I use it occasionally, but I use inventor a lot.  I fear that acad is heading for the boneyard though, to be replaced with an "inventor" like successor with adaptive history and 3d solid modeling.

ACAD is used heavily in architecture and the 2D drafting world where 3d is manytimes not as important.  What it doesn't do well is make changes easily.  Try changing a six deep boolean after 200 command lines later.   Inventor lets you do that but it is missing a few of the things I REALLY miss.  Like scale.  Once you set scale in IV ... that's it.  You can't easily resize your model but you can make fundamental changes in dimensions as long as those changes don't change things that are needed later.

 There are thousands of 2D and 3D ACAD LISP scripts that if some clever developer could figure a way to translate to IV ... they'ed be rich.

Still ... I have model WIP's in ACAD that I need to continue there so I guess I'll keep going with it as long as it's supported.

///--)\\\

Mikebro;

I feel you brother.  Autodesk really needs to do some deep thinking before they dump their vector based systems and Inventor doesn't yet have a fully functional boolean suite.  All it has is intersections which in my estimation is a very poor showing.

///--)\\\

Clever use of Boolean in AutoCAD can create some great solid models and is quite predictable. At each critical level of modelling I will create a copy and work on the copy, allowing me to always have a spare backup if I screw up. Every package that I have worked on has it strong and weak points. Organic modelling in Acad is virtually impossible yet extruding on a path and using Boolean operations can perform wonders in CAD. Because I do very little organic type modelling Acad can generally do everything that I want and of course is very accurate for mechanical creations.

Not to sidetrack this thread too far, but everyone knows that the built-in Boolean functions inside of 3ds Max are fairly abyssmal. However, if you are looking for a top-shelf boolean solution for 3ds Max or Autodesk VIZ, then I would strongly encourage you guys to consider looking at Power Booleans 3 from nPower Software. These guys got right what Autodesk/Kinetix/Discreet/Autodesk Media & Entertainment could not - the tool is exceptionally powerful and predictable. They also offer a downloadable trial version from their site so you can see for yourselves.

I just wanted to let you all know that a real solution does exist outside of AutoCAD itself.

-=Beau

Hi,

i am an architect who started using Autocad 6 believe it or not, that was in 1989 on a 286 processors, an kept using it till these days, I know that there is far more advance 3d modeling software like max, that I use since 3ds ver 1 for dos, but Autocad to me is like being used to your wife for a long time, you know all the ins and outs of her so you can better live with it, as for me i use Autocad for 2d drafting and 3d modeling, then exporting it to max for final touches in modeling and bringing it to life, then sending t back to Autocad with Final toon from Final render, and i am happy of what i get, and here is an example of my work.

Yes you can make mesh in autocad and also change mesh points like 3d max . but mesh work in cad is so ruf...then it is better then you make it in 3dmax.

rajdeep