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From AutoCAD yes to nanoCAD: change of the main CAD system in the design institute


From the author
This article is our real experience of transition from AutoCAD to Russian nanoCAD. The way he really was. Just facts and no advertising.

I hope that it will turn out unbiased to this or that CAD vendor, will help other enterprises to avoid some of the mistakes we have made and will allow us not to make our own. The scope of the article does not allow to describe in detail all the nuances associated with the transition, so you have to limit yourself to the main organizational issues, plus some technical details.

From ZAO Nanosoft
We are often asked “how is the transition to nanoCAD really carried out?” - now there is a lack of information of this kind; performances conveying the experience of implementation always listen carefully. That is why we decided under Friday to publish an article that describes the process as objectively as possible, and to share experience - everything described in the article is very similar to our experience with design organizations and will no doubt be useful to those interested. In the comments, let's discuss your situations.

The main actors



Background and the crux of the problems

In September 2014, the management of the institute decided to restore order in the software used and by improving the software used to improve the efficiency of the enterprise as a whole. Further, only CAD software is considered, although it must be understood that the modernization has affected the rest of the IT infrastructure. The company "InfoIndustry" participated in this process as the main supplier and integrator for CAD products: "Sibgiprobiosynthesis" has been a client of our organization for NormaCS, the development of Autodesk and NTP "Pipeline" for five years.
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The institute employs 40 designers, the team is mostly aged.

Before the transformation, the situation with the CAD system was as follows:
Such a situation is in general quite typical for many design organizations, and many of them do not consider it necessary to change something, preferring to work “as it happened”.

So, choose the main CAD ...

Actually, the choice is small. Options:
  1. Upgrade an existing AutoCAD (not LT) and purchase unlicensed previously unlicensed places.
    + High-quality, stable, proven tool in the work.
    + No retraining of employees and problems with the transition.
    - Issue price for licenses and upgrades.
    - The need to upgrade or change the "iron" for many jobs.
  2. Zwcad
    + Inexpensive with fairly strong functionality.
    + Support * .dwg (ODA).
    - The transition and all the difficulties associated with it.
    - Lack of direct contact with the developer and regional representation.
  3. nanoCAD
    + Support * .dwg (ODA).
    + Price.
    + The presence of the official dealer in Krasnoyarsk.
    + The possibility of direct contact with the developer.
    - The transition and all the difficulties associated with it.
    - The presence of moments in the product that require improvement.

The above pros and cons are fairly arbitrary and do not claim to cover the whole situation: a much wider circle of pros / cons was discussed with the heads of the institute, as well as the nuances associated with a possible transition. Assessing all the main factors, the management of the institute chose nanoCAD. At the same time, it was decided not to make "sudden movements": the transition process should be smooth.

Transition stages

1. We get acquainted (October-December 2014)
1.1 The first thing that we and the company’s management did at this stage was to organize a meeting of the entire structure of all project departments. At this meeting, I, as the representative of the vendor, gave a brief presentation of the product, and the management explained in detail their plans and (not least) the motives for action. All employees should be as clear as possible what is happening and why. Also at this meeting, we voiced the main stages of the transition and answered questions (including the question of designers, “How are we going to work now ?!”).

2.1 The second is test operation. It was carried out so that it was possible to remove some questions before the start of the transition and see what difficulties would be faced.

This stage was very bad. Despite the fact that absolutely all employees were told why they should start working at nanoCAD, almost no one did. Many did not believe that AutoCAD would disappear altogether as a work tool; current tasks and misunderstanding of what exactly needs to be done in the new software, and just too lazy. The stage lasted two months and, unfortunately, did not bring tangible results.

I believe that a good result in the case of testing nanoCAD is four sheets of questions on the results, as well as a clear understanding by the management and the designers themselves of the pros and cons of the software.

Conclusions: if you plan to test this CAD for its applicability, then:
Users would like to advise one thing: use the tested software as much as possible - only this way you will be able to see all its advantages and disadvantages.

2. Specification / Purchase Approval (December 2014)
Quite expectedly, the base product was chosen nanoCAD SPDS . In addition, the institute acquired a number of “vertical” solutions based on nanoCAD. Delivery form: “box” + subscription (for the possibility of software updates). Network license with reference to "iron".

Delivery and design of the software took place in a regular mode in two weeks.

3. Installation / Deployment (January 2015)
It took another couple of weeks to agree on which settings we are putting / not putting on the network and which ones we make editable / uneditable. As a result, we came to a certain scheme (please do not consider it the only correct one).

So:
The deployment was performed using Microsoft Active Directory, according to the distribution we had previously configured. Setting up the distribution, unfortunately, took some time and was largely done with the help of the developer nanoCAD, ZAO Nanosoft. Well, as you understand, nanoCAD does not have its own deployment system, like AutoCAD.

