BricsCAD .vs. AutoCAD - A sales pitch
I'm looking for help in refining my sales pitch for BricsCAD Pro. With each new hire, I find myself in the position of salesman. I must sell the the use of BricsCAD. It's not good enough to say it's just like AutoCAD, only faster and less expensive. The new employee isn't likely to notice the speed difference or care much about the cost. He's likely to want to use AutoCAD if it's just the same.
I'd like to be able to present a list of items that BricsCAD does noticeably better or items completely missing from AutoCAD to new employees ... and existing ones for that matter. Does such a list exist?
Comments
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( not one replyThere are many commands that BricsCAD has extended functionality that is not included in AutoCAD.
Pline - Follow method
Offset - Both sides...
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Autodesk tries to split its market across many many products - eg drafting (Autocad), mechanical (Inventor), architectural(Revit), Civil(Civil3D). These different apps generally have different file formats and don't always play well together. Try exploding an AutoCAD solids model in Revit. You also get confusing duplications like Revit Structures vs Advance Steel, requiring translators.
BricsCAD users can all use .DWG files across many disciplines. Hundreds of applications run in BricsCAD. A roller-shutter door manufacturer was shopping for CAD. He was offered a suite containing Inventor for modelling the door mechanism, Revit for modelling the buildings (since doors must be installed in buildings), and AutoCAD for other drafting. He bought BricsCAD Platinum.
If we're talking about a single user, pitching BricsCAD's speed and cost against AutoCAD is already a good argument. But when we're talking about an organisation, pitching BricsCAD for everyone against a whole basket of expensive, incompatible products is compelling.
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Donald,
I was struck by your comment: "The new employee isn't likely to .... care much about the cost."Instead of providing technical reasons why your employees should prefer BricsCAD, I recommend that you instead focus on the business issues.
I have held senior positions in a number of companies and when I came across similar attitudes, I took it as a teaching moment. Every employee should understand that companies who do not care about costs are not going to be around long. Your company is saving a lot of money by using BricsCAD in place of AutoCAD. That allows you to be more competitive, it allows you to invest for the future and it allows you to be more generous towards your employees, and it helps overall company profitability. All should be of concern to every employee. Having explained that to the employee, if they still "do not care much about the cost" they are working at the wrong company.I understand, of course, that people are hired for their AutoCAD skills and that they are rightly proud of those skills, but instead of losing the chance to work on AutoCAD, they are broadening their skills by also becoming proficient in BricsCAD.
I know that you know all of this.
As a practical matter, I suggest that you make it clear during the hiring process that the successful candidate is going to be using the company's preferred CAD platform, BricsCAD. If they then decide to join, there will not be an issue.0 -
I think some job applicants resist the idea of using anything other than Autocad because of the effect on future job prospects. Many employers won't interview applicants without X number of hours of experience on Autocad, and often on a specific version.
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I have been mindful of that issue, and when I have needed to find other work, I always have stated that,
" BricsCAD is a close AutoCAD clone. AutoCAD itself does not change much over the years, so I expect to be up to speed immediately."But, I have also taken advantage of an AutoCAD seat at a local maker's club. When I needed to do some job hunting, so I can also add, " I have been keeping up with some of the new features of AutocAD by using a seat at a local Maker space".
In my case, a 20+ year career pretty much has me considered as "highly experienced". A new student may benefit from only working on AutoCAD itself. Otherwise, the exposure they had in college (probably minimal) won't really solidify into their heads. Then, when they are asked to sit down for an AutoCAD test, they will flounder to some extent. So, I can see the argument from the viewpoint of a younger person. Still, at this age, they shouldn't be picky about what CAD program you put in front of them if you are offering them a job.
-Joe
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Well, there are things BricsCAD does better (ie. trimming hatches which doesn't work in ACAD at all) and there are some that are working less than better....the list would be quite long and I am not sure who would be the winner, especially if you do not look at the price and great support here at BC. However BC is so easily customizable and after all it is still a CAD soft with most of commands same as in ACAD.
The problem when a new employee is picky about BricsCAd not being AutoCAD is so out of the blue for myself. In my career I had to learn dozens of programs and I am still learning new ones.
In my first job overseas I had to work on Macintosh and PowerCAD (a terrible soft more like vector illustrator than CAD) but I learned to use it and did my job. No matter what tool do you provide the job has to be done. Unless you have employees deficency on your market.
Cheers
Jan0 -
Re: Trimming hatches in AutoCAD.
I can't speak for earlier versions but I know for a fact one can trim a hatch pattern in both AutoCAD 2017 and 2018.
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These are all good points and I'll be sure to include them. However, why isn't the list of technical items included in BricsCAD readily available? Why can't I easily include these points as well?
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Did you not download and read the 300+ page white paper "BricsCAD for AutoCAD Users"?
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@Cyberdyne_T800 said:
Re: Trimming hatches in AutoCAD.I can't speak for earlier versions but I know for a fact one can trim a hatch pattern in both AutoCAD 2017 and 2018.
We are having constant issues with triming, cutting etc. complex an non comlex hatches in AutoCAD I have even sent those to our autodesk support and they failed to do so. AutoCAd ability here is about 20% where BC 95%.
BTW: as above mentioned the "BricsCAD for AutoCAD Users" is a must have. I have stuck at page 140 but there is a brief introduction which may give some hints...
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Well then you are doing something wrong Drjan. I used the feature many times since 2017 came out and it does work. Maybe the root cause in your case is related more to technique than to programming.
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@Donald Broussard said:
I'm looking for help in refining my sales pitch for BricsCAD Pro. With each new hire, I find myself in the position of salesman. I must sell the the use of BricsCAD. It's not good enough to say it's just like AutoCAD, only faster and less expensive. The new employee isn't likely to notice the speed difference or care much about the cost. He's likely to want to use AutoCAD if it's just the same.I'd like to be able to present a list of items that BricsCAD does noticeably better or items completely missing from AutoCAD to new employees ... and existing ones for that matter. Does such a list exist?
As others have said. The "BricsCAD for AutoCAD users" book is the go to reference. However off the top of my head, (2D CAD users), some noticeably better items:
The Drawing Explorer - Use it to copy and paste stuff such as Linetypes, Dimension styles, Layers etc from one drawing to another.
Settings - Centralised and logical on a single Treeview with an invaluable search box (so useful for ferreting out a half remembered setting!). Plus it contains useful information such as the command line name and whether the setting is store in the Registry or the Drawing itself.
Ribbon/Classic Interface choice.
Start up is way quicker.
Status bar has understandable text eg "ESNAP" rather than obscure icons which you never quite learn.
Quad - Especially using it with the Ctrl key too burrow down in to the segment of a polyline for instance to add a vertex in a single step rather than cycling through all the segments one by one.
Faster lisp engine which is still being developed (important, if you care about that sort of stuff).
Inferior/missing:
- Dynamic block editing. (Not that I care about this personally),
Also quite often users are thinking of AutoCAD LT rather than full AutoCAD and if that is the case, then BricsCAD Pro's superiority with all the apps available, really is a given.
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