conwe wrote:

For anyone interested and I thought this might interest SDS as you had wondered how many users there are,

Just as a follow up on a previous conversation. One time we had been discussing how much users Envisioneer has, I came across the number so I decided to share.

Cadsoft is an award-winning developer of 3D Building Information Modeling software and is one of the world’s largest licensor of home design and construction software with over 2 million users worldwide in 4 different languages.

Thought this was very interesting now we just gotta get some of these guys into the competition and involved and we’ll have a real blast 🙂

Conrad

I guess we’ll have to differ on the definition of ‘Users”…I started out using the HGTV Deluxe Home Edition. It was given to me by a client…they paid $89 for it, new. The client was a lawyer or maybe a traffic cop, some decidedly-non architectural occupation…and he’d bought this software solely to design an addition to his home (it was actually a +/- 10,000sqft addition to his existing home but whatever) and then hire (me) a professional designer to produce plans from his design.

In no way did this client purchase this software for ongoing use…it was a one-off thing for him. After this project he was never going to use it again, so he gave it to me. However, it would be a couple years before I actually installed it and checked it out and, through a little research discovered that this HGTV software was and still is the very same platform as Cadsoft’s Personal Architect which retails for $99 here on this site.

These are the majority of your “2 million users” that Cadsoft is bragging about…there is no way in hell there are 2 million professional designers using this company’s software on a regular basis.

Bullshit.

Show me a list of companies with a stable of drafters they’ve trained to work on a  Cadsoft platform. Not possible because anyone with any sense would be using Chief Architect instead, or Architectural Desktop, or Revit or Softplan…or even Sketchup. There are several platforms that function much more RELIABLY than Cadsoft’s

Simply check the job market ANYWHERE and show me companies advertising to hire designers proficient in ANY of Cadsoft’s four design suites…you cannot.

It does not take a dead forum to prove this software is a very, VERY far behind the curve as to what a design firm needs in a design platform.

(and again, no offense intended Conrad)