In general, “they harnessed for a long time, but quickly arrived”: the installation took half an hour. Distributions did not adapt for single products, they arranged them manually in a couple of hours.

Later, some defects in the deployment were revealed:
AutoCAD was not uninstalled at this stage, and people worked as before.

4. Getting used to new software (February-March 2015)
After installation, we again held a team meeting, at which it was announced that:
Separately, the order of “conversion” of the file archive was clarified - I’ll stop at this point in more detail. The archive was organized essentially again, with a slightly different logic and principles than were previously. Before getting to the new archive, the drawing file went through all possible stages of cleaning, namely:

Then the drawing was saved to * .dxf, then opened in AutoCAD and saved to * .dwg. After that, it opened in nanoCAD and after all the checks it was already saved completely.
The order is painted here in general, for the designers have made detailed step by step instructions. In nanoCAD, it was allowed to either create files from scratch, or work with files that went through all the cleaning stages. It is quite difficult to control it, and, one should assume, copying pieces of projects from files that did not pass the test, was still practiced ...

It is also worth noting that it was at this stage that most of the project team realized the seriousness of the intentions of the authorities on the transition to nanoCAD. But few people want to leave the comfort zone, so few have begun to work closely in nanoCAD.

5. Training (March 2015 - Present)
The training, which was conducted by the specialists of LLC InfoIndastry, we began almost immediately after installing the software. Groups of 15 people were formed; two hours per week were assigned to each group - on a certain day and at a predetermined time. The main objective of the first stage of training is to teach how to work in nanoCAD SPDS with at least the same speed as in AutoCAD. In this case, advanced AutoCAD technologies (dynamic blocks, filings, external links / collaboration, annotation, etc.) were practically not used, so the task to get back to the previous speed was quite real in a short time.

The most difficult thing was to answer the question of what exactly to teach. The work process in both nanoCAD and AutoCAD is almost the same, the tools of work are also mostly the same. That is, people basically can do everything - at the “drawing” level. Therefore, although I have prepared a standard training program, I had to change it “in the course of events”. This was also due to the fact that the trainees have different levels of AutoCAD and computer literacy in general: the topic under study is more than clear to someone, while others need to be explained and explained. And in different groups in different ways.

Conclusion: for such training, you should either carry out detailed testing for knowledge of AutoCAD (and also for computer literacy itself) and form groups based on it, or accept the “different levels” of the audience.

The training related to the SPDS module went quite smoothly, since only a few designers were familiar with the capabilities of this module. For each lesson, part of the time (15 minutes) was devoted to solving current problems and issues unrelated to the main topic of study.

At the time of writing this article (June 2015), the main course “Platform + TSDS” has been completed, then we plan to deal with “vertical” solutions, starting with nanoCAD Electro.

6. Work on the new platform (March-June 2015)
In March 2015, the newly launched projects were already developed in nanoCAD, and AutoCAD was removed from the workplaces of designers. The reaction to this event was quite different, from an adequate perception of the need for change to a rare, but cardinal rejection of the new software. I think that a clear and clearly expressed position of the company's management is needed here. Those who want to "breed democracy" will be found in any team, and the task of the leadership is to respond adequately to this. If you, dear management, have decided to switch to other software, then you need to strictly follow the plan and intelligibly (but if you need to, hard) explain it to the staff. At the beginning of active work with new software, integrators and developers "hang up" everything: from actual software flaws to problems, in general, nothing related to this software.

In terms of technical support, we (LLC "InfoIndustry") tried to solve all the issues in person, in the workplace - this is the most effective way. We also organized a separate email address, but there were very few questions. The fact is that to describe some issues requires a lot of time and effort, and during personal communication the same problem is formulated in a minute. The peak of requests for technical issues came in the first two months.

I did not let down detailed statistics on issues, but traditionally they were divided into three groups - approximately in equal shares:
7. Stabilization (June 2015)
By the time this article was written, the speed of work had reached the previous level, only on a different platform. Naturally, we plan to increase. The number of questions is now small: one or two per week. During this period (about six months), nanoCAD, within the framework of this organization, has gone from practically unknown software product designers to the main work tool, with its pluses and minuses.

In general, I believe that at the Sibgiprobiosynthesis Institute the transition from AutoCAD to nanoCAD is fully completed. Further automation and speeding up the work of project departments is another story altogether.


Ivan Soldatov
LLC "InfoIndastri"

PS Thanks to Galakhov Alexander, who is responsible for the IT infrastructure of the SibGTU Sibgiprobiosynthesis Institute for supporting technical and organizational issues, and design engineers Zhukova Anastasia and Tretiak Nadezhda for supporting the transition process.

PPS I will welcome any comments, comments on this article and the topic as a whole. You can contact or ask a question at soldatov@infoind.info .

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/262283/

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