AutoCAD FAQs 2

How do the Educational/Student versions work?

Educational versions of AutoCAD are only supplied to institutions or educational charities. They are networked versions of a minimum of 10 seats. They use a floating licence system meaning that AutoCAD can be installed on any number of machines but only 10 people can access it at any one time. With every 10 seats there is a stand alone ‘Professor Licence’ included for a lucky member of staff to use.

To qualify for a student version you must either be a member of staff or a student of an educational institution or be a student on a recognised industry course, such as the one provided by the ABTT. You can obtain the programmes free from the Autodesk Student Community website - so long as you qualify

The student version is identical to the commercial version in its functionality and the licence lasts 5 years but can’t be upgraded to a commercial licence. Additionally when plotting, a watermark is applied stating that the file was created in Educational software

Finally when opening a drawing created in an Educational version you are warned by a dialogue box of its origin. This happens even if opening it in a full commercial version. In this case the plot stamp will pollute any drawings the Educational file is used in. Blocks for instance created in a student edition will cause the plot stamp to appear if used in a commercial version - very annoying!

Is AutoCAD the best program to use?

Although there are other CAD programs out there AutoCAD is always worth considering for these reasons amongst others
It uses the native .dwg file format guaranteeing ease of file exchange. This is not always true of other programs
It has the largest support community. With over 10 million users help is always at hand
It is the standard against which all other CAD programs are measured

Conversely it is expensive, around £4,200 for a full, commercial version

Is there a Demo version available?

30 Day demo versions are available from resellers in the UK. They only work once on any machine, so if you like it, you’ll have to buy it!
UK reseller information here