Who's running Windows 8 with Revit or AutoCAD?

Anybody? I just ordered me new parts for my new home rig and I haven't bought the OS yet - should I reuse my Windows 7 or go fresh 'n clean clean with Windows 8? I will be running Building Design Suite with all 2014 products.

 

I'll be getting Office 2013 through my company's discount program so any thoughts on that as well would be nice. Currently running Win 7 with Office 2010 at home, with all Autodesk 2013 products.

 

Any thoughts on going Windows 8? For the record I do NOT have touch screen anything other than my phone.

I have a laptop running W8 64-bit together with Office 2013 and Auto-CAD Civil3D 2014 and AutoCAD 2014 LT (English and German) without any problems whatsoever.

Sorry StykFace I totally missed your new name. Best of luck.

Anybody? I just ordered me new parts for my new home rig and I haven't bought the OS yet - should I reuse my Windows 7 or go fresh 'n clean clean with Windows 8? I will be running Building Design Suite with all 2014 products.

 

I'll be getting Office 2013 through my company's discount program so any thoughts on that as well would be nice. Currently running Win 7 with Office 2010 at home, with all Autodesk 2013 products.

 

Any thoughts on going Windows 8? For the record I do NOT have touch screen anything other than my phone.

I am running 2009 LT on a 64 bit win 8 machine with a 27" touch screen. I would not get a touch screen again for my drafting computer if I had it to do over. It is also our "Family" computer, and I was outvoted. I figured, Oh well, how bad could it be.

 

A touch screen can be a little surprising when you go to point something out to someone watching over your shoulder. Anything you touch might be selected, dragged, and dropped by accident. Also, some touch screens have proximity sensitive monitor control switches in the frame that light up when one's hand is near. Both are an annoyance when using AutoCAD. If only the screens touch to zoom feature worked in AutoCAD. That'd be handy, but it does not work.

 

The "App" (start) screen in Win 8 is fine for my wife to play with, but when working, any of my "work" programs like AutoCAD, pop me to the desktop anyway.

 

Windows 8 is a good bit different from Windows 7. It makes your computer look like a giant smartphone.

I greatly prefer Windows 7, although I don't mean to imply that Autocad doesn't work fine on my Windows 8 laptop.

I bought a Lenovo laptop for my daughters a few days ago, so they have a laptop they can take to school when needed,

and opted to install Windows 7 on it.

I just have no desire for my computer to be turned into a smartphone, nor am I interested

in touch screen, as it seems useless for doing cad work. Maybe for a tablet, which I do not have I would want touch,

or at least find it helpful.

Be aware that Win 8.1 is coming soon with improved interface.

http://lifehacker.com/all-the-new-stuff-in-windows-8-1-587098156

. . . . Also, some touch screens have proximity sensitive monitor control switches in the frame that light up when one's hand is near. Both are an annoyance when using AutoCAD. . . . .

 

Does this allow for "hover" (a prerequisite for the accurate Object Snap use)?

Does this allow for "hover" (a prerequisite for the accurate Object Snap use)?

Allow for it? I don't know. My screen won't let me test it. If it does, it won't be in a good way, I am sure. So many things happen all at once in AutoCAD when I touch the screen, I am sure there would not be time for it to be of any use. First thing, I have to take back what I said about touchscreen zooming in AutoCAD. I tested it for the first time. It works, but it is a disaster. The zooming is very jerky and uncontrollable. Mostly because any time the screen is touched, all things to do with clicking occur at once, depending on what your finger hits. While testing zoom, I got a select window opened, the cursor followed one of my fingers, and I accidentally dragged and dropped a whole bunch of drawing geometry.

 

Since one can drag the crosshairs around with a fingertip, I suppose one might be able to get a hover to light up, if the wayward select window doesn't cover it up. Unfortunately you cannot manipulate the crosshairs over drawing geometry with your finger. Everything gets selected that gets touched.

