Customer Reviews

AutoCAD LT 2006 Upgrade from LT 2004/2005

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I used to enjoy Autocad LT so much more than the full version of Autocad. For someone like me who does production drawings, LT was a great thing. It simplified and sped up the process. When I recently purchased the upgrade from Autocad LT 2004 to LT 2006, all of this changed. I felt like I was back in the day, trying to install Autocad Release 8.

It took more than a few tries to install the upgrade to Autocad LT 2006. Once I did install it, I needed to uninstall it, since it was lethargic and crashed the computer.

Here are some of the major issues I had:
1. LT installs usually go smoothly. This install was as frustrating as they come. But not just because of the usual bugs. There were too many choices required and none of these choices was clearly explained.(A muddy explanation is hidden in the documentation)This leads to a fork in the install:
2. "Stand-Alone" or "Multi-Seat" install. I purchased a single license. Why is the "Multi-Seat" option even offered during this installation? I asked someone at Autodesk what would have happened if I had done the "Multi-Seat" install. I would have to pay to get the activation codes.
3. The activation codes are now 32 characters long and are only good for one use. If you need to re-install Autocad LT 2006 on a new computer or on the supposed second "allowed" computer with a "stand-alone" license, you must call and go through the same drill again. The on-line activation process didn't work. I talked to friends who said it didn't work for them, either. This process was very frustrating. If you want to avoid this for your second computer, you may use the "portable license" feature. This allows you to transfer Autocad LT from one computer to another, but then disables Autocad LT on the first computer after 24 hours.

The first installation went very poorly. There was some promise with the settings migration. This feature was nice and it worked. This was about the only thing that worked on the first installation. After the migration and the activation, the computer froze. After re-booting, I tried again. Autocad LT 2006 was extremely sluggish. No other programs could run at the same time. I uninstalled 2 programs, to no avail. It took 4 minutes to install a 1 megabyte drawing. I uninstalled LT 2006.

The next day, I tried again. It went a little better this time. The install was smoother. This time, LT ran more smoothly. When I got into the heart of the changes, I was very disappointed. All of that money for renamed old commands. An added calculator? I have a calculator, thank you, and it cost me a lot less than this upgrade. The previews from Autodesk lead one to believe there are truly good things about this version of Autocad LT. There aren't. I never had problems plotting prior to this. Now I do!

It seems the primary goal of these upgrades is not a better product for the consumer, but added security measures for Autodesk. The result is incredible frustration for the consumer.