Buy ACAD 2006 now or wait till next release ?

I just did a quick scan of the subject headings in this NG to see how many bug issues people were talking about and there didn't seem to be that many.
Would it be reasonable then, to conclude that this is as good a time as any to upgrade to 2006 ?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Now that they're on an annual release program, 2007 will probably be out in less than 6 months. ___
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Paul Turvill wrote:
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Our Design Office is being forced to upgrade to AutoCAD 2006, mainly because of drawing compatibility issues.
We certainly don't need AutoCAD 2006 for our electrical design work; earlier AutoCAD releases are more than adequate.
It also seems that AutoDesk are running out of good ideas for so-called 'programme enhancements' to appeal to the 'must have' Brigade. IMHO, some of the 'bells and whistles' features of AutoCAD 2006 are little more than irritants that need turning off!
I now have the unwelcome task of trying to get all our customisation files and lisp routines running on 2006. The new .cui menu files don't seem very cooperative, although I still have some patches/bug fixes to apply. I could have done the traditional custom menu file 'cut & paste' in a fraction of the time.
Last week Service Pack 1, CUI Update and a security patch were applied one of our AutoCAD 2006 seats. After installation, it was necessary to reactivate 2006, but the programme locked into the Product Activation dialogue box loop fault (Activation error on computers with Serial ATA hard disc controllers).
It would probably be prudent to at least wait for AutoCAD 2006 SP2.

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I like that moniker. I wonder how mnay of the senior officers in the brigade are old guys who have never used a computer, but have generally good business "chops" and are taking the advice of their "computer guys" (who have no business sense at all)
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At the risk of sounding like an neandralthal who still shaves with a flint, 90% of the features developed in the last DECADE seem to me to be in this category. Excluding bug fixes, and cosmetics, there's only a release-or-two's-worth since r14.

Why?
Take a look at dwggateway.com ... using it I can open drawings from *any* AutoCAD release with good ol' R14. And it's free. ___
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Paul Turvill asked:
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Not my call, just my problem!
Those above (in search of kudos) took the decision.
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Must admit, if I'm starting a new drawing, I still prefer to use my heavily customised AutoCAD 14.
I've had a look at DWGgateway and it seems very useful. However, I can't find the advertised link to the Release Notes.
Do I need administrative rights to install DWGgateway (those above have also removed everyone's Admin rights)?
BTW Paul - any thoughts on my earlier post 'Lisp Unexpected Exception Error' (in AutoCAD 14)? The error has occurred several times now and I can't find any mention of this particular error message in the AutoCAD Help files. I can live with it, but am keen to know whether the problem is likely to be my Lisp code. The error seems completely random and I cannot produce it at will.

I don't know (as a sole proprietor, I have full Admin rights). But since it's a free download, why don't you simply try it and see?
Sorry, I have no clue re your LISP error. ___
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Paul Turvill wrote:
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Yes, it installs OK without Admin Rights.
It wouldn't install on one of our other machines still running Windows NT, because the Windows Installer needed to be a newer version. However, a bit of careful file copying from my XP machine with the installed version solved the problem.
I pasted the DWGGateway menu commands into my own customised AutoCAD 14 menu and turned off their own menu and toolbar. Then I discovered that the DGArx14.arx file always reloads DWGGateway's own menus whenever the routine is run, so I had to disable that.
The fact that DWGGateway can open any AutoCAD version drawing into AutoCAD 14 and then save that drawing as any AutoCAD version is very useful.
If I was cynical, I might think that these 'open' and 'save' features could easily have been offered by AutoCAD, but were deliberately withheld in order to encourage/compel users to upgrade ;-)

If you use any custom scripts you may want to think twice...we have around 15 AutoCAD LT users where i work ranging from 2000 to 2005 and works fine on all those versions. But when I tested out the scripts on a trial version of LT 2006...no go! The worst part is that most of the workarounds I had to do to get it to work in 2006 meant it was no longer compatible in the previous versions....sigh.
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