Bricscad vs Autocad

Hello,

I'm trying to find out how does Bricscad behave in a comparison against Autocad.

Has anyone used it profesionally?

Thanks for your time and answers.

I don't know much about Bricscad. I run into more DataCAD than any other knock off. I tink it is 2D only. I have a licensed copy of Inttelicad. As far as the A2K dwg format, it is very comaptible. I don't know if they ever picked up 2004s format. Good Luck -David

I know this is an ancient post but ...

BricsCAD v9 is GREAT! Try it out and you'll ask why pay so much for AutoCAD. I'm not a reseller or salesman ... I just like it

I know this is an ancient post but ...

 

BricsCAD v9 is GREAT! Try it out and you'll ask why pay so much for AutoCAD. I'm not a reseller or salesman ... I just like it

I use I-98 (prior to Brics', back in the Visio days) and there are a few bugs in it, making it do thhings other than requested or expected. I have friends who use latest version, and they complain it does same for them too, but no responce after purchading it.

Wm.

I work for a medium sized Engineering firm and have spent quite a bit of time with both BricsCAD and AutoCAD. I've encountered a few things in the lastest version of BricsCAD too. But I have in AutoCAD as well. I wouldn't say one is more stable than the other. It is working well for many of our users and costs a fraction (almost 1/10) of the price. BricsCAD won't be the answer for everyone but I tell my friends to test the free BricsCAD download before I spent the money on AutoCAD.

Never used BricsCAD however, engineer firms want to communicate with

*.dwg AutoCAD files.

I find other CAD products don't save to well to *.dwg AutoCAD files.

I've encountered too many issues and left the "junque" for others who don't

or won't bite the bullet and purchase an AutoDesk CAD program.

Can't go to other "CAD" products and possibly lose some communication that our clients require.

We're all in that position. BricsCAD reads and writes AutoCAD DWGs natively. BricsCAD displays the custom objects from the verticals like Civil3D as well.

I don't think BricsCAD writes 2010 version drawings yet but we've been using it for 2007 version drawings very effectively.

You'd be very surprised if you took a look. The commands and interface are almost exactly the same. Almost all lisp routines and vba macros run without any modification.

I don't want to mislead anyone ... AutoCAD has its place, and we have many licenses in use. BricsCAD and possibly some other alternatives have a place as well.

We've found that users that use AutoCAD very similarly to the way they did in releases 2002 and 2005 like BricsCAD very much.

We detoxed ourselves recently from our 20 year AutoCAD addiction. With 6 seat licenses, we have been holding on to our last full version (2000i) for as long as we could (We also experimented with AutoCAD LT 2005). We do about 100% 2D drafting, so we felt that AutoCAD's software had become way to bloated with features we just never use. Problem was, many companies that we do business with were sending us CAD files we could no longer open from newer versions and we had to do something. Faced with a $24,000 charge to bring us up to date, I gave my lead designer the task of finding a cheaper replacement. After evaluating about six different programs, he settled on BricsCAD V12. We have been using this for a couple of months now and could not be happier about the move. Funtions so identical to AutoCAD 2000i, that sometimes I forget that it is a competeing product. Just like using AutoCAD LT, but with important features such as Lisp support that Autodesk leaves out of LT. And, the best of all: cost all of $2300 for my 6 seats! The owner of my company sure liked that part. We highly recommend BricsCAD for anyone trying get away from AutoCAD's overpriced software.

Thanks for the post Woody. It's nice to have real world users comment on AutoCAD alternatives for the people in need.

The "other" software are getting better all the time at compatibility, as part of another project I tried Intellicad, CoralCAd and ZwCAD from the programming side in particular Lisp VBa & soon .Net .

Intellicad required a couple of changes to lisp code, CorelCAD started well but would not run my Dialouges but its macro function wrote .net Code a real bonus, latest ZWcad seems ok but again some subtle recode needed in a couple of modules sure I can fix, it pops View dialouge were Intelli & acad did not.

Just a side comment a few years ago the mac version 2011 was a recode as well. Havent tried with current version.

Also not sure of support for VL lisp as more and more code goes that way. This will be tested in a few minutes on ZWcad.

So if choosing an alternative test any programs you have or download some from here for testing.

About two years ago I changed AutoCAD for Bricscad. The interface is very similar, it works well on medium sized drawings but when in large drawings (meaning large filesize) there was a delay in reactions. If I selected a lot of entities, I had to wait until the software highlighted them on the screen.