 

At least my version of AutoCAD is completely unprepared for a touch screen. There obviously are no error traps in its program code for Windows commands generated by it.

That doesn't sound pleasant. I've experienced touchscreen driven AutoCAD 2014 and it wasn't too bad. Actually, the touch screen sessions were on a Surface RT via a Remote Desktop connection to a traditional office computer, so it may have dampened some of that erratic input you described. I could not get Object Snaps to register, though, before inputting a point via touch.

 

I suspect that a Surface Pro touchscreen could initialize Osnaps with a digital pen - when you mentioned a screen with a proximity sensor, it seemed like a good feature for the finger.

My new comp is up and running and reused my Win7 Pro for now, until Win8 8.1 update.

 

Got an excellent bundle deal from this site: http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

 

Specs are as follows:

 

4th Gen Intel Core i7-4770K

Gigabyte GA-Z87X (4th mobo option from link above)

16GB RAM (upgrading to 32GB soon)

256GB SSD - Samsung 840 ProSeries (

Quadro FX1700 (leftover from old computer, will upgrade soon)

 

That's about it. Bought a 750W modular PSU, and a very nice NZXT mid-tower case. My old computer this new one replaced has been very good to me, and was my first ever store bought PC. It has been rock solid and has made me a ton of side income and honestly, still is rockin' pretty good - and this coming Feb will make it 6 years old with zero upgrades. It was a beast at its birth.

 

Okay so a high end SSD will change your life and I'm not kidding. Words cannot describe how insanely responsive and fast this thing is. Worth every penny for what I do. 500MB/s read and write from real world tests on seq 1GB file. I have tested a few CAD and Revit 3D rendering times, identical files between both computers and it's no contest. One file rendered 17 minutes on old PC, 3 minutes on new PC. SSD makes this bad boy boot in 17 seconds, idle, ready to go, from a hard boot. New comp has gigabit ethernet built on mobo so finally running gigabit speeds between my server and all other PCs in the house.

 

All for $1k total. Will spend the extra $150 and $250-$300 on mid-grade gaming card in a few months probably. Just gonna let money become available once again.

That doesn't sound pleasant. I've experienced touchscreen driven AutoCAD 2014 and it wasn't too bad. Actually, the touch screen sessions were on a Surface RT via a Remote Desktop connection to a traditional office computer, so it may have dampened some of that erratic input you described. I could not get Object Snaps to register, though, before inputting a point via touch.

 

I suspect that a Surface Pro touchscreen could initialize Osnaps with a digital pen - when you mentioned a screen with a proximity sensor, it seemed like a good feature for the finger.

It's not the screen with proximity reaction, it's the monitor settings switches built into the frame. They light up when you get within about an inch.

I have heard mixed feelings about Windows 8. I prefer Windows 7 because the interface is much easier to use. I have Windows 8 on my home computer and the start menu is cumbersome sometimes. You might get annoyed using the Windows 8 interface. Saying that, I recommend Windows 7.

In my last post, I notified that I went with Win7 for now.

I have AutoCAD on an older laptop at home with Window 8. It seems very fast, even on that old computer. The interface in Windows 8 really doesn't matter with AutoCAD, you start AutoCAD and get work done. The "metro" interface is not a factor unless you leave ACAD and go there. Press one button and you are out of the metro interface and working in the old familiar W7 interface.

 

8.1 will be out soon and should help those who haven't been able to work with 8.0.

Do you know if they will offer 8.1 for free to those who have 8.0, or will I have to pay for it? I was thinking of downgrading to 7 because I'm not a huge fan of 8, but 8.1 looks okay to me.

Do you know if they will offer 8.1 for free to those who have 8.0, or will I have to pay for it? I was thinking of downgrading to 7 because I'm not a huge fan of 8, but 8.1 looks okay to me.

 

"Microsoft has announced that the Windows 8.1 update will be available for free via the Windows Store."

 

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/windows/3445924/windows-81-release-date-new-features-price/