Benefits moving from AutoCAD

Mr_Chairs
Mr_Chairs
in Moving from A-CAD

Hi

I worked the last 5 years in AutoCAD and just came across BricsCAD. Just did my test installation - it is crazy how similar both programs are.

Do you have a summary of the benefits moving from AutoCAD to BricsCAD? Not sure if a comparison table is out there but I would appreciate any feedback or experiences.

If this discussion was already out there - please do also feel free to give me a hint towards the correct post. Currently I did not find the option to search properly in the forum - so please bare with me.

Thanks a lot.
Thomas

Comments

  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros

    If you've been using full Autocad, that's a much more expensive program. If you've been using LT, you didn't have the ability to write custom commands with Lisp. That point alone would have made the decision for me, even without all the other advantages. All the commands I use regularly are at least partly customized, and many of them are unlike any of the built-in commands.

    I have Autocad LT installed on my computer, provided by my employer, but I never use it. I use Bricscad, which I bought myself. Until a couple of years ago, I had the latest version of full Autocad installed, but since I never used it I suggested giving it to someone else in the firm.

    The advantages of Bricscad depend on what you do with cad. What kind of geometry do you work on -- buildings? manufactured products? sheet metal? site engineering? Do you do 3D modeling?

  • avc
    avc

    You can find many comparisons of AutoCAD vs BricsCAD. For example this: https://help.bricsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013698840-BricsCAD-vs-AutoCAD-Feature-Comparison

    I would pay attention to the following features:

    • Price. AutoCAD is only rented, Brics can be bought at a price close to the annual AutoCad subscription. However, the Chinese clones of AutoCAD are even much cheaper. And Brics free for programmers.
    • Performance, display speed, model rotation, and load speed.
    • Stability, the absence of fatal failures.
    • Advanced and convenient standard commands. For example, _Union accepts a pre-selection. And there are a lot of such pleasant little things.
    • 3d parameterization.

    • Powerful modeling commands such as _LConnect and _TConnect. _Unfold Command (from Mechanical)
      But there are also problems:

    • The interface is different. Addictive is required. (And the Chinese clones completely repeated the AutoCAD interface).

    • It is difficult to call the context menu and the "Manipulator" (analogous to GIZMO)
    • "House" for choosing a view is more convenient than "Chair" in Brics.
    • The .Net API I'm programming on lags behind the AutoCAD API and the plugins are slow. (However, other clones API is generally not usable in 3d)