AutoSketch 8

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• ASIN: B00005UO0J
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 20, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,129 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great 2D Drawing Tool, August 22, 2002

By 

S. Sawtelle "Steve in CT" (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: AutoSketch 8 (CD-ROM)

You'll need to invest some time to complete the series of "Two-Minute Tutorials"; however, they really do take about 2 minutes each to complete and they provide an excellent foundation to begin using the software effectively. As an entry-level 2D drawing tool, I can't imagine ever using all of the bells and whistles. Fortunately it's fairly straightforward to find/use the functions you're interested in after only using the program for a short time. Online help is always a few clicks away but would still like to see a hardcopy User's Guide included in the box (you can download/print the User's Guide but it's 400 pages...). Overall a very good product.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Difficult Product, January 27, 2004

By 

George A. Trowbridge (Grand Rapids, MI) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: AutoSketch 8 (CD-ROM)

I bought this product hoping to do some designs for wood working projects. We use AutoCAD in the office but that is way to much for my home use and very expensive. I thought since that is supposed to be such a great product that I would buy from the same manufacture. BAD IDEA. I bought this a year ago and it took me forever to learn it. Like another reviewer said IT DOESN"T WORK LIKE ANY OTHER CAD TOOL ON THE MARKET. Pay attention to that. This is a very hard tool to learn. I've finally learned it, but working with the tool is not easy at all. I have since trashed it and bought TurboCAD Deluxe v9.2. Much easier to use. More documentation and actually cheaper. They have a demo you can download at their site that was very helpful in my decision.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Save up, buy something better!, November 24, 2003

By 

Otto (Silicon Valley) - See all my reviews

This review is from: AutoSketch 8 (CD-ROM)

I needed a 2D drawing program, and when I saw this I figured that it would be a decent product given that it's sold by Autodesk, maker of Autocad. FYI I'm a UNIX programmer by profession, with high school level instruction in drafting, woodworking, and mechanical engineering. I wanted software to document some woodworking projects I'm doing. Autosketch isn't it; it has numerous problems:

1) there's no commercial documentation for it, and the supplied 400 page user guide (on the installation CD; not in print form) does not explain how to use the software adequately. It tells you how to press the buttons on the interface, but it provides no information about how to do basic drawing functions such as drawing a rectangle to a specific, in-scale, size.

2) I don't think you can composite drawings. I.e. if I draw a frame made of 2 x 4's and I want a detail-drawing of the butt joints on the same page as the elevation drawing, you can't do that (at least not that I've been able to figure out with the supplied documention), *unless* the details are already in the larger drawing. You also cannot draw the detail view on a seperate page and then transfer a scaled down version of it to your elevation drawing, as "detail view"s must apparently be limited to the same drawing.

3) The drawing screen doesn't redraw right when you delete or move entities. Ever. AutoDesk implmented a "redraw screen" button rather than fix this problem, and you will be using that button a LOT.

4) It seems very difficult to navigate around a picture when you're zoomed in, using a mouse. I may not yet have found the easy way of doing this (since there's no useful documentation) but currently navigation involves zooming in, then pressing the wheel down to move the drawing around in the pane. It's hard to find your way around even a simple drawing this way.

5) Autocad basically punted on the install software. They don't add a desktop shortcut, and they don't offer an option to install the 400 page .pdf users manual, so you have to be lucky enough to find and read the README, which tells you to copy it off the CD. This type of attention to detail typifies the Autosketch user experience.

My overall gripe about the software is that the price and packaging seem to market it to people who just want to do some basic drawings. However the lack of documentation and the complex user interface mean you have to be pretty sharp, and spend a lot of time, to figure out how to use this. My feeling is that if I have to spend that kind of time to use the program, I may as well just buy TurboCad and have a full featured drawing program to start with.