Upgrade alternative to 2005? Thoughts?

[civilDrafter]

I'm looking at the retirement of my 2000i program and am not convinced I want to go to 2005. The DOT's are now requiring DGN and it's a real pain for me to convert back and forth between formats.
I have a buddy who has used the new MicroStation version and the DWG compatibility seems to work really well.

So I just got an email from Bentley advertising a new upgrade program and the price is wonderful.

http://www.bentley.com/YouDeserveBetter (http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/MicroStation/You+Deserve+Better/Overview.htm?skid=1%2d4AHCHL)

I'm considering the change to MicroStation, any opinions?

[hendie]

if I was going to change, I'd consider Intellicad... but it all depends upon your circumstances

[VERYCIVILDRAFTER]

Well fellow Civil drafter, AutoDesk has come out with their new Civil 3D package that has the "potential" to make LDD look about as useful as MS Paint. I don't know if this fist release will be worth the box it comes in, but if you can stand to wait a year or two or have the money for a subscription it could be well worth it.

In general you need to weigh the cost of need vs. want of an upgrade, the cost of learning entirely new software with lost man hours vs. the cost of lost man hours/sanity with conversion to dgn problmes. Also factor in the cost of converting your current drawings and projects (more down time) to new software and how and will you access old projects.

If you are in fact using LDD and like it but just don’t want to give your money to AutoDesk then I would suggest taking a look at Eagle Point. I worked on it in 1998-2000 and it was almost identical to LDD back then.

Civil 3D (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3566722)

Eagle Point (http://www.eaglepoint.com/civil/)

[csiarch]

Wow! Another "civil drafter" on the scene! :D

Ever consider the permutations possible on "civil drafter" ? Besides the established "civil drafter" and "Verycivildrafter", we have:

"Un",
"Good"
"Bad"
"Notvery"
"Veryvery"
"Extreme"
"Young"
"Old"
"New"
"Real"
"Unreal"
"Grumpy"
"Doc"
"Sneezy"
"Bashful" :oops:

And so on.....the potential for populating this forum is endless! :?

[VERYCIVILDRAFTER]

...and I'll be registering all those names right now! :D

I think I really like Grumpy Civil Drafter.

But where's Sleepy, Dopey, and Happy?! :lol:

[csiarch]

Sorry! :(

Sarcastic witticisms got replaced by placid woolgathering. In reality, at my advanced age, I couldn't remember the other names! :oops:

Getting back to the original posting topic, I also got the offer from Microstation....sounds like a good deal if I were doing engineering. It stands to reason that ONE of these days, someone's going to come along and knock the socks off of Autodesk with a $500 program that is totally transparent.

Not familiar with Intellicad personally but from what I've read, people say good things about it. One thing for sure, if Intellicad gets bought out by one of the big guns, it's a sign that they've made a dent. :lol: