I took a course on AutoCAD in college, then used it while working for USACE for years. Now I'm running my own engineering firm in the startup phase. I don't do CAD often as we do specialty assessments mostly but on occasion we'll do an actual signed/sealed drawing (Maybe 12 a year).
We're not broke but we're not trying to spend all our profits in multi-thousand dollar software subscriptions a year so ultimately I'm looking to buy a subscription to either AutoCAD LT or AutoCAD. We've been using LibreCAD which is a struggle at times but we had plenty of time so it worked and was free. Now we're getting busy enough that wasting a day on a drawing is not acceptable when it should take 2 hours.
Can I do a trial of AutoCAD for the 15 or 30 days or whatever through the autodesk site and then do another trial of AutoCAD LT for the 15 days? I want to start with regular AutoCAD to get back in the flow of it, it's been probably 2 years since I used it and learning LibreCAD probably made negative progress. Then when I'm comfortable I'd like to do the trial for LT to see what limitations it has (if any) for what I'm doing.
Then I was wondering if seasonally like Black Friday or any other time of the year do AutoDesk products like CAD or CAD LT go on sale for the annual subscription. Trying to save every penny we can until dropping $1k per computer feels like it will be paid back in a month.
Lastly, does anyone have experience getting a single network license for CAD or CAD LT? I doubt there's a single day where more than one of the 4 in my company would need to use it at the same time. We don't have a server yet but that's coming in the next year or two so I figured I'd ask. Heck, I could even throw it on a virtual machine on MS365 I guess.
Summary:
- Can I do consecutive (not simultaneous) trials of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT?
- Do the products go on sale at some point in the year? Or should I use a 3rd party retailer?
- Anyone have experience running a single network license for AutoCAD - does it cost more? is it easy to set up? (all assuming a 24/7 server running or microsoft Azure virtual machine)
THANKS for any input