Upgrading from 2d to 3d need a little input

[durham_jc]

Hi all our company is finally seeing the light and will be upgrading from 2d to 3d soon. Now i am challenged to find the right software that fits my needs as i am the only draftsman here. Some of our competitors are using Autocad-2013 with an add on program called Cad Pipe to be later inserted into Navisworks for overhead coordination. Not sure if i should use the same products as our competitors or go with 2013mep.

Our needs are plumbing shop drawings from the original contract documents as well as some small design builds. Any and all advise will be greatly appreciated as 2007 2d is all i know.

[Dadgad]

Congratulations on getting the go ahead for a software upgrade.
Stykface has spoken pretty highly of Autocad MEP, as I recall.
Hopefully he, or someone else in that discipline will see this thread.
There has been quite recently another thread discussing the relative merits of different software packages for MEP work.
Search on the site for MEP, you should find plenty of input.

[durham_jc]

Thanks Dadgad i will check

[Dadgad]

You might start by visiting the MEP & MECHANICAL forums, which are subdirectories of the VERTICAL PRODUCTS forum on this site.
http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/forumd...tical-Products

[ReMark]

Whatever your company decides on make sure someone attends a three day training session so you can hit the ground running. That person should then be responsible for providing in-house training.

[StykFacE]

Hi all our company is finally seeing the light and will be upgrading from 2d to 3d soon. Now i am challenged to find the right software that fits my needs as i am the only draftsman here. Some of our competitors are using Autocad-2013 with an add on program called Cad Pipe to be later inserted into Navisworks for overhead coordination. Not sure if i should use the same products as our competitors or go with 2013mep.

Our needs are plumbing shop drawings from the original contract documents as well as some small design builds. Any and all advise will be greatly appreciated as 2007 2d is all i know.

You are in search for a version of AutoCAD called "AutoCAD MEP". Here's a link to the main software site: http://usa.autodesk.com/autocad-mep/

What's good about AutoCAD MEP, there's good books to help you learn, and the AutoCAD MEP community has gotten very strong in the past few years so you can always get a question answered from a real user (in online forums like this one). Also, since AutoCAD MEP still uses standard AutoCAD as the "core", the learning curve is small and easy since it still works and feels like AutoCAD. You can even work in a 2D environment very easily while it automatically builds duct and pipe in 3D.

[durham_jc]

Thanks all! We ordered mep and yeah im taking the 3 day course to stay on top, should be fun.