AutoCAD 2011 Speeds Work, Saves Money for Design and Engineering Firms

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK), a leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, announced the results of the AutoCAD 2011 software Productivity Study. David S. Cohn Consulting compared the productivity of AutoCAD 2011 to AutoCAD 2008 on typical AutoCAD design processes in a variety of industries. The consulting firm concluded that AutoCAD 2011 showed an average productivity improvement of 31 percent for users who upgrade from AutoCAD 2008 to AutoCAD 2011, and a 44 percent overall productivity improvement for users who upgrade to AutoCAD 2011 and Windows 7, while also upgrading to a new HP Z200 workstation.

“The amount of improvement likely to be recognized will lead most users to conclude that the cost of upgrading is easy to justify”

“The results of the study were more dramatic than I expected -- after all, how much faster can you draw a line?” said Cohn, a widely recognized expert in the use of AutoCAD and president of the independent consulting firm David S. Cohn Consulting. “To test AutoCAD 2011, I selected eight designs, most of which I concluded would take a typical user anywhere from an hour to half to a day to complete. I saw dramatic improvements in overall productivity. It took 13 hours, 24 minutes to complete all eight designs using AutoCAD 2008, compared to 9 hours, 16 minutes to complete the same tasks using AutoCAD 2011.”

Study Shows Significant Return on Investment When Upgrading to AutoCAD 2011

The consulting firm’s study found that for typical drawings, the ease of access afforded by the user interface, together with new features and functionality, resulted in individual user productivity increases ranging from 15 to 94 percent.

“The amount of improvement likely to be recognized will lead most users to conclude that the cost of upgrading is easy to justify,” said Cohn.

Performance improvements documented in the study include:

50 percent productivity gain due to new functionality in surface modeling, surface associativity and materials
40 percent productivity increase through use of dimensional constraints and constraints as annotations
39 percent increase in productivity due to the hatch enhancements and grip editing
20 percent productivity gain through use of the ribbon interface, 3D gizmos, subject selection, navigating with the Autodesk ViewCube 3D navigation widget and the ability to extrude a curved edge of a solid to create a surface

“The most costly expenditure in an engineering or design firm is time. After 28 years of working on this product, it’s Autodesk’s goal to continually deliver new and improved functionality to help designers and engineers complete projects faster, and at the same or higher quality,” said Guri Stark, Autodesk vice president, AutoCAD and Platform Products. “As demonstrated in this study, AutoCAD 2011 delivers on the promise of increased productivity, with the speed, power and flexibility needed to take documentation and design further.”

David Cohn is a renowned AutoCAD expert with more than 25 years of hands-on experience as a user, developer, author and consultant. He has been benchmarking computer hardware and software since 1985, and has published hundreds of articles and reviews as a contributing editor to Desktop Engineering. He is also the author of more than a dozen books about AutoCAD. A licensed architect, Cohn was also one of the earliest AutoCAD third-party software developers, creating numerous AutoCAD add-on programs.

For more information on the study, visit http://www.autodesk.com/productivity

About Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc., is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, and media and entertainment industries – including the last 15 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects – use Autodesk software to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk continues to develop the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art software for global markets. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com.

Autodesk, AutoCAD and ViewCube are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Academy Award is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document.