, I've always found the exact opposite from my unfortunate interactions with AutoCAD.
I used MicroStation between 2002-2006, just getting back into it. I used AutoCAD between 2007-2022. I'm confident enough in both. However, I do remember hating AutoCAD at first. Now I'm struggling a bit with MicroStation although time and experience will fix that.
In truth both software's have their advantages and disadvantages. I've always found MicroStation to be a solid product that was perhaps a little locked down. Whereas AutoCAD can pretty much do what you want it to. It'll just crash every hour doing so.
I definitely appreciate the capabilities of dynamic blocks in AutoCAD though. They can be extremely useful and really minimise the amount of blocks you need to make and manage.
I haven't played around with key-in/scripting in MicroStation yet but that was another thing that was good about AutoCAD was the ability to write and test Lisp routines within command line.
Bob Rayner said:We used to have a fellow here, Don Fu, who was their only Microstation DWG expert. Phil Chounard also started life as an AutoCad tech, but they're both long gone. I'm afraid we're screwed on this.
Haven't seen that two guys many years...... I remembered that Bentley Staffs were nice to share how to enable some of functions which were disabled when you were editing with DWG. So that you could work something out with the DWG where AutoCAD couldn't but MicroStation could.