AutoCAD Insider: Autodesk offices are still abuzz with the excitement of having released AutoCAD for Mac 2014 last week - and we haven't yet caught up on lost sleep while working days and nights to ship the product! There has been lots of great feedback, press mentions, and conversations from users about the release, and we are thrilled to see the favorable response the release has generated.
And while 2014 is now live, you may have noticed that AutoCAD for Mac since its beginning is a little different than its Windows cousin, and perhaps wondered why. We thought we'd take a moment to give some background and explanation.
10 comments:
I appreciate that AutoCAD is at least being honest about the fact that their Mac platform product is new, and still just doesn't quite compare to their Windows one. Any program developed for one platform is going to be hard to adapt, it's even true of more universal things like Microsoft Office. But, that being said, there is a lovely universality in the keyboard commands (no matter what computer I am on, i type L and know what to expect). And, if the Windows shortcuts are something you know, you can always set them up on your Mac computer to ease your crossover between platforms. My biggest issue is with the fact that drawings don't really port universally between the two platforms yet, but I think that's coming soon. I look forward to exploring AutoCAD2014 for Mac more.
I think it is good that AutoCAD is being so forward about the fact that there are differences between the two products. It's also good that they are working towards making them as similar as possible especially because I'm sure that many of the industries that use AutoCAD also use Macs. I don't mind that the products look different and have different user interfaces, since that is one of the things that sets Mac and Windows apart in my mind, as long they still have similar, if not identical, functionality. It is also good that they acknowledge that they still have a ways to go before the two are truly equal since this shows that they are obviously working toward that goal. Since I have not used AutoCAD on Windows, and am still learning on my Mac, I don't really have a way to compare the two other than to say that I have found the interface on Mac really easy to use and intuitive.
I really have only drafted on a Mac, so I have no idea truly what the difference is. The biggest difference to me is that it seems the AutoCad just runs better on windows. Took me a while to get AutoCad to run right last year on my Mac machine. My biggest concern is how will they add new content? Will it be software updates or will it be new versions? Currently I am using educational so it is free but if I ever get to the point when I have to spend money on the program that will become a much bigger deal to me.
Glad they are thinking about it and excited to see where it goes.
I agree with both Becca and Phillip in that it is good that AutoCAD is acknokledging their differences and that I appreciate those differences. AutoCAD did a fine job formatting their programs to Windows and to Macs and having worked on both, the only major difference that I can tell is aesthetic. If a user were ever to transfer software it might be a bit difficult to get used to at first but overall I don't think the difference is a major deal.
It seems as though AutoDesk is incredible at crowd control. Looking at this article, it seems as though a significant amount of thought has gone into the creation of AutoCAD for Mac and that the differences between the two are very special and make each product unique. However, looking at the comparison chart, it seems as though there's tons of simple features that have nothing to do with the limitations of Mac that have simply been left out. More than likely, there's some deeply rooted features of both platforms that I just don't know about.
While I think its good that AutoCAD is making an effort to be more in sync with the clearly superior operating system (Discounting Linux), it does seem like they could have released a ported version of 2014 that may not have been as good as it is running on windows, and spent the extra year coming up with the comprehensive Mac version. In the mean time, Vectorworks is still very mac friendly . . .
As both a Mac, PC and avid AutoCAD user the differences between the program and the two platforms can often be astronomical. The biggest problems being the lack of Tool Palettes on Mac, Dynamic Block Editing, as well as a number of the connectivity and visual/rendering capabilities. More often than it should someone will ask me how to do something in AutoCAD and my response will be "oh yeah, just do ____, ____, ____ and maybe ___(feel free to fill in the blanks with a PC based approach) then I will notice that they're on a Mac and unless I remember what the keyboard command prompts are it then takes me another 5 minutes or so to find the correct menu and sub-commands. In terms of connectivity, I'm glad you can at least do pd underlays now and import SAT files, and Mac users can now do some visual style editing but up until the last version of 2 you could not which made some otherwise very simple tasks infuriating difficult. At least they have addressed the issue and are working on including as much as they can feel is appropriate, regardless of whether or not I agree with the exclusion of tool palettes. Next on their to do list should be crossing platforms with Inventor, just sayin...
I think that its awesome that AutoCAD is being so honest and open that there ARE differences between the Windows version and the Mac version. These differences are enough to be noticeable, but not quite enough to render the Mac version incompetent or not useful. Most everything that can be done on the Windows version can be done on the Mac version, it may just take a little bit of working-around or extra time. It is good to see that plenty of effort and time has been put into this version of AutoCAD.
For context, I have a Mac, but run Windows in a virtual machine for AutoCAD and some other specific applications. I spent all last year working in the Mac version, without feeling like I was missing something. This summer, in an effort to better my skills in relation to sound design, realized that there were many features that were poorly implemented in the Mac version or just plain missing. For example, this article states that dynamic blocks are available in both Windows and Mac. Reading the footnote however, it provides the disclaimer that the mac version cannot create or edit them, only import them. Little things like this, as well as the user interface led me to switch over to the Windows version.
I have used several different CAD programs including both autocad for windows and mac. As a big mac user, I really appreciate the differences in the program and how they really designed it to work for high power mac customers. For me, because its set up like other mac applications that i am very used to (the closest parallel i can think of is photoshop), i can move through the program very quickly. One negative that i can see is how many of the traditional autocad users are pc based and so in autocad classes it might be difficult for them to teach to a mac based audience, even if they know the content quite well.
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