AutoCAD - Best CAD
As a professional, some of you design houses for a living so using a simple software to design houses is definitely not enough because your customers could do it themselves. That is why using a professional CAD software design houses will attract new customers but which CAD software is better? That would be the AutoCAD software which is probably the best professional solution for professionals. With the first version released in 1982 you can understand that the company has been around for a long time now and its new software provide even better features. because this is a solution for professionals only don't be surprised if the cost may seem high.
AutoCAD is an Autodesk product that comes with 2-D and 3-D design and drafting. Not only that, this software basically consists of a full set of basic modeling and 3-D tools that will basically allow you to design anything. The reason why this product is so admired is because the earlier versions had far more feature extensibility and was more customizable than its competitors. Even today they still maintain these two criteria in their software and of course it is even better than when they first started out.
There have been over 10 different versions of this software in the last 25 years which gives you a good idea how often they come up with new softwares. Of course they still keep updating older software but they always recommend getting newer ones. the latest version which is 2008 has new features such as annotations scaling, multiple leaders and new and enhanced tables and texts. Using such a program requires you to have more than a great computer so let's look at some of the requirements.
In the earlier versions, AutoCAD was supported by many platforms but today it is exclusively supported by Microsoft's Windows but if you have a PC emulator on a Mac it is possible for you to run the software. You'll also be surprised that in order to run this software your computer must basically have the latest technology because a software as powerful such as this one requires a computer to have peak performance and some of the best graphics available on the market. Just to give you an example, you will not be able to run this software if you do not have a minimum of a Pentium 4 2.2GHZ. You may think that buying an end of a line computer is expensive but wait until you see the price on the software.
Are you ready? Buying one license of the AutoCAD 2008 will cost you 3995 US dollars. For some, a month's salary when not even cover it which is why I specified that this is a solution for serious people. Because this is a complex software there is training available and it is strongly advised to take it because if you were going to pay such an amount for software you might as well learn how to use its full potential or else it would be a waste.
If you hire an architect who is using this software then you can rest assured that your new house will definitely be good looking and if you want to use this software but you do not have the financial means there is always a scaled-down version which is the AutoCAD LT that will cost you $1200-1800 instead of $4000. He pretty much guess this software will have some limited features. If you are running in the business this is definitely a software you must use if you want to have an edge over your competitors.