OK, so let's set this straight. Paul Burdick, as everyone knows at UOP, is a lazy systems administrator whose priorities are so messed up that it takes over 3 weeks (and counting..) to get the necessary software needed to use a class. We're talking Visual Studio 2008 here, nothing outrageously difficult. With a guy who consistently tells you "it's on my list" and nonchalantly dismisses you, it's easy to see why he'd take any shortcuts necessary to cut out any extra work so he could spend even more hours chatting with buddies and accomplishing nothing.
That said, DoubleCAD has been a horrible, horrible move at University of the Pacific. There's been quite a staggering backlash against this decision, with most professors not knowing a thing about this "new" program. Professors are used to having students work in AutoCAD LT (which the student version is now available for FREE, better than the $600+ license for DoubleCAD), and professors could assist and teach the software with the years of experience they've had with it.
This program teaches you a very inefficient way of drafting - hunt for the command and click it and completely ignore the text command box. Standard, efficient AutoCAD drafters typically keep one hand on the keyboard, and the other on the mouse, and actually moving the mouse as little as possible. Moving from AutoCAD to DoubleCAD is a horribly awkward process, and extremely frustrating, since the escape key doesn't actually completely get you out of the tool you're using.
And the final icing on the cake: getting a job out of college. As a hiring manager, you're probably going to take a better look at the guy who uses industry standard (ubiquitous in the workplace, really) over some guy with a knock-off brand of CAD that they've never heard of. I'd really like to know what these "numerous additional features" are that Paul Burdick found.
In short, AutoCAD really isn't a pain to license, Paul Burdick is just a lazy systems administrator who doesn't really understand CAD at all, but makes uneducated decisions based on the bottom line, and the amount of spare time he'll have to do anything but what his job actually is: provide a working computer systems network that allows us, the students, to actually get the education we need.
If you're considering DoubleCAD, reconsider. Seriously.
|
Misleading quotes from a lazy systems administrator
