Customer Rating: 
Summary: First LT Experience Better than Expected
Comment: Prior to using LT 2006 I had a full version of 2005. Most of the things missing between LT and the full version aren't a big deal if you don't do rendering or write code, but some of the absences are noticeable on a day-to-day basis (most notably Express Tools and polygonal viewports).
2006 has some neat new features, like the "dyanmic command-line input" which puts the command line at the cursor and actually has a clickable version of each command's options. They've also cleaned up some of the enhancements to 2005. For example there's now an undo feature built into the copy command, so it actually makes sense to default to multi-copy mode.
In addition to that, I've noticed that finally with
AutoCAD 2006 and Acrobat 7.0 making PDFs is much easier. Font embedding is simple enough (though disabled by default), but more importantly all vecotrs in
AutoCAD are rendered as vectors in Acrobat. This yields much smaller file sizes while providing much more professional-looking PDFs.
Finally, I must say that 2006 is the least-buggy annual
AutoCAD release I've experienced. There is a service pack available, and it fixes some issues. But even without the service pack, while I would crash pervious versions all the time I think I've killed this version two or three times.
There's still room for some improvement, particularly in the online features (including downloading patches) but overall this is a decent upgrade... if you can afford it.
Customer Rating: Summary: Cautious With The Price
Comment: You can download this program for a free 30 day trial at the autodesk website. I have used
AutoCAD off and on myself since 1985. I tried this version and I still prefer
AutoCAD 14. It's really hard to beat it for 2D capabilities. For 800 bucks, I laugh at Autodesk for still trying to make this kind of money off license upgrades. It definately has bells and whistles, but in today's economy, it's lacking in competive price, in spite of the fact that Autodesk is sabotaging sales by releasing information on their own website that the LT versions in the near future will be released for free. If you only need 2D capable CAD Package, I would look toward other packages like Intelicad or Turbocad. Maybe even try to get an old copy of
AutoCAD 14 which would have some 3D capability. If you are wanting an elite CAD package, you better go visit the
Bentley website for Microstation. Microstations Raster capabilites totally blow away
AutoCAD Products and imaging overlays are far superior to Autodesk.
Customer Rating: Summary: Works a little better with each release......
Comment: I've been using
AutoCAD off and on since it was a DOS program and it has continued to improve in ease of operation with each subsequent release that I've used from AutoCAD11 to the present. they haven't all been huge jumps in quality, but it has been at least a slight improvement with each one. I guess the only complaint I might have with this release is that the instruction manual might have gone into more depth; some one who is going to be using
AutoCAD for the first time might still be lost with some of their explanations and examples, but then I suppose that's what all those aftermarket
AutoCAD manuals are for.
