Search the Community

Hello Friends, We are launching a new keyboard/mouse combo device on Kickstarter. A friend of mine is a CAD designer, and he feels like this product would be a nice fit for CAD designers. So I'm reaching out to the community here for feedback to help shape the final design. We exhibited at the CES tradeshow, so we collected some feedback there and made some product changes: • Switched to Cherry MX Brown keyswitches (we had used Cherry ML switches in our first prototypes) • With the change to Cherry MX switches we also enlarged the keys • Added LED backlighting • Added USB interface for even lower latency (now you can connect with Bluetooth or USB) Here's a link to our Kickstarter project: If any of you have suggestions or feedback, feel free to reply here or on our Kickstarter project. We value your input. Thanks, James

When I edit drawings all my network connections are shut down by the external company my company works for. Problem is there hiring another drafter to take some of my work load and we both need access to the same pool of drawings while we both have our network connections shutdown. So I was thinking that we could both share from and external hard drive, but it seems that external hard drives can only connect to 1 computer at a time. Does anyone know of a workaround for non-network drawing sharing? Thanks, Tom

Just wanted to start a discussion, I know ALL mice are different and ALL people are different in what they prefer and what works best for them. However, I just wanted to get a general idea of what mouse dominates the 2D CAD world. In my industry we work strictly 2D with some 3D Wireframe tank illustrations, P&ID drawings, line drawings, custom one offs as per clients, etc... The mouse that I like and have been using for years is the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB, which has been discontinued for a while but I have stuck with it for over 6 years. I would like to see if there is something I am missing out on that could improve my productivity/creativity? It has 2 customizable buttons which I use for ORTHO and OSNAP. It is light. The only CON I would say is that its wired. Simple and sweet but I feel there is something more out there that could benefit me/us in the CAD community that we just arent aware of... Anyways, thats my take on starting out the post and my mouse pros/cons. Looking forward to hearing what everyone else has to say!

Our office is considering getting a new computer for my daily cad use. Currently we use 2009 and would like to upgrade to 2012 and hopefully 13 when we get it. The computer I use now is 4 years old and is starting to run slow when using multiple programs or even cad just by itself. 3D is a nightmare! It is a Dell T7400 Quad core Xeon Proc E5420 2.50GHz, 2X6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz 4GB, DDR2 ECC SDRAM memory NVidia Quadro FX1700 512MB dial DVI Graphics Card Dual monitors Windows Vista OS I was hoping someone out there could help break down what would be an ideal set up for running 2012 and up, with the occasional 3D rendering through cad as well as frequent photoshop use (CS4). I also use occasionally sketch up, impression, those little add on programs. Autodesk has the "system requirements" for installing the program, but that I am guessing is nowhere near what an ideal set up would be for easy daily use. I have looked thru some posts to get an idea, but I figured it would just be easier to ask. We also have a "computer guy" who can piece together a computer if that's recommended as well, he did that with our server, however I don't think he is too familiar with autocad's needs so that's why I'm here. I'm not trying to go crazy because there is a reasonable budget (maybe between 2k and 2.5k), but what's something that would be powerful to hold out for another 4 or 5 years? Typically, we buy directly bought from dell, but if we could get a better system for less by building it ourselves, it doesn't matter. I just need some ideas to hand to the decision makers. Basically...if you had $2500, what components would you get for a new computer? Thanks!

Looking to buy new laptop with 64 bit Windows 7 operating system -will 32bit AutoCAD (LT 2009) still work on this machine?