Answering this question for yourself could influence how often you upgrade your CAD technology in the future.

As CAD technology advances, land development organizations are continuously faced with tough decisions CAD developers force them into. It seems that many of the developers in the CAD industry have grown their core technology past the point where the majority of users receive substantial value through upgrades. In reality, CAD developers have been overshooting the masses in the land development industry for quite some time, but they still continue to develop new features. On the surface these new features may seem valuable, but when it comes time to utilize them to create a feasible work product, it’s easier to resort to the old tried tested functions than grapple with learning how to use these new features to do the same job.

This lack of value is magnified when CAD users are threatened with discontinued product support and upgrade ability. In essence, these CAD developers are forcing organizations to evaluate the risk of lost productivity versus the cost of a “CAD upgrade insurance policy”. This leaves many land development organizations facing the same dilemma – to upgrade or not to upgrade. Regardless of the decision made, the end result is typically unhappiness with the service/product and distrust of the developer.

With all of these questions and no specific answers, what the industry is looking for may be right around the corner. It’s time for a simple, low-priced, good enough CAD solution that won’t overshoot the features the land development industry needs to complete the work. This logic might seem too simplistic to CAD developers, but in reality it’s what the land development industry really needs and developers have to take note of:

The industry needs:
• Compatibility with current and legacy data structures.
• Simple transfer of LISP and Visual Basic routines.
• A product that won’t go into retirement every couple of years forcing us to upgrade to something we really don’t want.
• A partner that won’t hold us hostage allowing us to make good business decisions.

Developers also need to understand that the industry is not looking for someone to just deliver technology. We’re looking for a trusted ally that can provide quality workflow solutions aimed at improving business.

Of course, success requires more than CAD developers changing to only deliver needed features and stop forcing the market to upgrade the products that continue to produce a feasible deliverable. It requires the users of CAD to step back and evaluate the value they’re receiving for maintaining those same CAD products. Users need to embrace innovative change in CAD and not discount the value they could receive from forthcoming innovative CAD solutions. Unless they take this approach, CAD developers will continue to provide products that overshoot the market using the same sales tactics.

Take a minute to answer the question posed at the beginning of this article and decide for yourself what message you’ll send to CAD developers when it comes time to review your CAD needs. SLDT