Cheap AutoSketch 8 (Software) (Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me) Price

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Customer Reviews of AutoSketch 8

Very Difficult Product
I bought this product hoping to do some designs for wood working projects. We use AutoCAD in the office but that is way to much for my home use and very expensive. I thought since that is supposed to be such a great product that I would buy from the same manufacture. BAD IDEA. I bought this a year ago and it took me forever to learn it. Like another reviewer said IT DOESN"T WORK LIKE ANY OTHER CAD TOOL ON THE MARKET. Pay attention to that. This is a very hard tool to learn. I've finally learned it, but working with the tool is not easy at all. I have since trashed it and bought TurboCAD Deluxe v9.2. Much easier to use. More documentation and actually cheaper. They have a demo you can download at their site that was very helpful in my decision.

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Save up, buy something better!
I needed a 2D drawing program, and when I saw this I figured that it would be a decent product given that it's sold by Autodesk, maker of Autocad. FYI I'm a UNIX programmer by profession, with high school level instruction in drafting, woodworking, and mechanical engineering. I wanted software to document some woodworking projects I'm doing. Autosketch isn't it; it has numerous problems:

1) there's no commercial documentation for it, and the supplied 400 page user guide (on the installation CD; not in print form) does not explain how to use the software adequately. It tells you how to press the buttons on the interface, but it provides no information about how to do basic drawing functions such as drawing a rectangle to a specific, in-scale, size.

2) I don't think you can composite drawings. I.e. if I draw a frame made of 2 x 4's and I want a detail-drawing of the butt joints on the same page as the elevation drawing, you can't do that (at least not that I've been able to figure out with the supplied documention), *unless* the details are already in the larger drawing. You also cannot draw the detail view on a seperate page and then transfer a scaled down version of it to your elevation drawing, as "detail view"s must apparently be limited to the same drawing.

3) The drawing screen doesn't redraw right when you delete or move entities. Ever. AutoDesk implmented a "redraw screen" button rather than fix this problem, and you will be using that button a LOT.

4) It seems very difficult to navigate around a picture when you're zoomed in, using a mouse. I may not yet have found the easy way of doing this (since there's no useful documentation) but currently navigation involves zooming in, then pressing the wheel down to move the drawing around in the pane. It's hard to find your way around even a simple drawing this way.

5) Autocad basically punted on the install software. They don't add a desktop shortcut, and they don't offer an option to install the 400 page .pdf users manual, so you have to be lucky enough to find and read the README, which tells you to copy it off the CD. This type of attention to detail typifies the Autosketch user experience.

My overall gripe about the software is that the price and packaging seem to market it to people who just want to do some basic drawings. However the lack of documentation and the complex user interface mean you have to be pretty sharp, and spend a lot of time, to figure out how to use this. My feeling is that if I have to spend that kind of time to use the program, I may as well just buy TurboCad and have a full featured drawing program to start with.

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Not all it's cracked up to be.
I bought this software because I could afford AutoCAD LT at the time. I was told that my files would be compatible with AutoCAD. I can save Autosketch files at AutoCAD files, but all of my layers and line weights are lost in the transfer. I have found it very difficult to share files with AutoCAD users.

I have used various CAD softwares for many years and Autosketch does not operate like any of them. I have to define the size of my paper and set a scale before I begin drawing or my drawing spills out onto a gray background which is hard to see. In a typical CAD program, you draw in real world dimensions and then scale it down to a paper size when you plot. It's the little things like this that have made me very disappointed in the software.