Dear AutoDesk,

I’m writing to you in concern with AutoCAD MEP 2013. For the past 6 months, at the firm I work at, we have been using AutoCAD MEP 2013. Thus far, it has given us nothing but trouble. It has not only given us trouble, but it has given trouble to people around the globe. I’ve done several searches online for the troubles I’ve encountered and found that not only are there more troubles than what I’ve encountered, but across the AutoCAD 2013 line up with no real solutions from AutoDesk. The only solution some people have found is to just stop using AutoCAD 2013.

There are updates, Service Pack 1 and 2, which have been installed, but have only made the current problems worse. The latest updates in windows have been installed, the most recent certified Nvidia drivers have been installed with certified cards, yet there are still a slew of problems.

Is my machine powerful enough? Most certainly. I’ve got an Intel Core i7 980X installed. It runs at 3.34 Ghz with hyper threading. It also has 24 GB of RAM and a 24 GB paging file, along with a Solid State drive. It also has two Nvidia Quadro FX 580 video card. The machine is very high end.

I, myself have a Quad Core with 16 GB of RAM and a GeForce 240. It runs AutoCAD MEP 2014 more smoothly than the machine at work runs 2013. My laptop, a duo core with 2 GB of RAM and a Geforce 7900M runs AutoCAD MEP 2014 more smoothly than 2013 on the work machine.

As you can see, computer specs don’t come into play with AutoCAD MEP 2013.

You will also probably ask, "are you using any add-ons or plugins?" The answer is yes, but that doesn't stop the bugs from rearing their ugly heads. Enabled, loaded, disabled, unloaded, the problems still come through and the software still crashes. The developers of the add-on update their software more frequently than AutoDesk does.

There is a quirky part of this problem: these bugs can surface horribly one day and give nothing but grief, but the next, not show their ugly heads.

Below, each problem will be explained and what steps are taken to help prohibit it.

  1. Crashing:
  2. The crashes come from anything, could be a view change, style change, pipe change. From the simplest command to the most complex command. They happen randomly and for whatever reason. It crashes at least twice a day, a dozen times with large files. The only way to prevent loss of data in large drawings is to have multiple instances of AutoCAD open. This however, makes the problems worse by ten-fold when they do present themselves.
  1. Screen Flashing
  2. Commands Not working
  3. It takes several instances for a command to initialize and work. Sometimes pressing esc and starting it over is the only way to get it to work.
  4. Not Responsive during a command, lasting for more than 10 seconds without actually executing the command.
  5. Any time any amount of processing is required, from a simple pipe to saving, there is a hang time, from several seconds to 2 minutes, sometimes longer, depending on what the command was. Saving, it could be 5 minutes.
  6. Not AutoSaving
  7. Sometimes it flat out doesn’t work.If autosave is set higher than 20 minutes, it doesn't save for hours, sometimes days. If it's set for less than 20 minutes, it saves on cue. However, there are times when Autosave doesn't work because it locks up and crashes. Other times, the entire application reverts the drawing backwards two hours out of the blue, without warning, as if you told it to. This can happen for any reason at any time.
  8. Using Recommended, certified hardware (according to website), yet isn't recognized by CAD.
  9. Can't use video card hardware even with certified and tested driver according to website.
  10. Drop down menus don't work properly.
  11. Jumps back into history, deleting all work progress as if it never happened.
  12. Randomly deleting layers and objects
  13. Graphic issues, causing objects to randomly disappear.
  14. white boxes- happens randomly and takes the shape of any menus such as layer manager, etc.
  15. white flashing- the entire autocad screen turns white for a split second.
  16. pipe disappears- at random points, the pipe will literally just vanish. Only when a new piece of pipe is started with the previous pipe re-appear.
  17. Slow Drawing:
  18. Drawing new pipe takes a good ten to 15 seconds for the software to add a single piece of pipe, even with the simplest display settings. The pipe could be 5 inches in diameter or a single 3/4" pipe, doesn't matter. It's slow. Others have said it's specifically 2013, with or without add-on. From research, Quicken Pipe, it takes nearly a minute. A minute…who has that much time to waste? I certainly don’t.

Performance Drivers won't do anything - only designed for Autocad 2008-2011.

You know the sad part? Some of the things that are done with files in AutoCAD 2013 with the work computer perform much slower than 2014 on my home computer. Audit works incredibly fast, taking only 10 or so seconds for a drawing that has 18000 pieces in it. That's AutoCAD 2014 on a 64 bit machine. In AutoCAD 2013 with the work computer, it takes as much as 2-3 minutes. That’s a big difference, and the work machine has much more power than the home machine, by leaps and bounds. How is that even possible?

Another odd thing, even without the plugins and add-ons, AutoCAD 2013 operates slower and worse than 2014, even when uncertified, GAMING video cards are used. And that’s with small and large files. My GeForce GT 230 and 240 work much better with uncertified and tested graphic drivers than the Quadros that are certified and tested with certified and tested drivers. Yeah, there's a difference in GPU speed, size and RAM, but shouldn't it be the opposite? Certified should work better than non certified?

I've had a single drawing open and 2013 just crashes on the work computer where I can have 5 or more drawings open in 2014 and the performance is unhindered on the home computer.

In the end, is AutoCAD MEP 2013 just a bad release? I hope that AutoCAD MEP 2014 isn’t an ‘oops we fixed it’ release like the iPad and iPad 2. AutoCAD MEP 2013 is like Windows Vista or were you serious about the workforce with 2013? Cause to my company as well as all of those individuals who are having serious issues with 2013, it's a joke.

You may also wonder why I went through all of the trouble to compile this letter with screen shots of the computers and information about the software. The main reason is to stop the waste in time and money that’s occurring with using 2013. Why don't I just upgrade? Why should I? When a company such as AutoDesk releases a new version of their software, I expect it to be as stable or more stable than the previous, to work better than the previous and have new features that were tested and were stable enough for the work force. With 2013, it's as if there was no testing and it was just put on shelves. Why should people have to pay for the mistakes of a multimillion dollar company?

It's all about principle. You release a $50 piece of software, I'm not expecting much. You release a $500 dollar piece of software, I'm expecting only a few bugs. You release a $5000 piece of software, I'm expecting little to no bugs and a crash or two a month at most. I'm paying for quality and stability, not the pile of code that is called 2013. I could go on about ethics and whatnot, but that's beside the point.

I'm writing this email to make you at AutoDesk wake up and realize that while your website may say one thing, AutoCAD MEP in general says another, that 2012 was your last, stable release and that 2013 needs a lot of work.

AutoCAD MEP 2013 is being considered the worst version of AutoCAD. A metaphor would be "it's the vista of AutoCAD."