I just installed ACAD 2012 32-bit (licensed) on my drafting machine at work.

I opened it, let it migrate my settings from 2009.

I opened a .dxf delftship user model of a containership, applied a lofted surface between 3 stations and BAM! Crashed it, hehehe. I'm laughing, but sighing at the same time. I said to a programmer next to me, "I just crashed this $4,000 program with a simple hull model." He replied that there are $25,000 programs that crash.

I restarted ACAD (i did not let the report to to adesk). Reapplied a lofted surface, and due to the settings or the programming, it showed a DENSE and at-first-glance USELESS mesh of lines. Why does a surface look like a window screen? I don't have Spidey vision and don't want to see the background when I feel I should be seeing a surface.

I applied thickness to see what the hull would look like. Thickened, but at the command line it would not take "15mm". INT WTH???? $300 ViaCAD PRO lets me input feet and mm and inches and meters as if they are not a sweat. I just jabbed in .015. All I wanted to see was thickness. It threw the thickness inboard, toward the model's middle. I got dizzy. Could not imagine what it would take to "flip" the direction as easily as it is in ViaCAD Pro.

Wanting to see the surface and solid rendered, I hit a button for rendering. Got this ugly gray background with black for the steel. I gave up and discarded the few minutes of work, and I shut down the program.

An architect and the IT manager walked by and i put the 64-bit/32-bit disks into his hand and lamented to him, "I would NEVER use this program in my hobby modeling."

It's NOT that I want adesk to slash and burn competitors. Fortunately, for me, and for many of us, ViaCAD exists, and "seeks PEACEFUL co-EXISTENCE", and I will continue modeling in VCP or - when I can afford it one day -- Shark. It is easy to draw along for months on end and grouse about what VCP lacks. Thanks to VCP, for me, skinning the surface of my ship models is a BREEZE.

Now, to be fair to AutoCAD 2012, I will as one of the senior drafters how HE would approach the model if it were his task to skin the hull, draw surfaces between sideshell, thicken them to be deckplates, and then trim them. I wonder if he could do it as fast as I can in VCP.

Also, to be fair to AutoCAD 2012, it is possible that I SHOULD attempt this in Inventor. I will never convince my office to use VCP or Shark for various things that it probably OUGHT to use VCP and Shark for, but unfortunately, I have little to no clout when it comes to suggesting CAD tools. If only my mind were clearer so that I could work faster at my own hobby, i could make money and transition my life to my next stage.


People who swear by ACAD can continue to do so. I thank the stars that VCP exists. If I owned a company based on my hobby, VCP or Shark would be the 3D modelings tool of choice even though they lack command lines, multi-key shortcuts, and more robust layering (though, VCP's layering interface and select filters are great; I'd have a heart attack if they vanished) and other things on my 48-items-and-growing wish list, I think VCP would be best. To avoid insurrection in my own future shop, I'd have to hire only those who would not sneak in as the main tools that I could not mentally embrace as my main tool. ACAD is a powerful tool, but VCP is MY tool.

I REALLY, REALLY wish the drafters gave me advance notice and allowed me to crimp the product demoers before we plunked down HUGE dollars. Then again, it might have insulted the produce demoers to see $300 VCP in rapid action making a hull and managing it in minutes (well, it took me a few years of playing around to get into a rhythm...)

I better get cracking on my list of 44+ wishlist items so that ViaCAD/Shark have more compelling reasons to be used and to keep a comfy distance from ACAD.

There is great potential for ViaCAD/VCP or a Shark-enveloped VC/VCP to be adapted to naval architecture. If is had a user-accessible database and a thoroughly revamped BOM/entity tracking system in user space, it would be very, very well on its way to project/product/construction management. Punch's various home design and landscaping tools have a good deal of industry-standard items. The shipping industry, too, has a number of standard pipes, profiles, plates, and rulesets to govern extrusion of pipes and ventilation ducts and safety railing/courses, and inclined ladders and more.

Shipconstructor and others may not like it, but there is nothing whatsoever novel about embedding databases (such as sqlite) in products and allowing users to expand, contract, and otherwise manipulate the tables and structures to manage entities. It's not so much that it needs to compete with those higher-tier, $8,000+ per seat apps as much as it is that VCP/Shark need to enable the user to extract layernames and assign in-drawing attributes that STAY in sync with the BOM/other elements of the drawing.

Yep, there most definitely are things in AC to like, and which would be nice if VCP/Shark had. The most recent thing in AC that I've seen since 2010 that i like is the helpful help info that floats into view if the mouse hovers over a tool button. It's not CRUCIAL, but it is pretty snazzy/neat so you can quickly get a preview of what the tool does. A simple sample image is part of the floating pane.

VCP/Shark should have that kind of thing, but take it further: Show useful or powerful interactions or combination uses of tools to arrive at certain types of easy and difficult ends/destinations.

VCP/Shark should include some sort of "pain gauge" that interacts with the user so the user can tell the program to record the steps the user is about to take, and what geometry (if not proprietary or owned by another party) is there and either suggest mid-stream a better tool to use, or what tools to use in what steps. Yes, it's hand-holding, and takes resources to design and to implement, but it's that extra polish that might cinch the deal for those who want that. That said, VC/VCP/Shark do come with hours of tutorial vids. So, maybe VC/VCP/Shark should have user-supplied vids that Tim and Team vet for inclusion. Not just put links on the web, but include with the app as the cream of the crop of submissions to sweeten the sale/consumption of the product.