The Sheet Metal Shop .Com

Sheet Metal & CAD - EastCoast Cad 2007

gator412 - Feb 02, 2007 - 04:01 PM
Post subject: EastCoast Cad 2007

Hi,

Is anyone using the new eastcoast cad 2007 program? I have been using it for a couple months and it is really disappointing. There are so many bugs in it and now it takes twice as many clicks to get a tool active. Maybe I am over reacting but for over $10,000. I expected a lot more.

(I have been running eastcoast cad for over 14 years now.)
Let me know if any one else is having problems.

Thanks

beernut - Feb 02, 2007 - 04:11 PM
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I am running it and there are a lot of bugs. I don' think it's just you or your systems. Do you have the ABS version or just plain EC-CAD?

gator412 - Feb 02, 2007 - 04:14 PM
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I have the plain EC-Cad. I have sent close to a dozen bugs to them.

gator412 - Feb 02, 2007 - 04:30 PM
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I just counted..I sent 10 since 1-11-07. I actually stopped sending them due to the time it was taking to type thema ll out. I am fed up with ec-cad and their tech support. Guess I just needed to vent.

beernut - Feb 02, 2007 - 06:43 PM
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I understand I recently had a drawing lose all of it's spec data on ductwork after doing a combine. I had to enter the entire drawing into the plasma cutter by hand. We download directly to our cutter it was a real nightmare. I asked about the ABS version because don't they still have the yearly software subscription? I think at this point if it was going to cost us $10000 we would probbly switch to something like CAD Pipe.

gator412 - Feb 02, 2007 - 07:08 PM
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They did away with the subscription. As well as the non ABS version is going I would be afraid of the ABS version. I had a customer that has me download to a manufacturer receive a lot of wrong duct on the job. We traced it back to a bad mapping job that EC did mapping to Vulcan 6.0 (or vulcan 2 in the ec program). Vulcan said they had some liabilty also and made it right with my customer. I asked EC to make it right with my custmer and me...their responce "we will fix the program" #Bad Talk

Well they did but it took too long. So there have been several things I dislike about EC and now I own two stations. I think I will not get the maintance agreement again this coming year. I would really like a program that is eazy to use and interfaces with autocad. EC says it does...but we know better........Sounds like I am still on my soapbox. Ok I'll step down now...reluctanly.

ccrayjr - Feb 05, 2007 - 10:21 PM
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try cadduct.com or call the guys at TSI.

the best cad/cam/est program on the market. the cad, cam, and est work off one single database, so the same elbow you draw with is the same elbow you burn with and estimate with. no more downloading, second and third party software! it is the only truely seamless program on the market!!! it also runs in autocad!

legacy - Feb 06, 2007 - 01:51 AM
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I have been running EC CAD and Maker for about the last 6 or 7 years. Last year I upgarded both programs and have found them to be more user friendly interms of downloading DXF or DWG drawings.

I am wondering what the big differences are between the 2006 and the newly realeased 2007 or the ABS version.

I like the EC software over the others because it is NOT AutoCad based.

beernut - Feb 06, 2007 - 01:43 PM
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legacy wrote:

I have been running EC CAD and Maker for about the last 6 or 7 years. Last year I upgarded both programs and have found them to be more user friendly interms of downloading DXF or DWG drawings.

Don't get me wrong East Coast is still much faster than any AutoCAD based duct program I have seen. Right now the most time consuming part of drawing a duct system is adding size, length, and elevation text to duct runs. They have greatly improved the DWG, DXF importing.

The problem seems that when you have a problem either support doesn't know or they need to give it to the programmers and you don't get an answer or a fix.

gator412 - Feb 06, 2007 - 04:30 PM
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I agree that ec cad is the fastest. But like beernut says support is lacking. I think the main reason for that is they have third party programmers, they are back to using the Russians. There is only one guy in support and he is so swamped that he can't get to your problem in a reasonable time sometimes. So it gets lost and I just let it go and figure out a work around.

I am running both 2006 and 2007 now. The biggest difference is the look and the amount of bugs in the system. Really the look is the main difference and the file system. You can now name the drawings real names and put them in folders where ever you want. I don't think it was throughly tested before it was released. It looks like a windows based program but doesn't act like it. Also the text in the side bars is so small now that you have to be very accurate when you click on it. So that means going slower. Also you have to double click most of the icons now, or turn the active one off then turn the one you want on. Before you could just click on the icon and it would become active without having to turn the other icon off.

Legacy, I would wait to upgrade. I actually went back to the 2006 version. I was so slow on the new program it just wasn't worth it. When they get some of the bugs out I will try the 2007 again. I have to keep the 2007 version due to the downloading fix is in the 2007 version...so be fore warned that downloading to "vulcan 2" in 2006 can give you some wrong duct work.

Downloading drawings.....2007 will not downlood some drawings at all drawn in acad 2007. I have had to convert drawings to tiff then convert vector to raster then to dxf, then I could import to eccad. What a pain and the lines are slightly off and then have to be fixed.

gator412 - Feb 15, 2007 - 12:01 AM
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Found another bug...try and make a symbol. You use to be able to see the grouped item that you were making into a symbol so you could change it orgin point. But now the screen comes up blank when you go to make a symbol so you can't give it an orgin point cause you can't se it to click on it.....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #2gunfire

Bud - Feb 15, 2007 - 12:05 AM
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Let us know how they respond in fixing this Bug if you call on them...there are many programs with bugs, it's the support that counts:)

gator412 - Feb 15, 2007 - 12:17 AM
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Actually, I quit telling them about the bugs cause it was taking up to much time. I have sent close to a dozen and all I get is they will work on it. 12-27-2006 was the date I sent the 1st bug into them. There have been no updates or fixes so far....at least none I know about and I pay a yearly fee to get them. I can't even get them to respond to the most of my emails. When I call I get a voice mail or that the voicemail is full. If I ran my company that way I would be out of business.....

Bud - Feb 15, 2007 - 01:22 AM
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Amazing? I hear what you say. It makes you wonder, what is keeping the companies in business that have no support? Customer support & service is everything...

gator412 - Feb 19, 2007 - 08:35 PM
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I spoke with support last week. They said they are fixing errors in the piping part of the program that they tried to fix before. That is their focus right now. So it sounds like we sheet metal guys are left twisting in the wind.

CadMan - Mar 20, 2007 - 06:29 PM
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I have to agree with the fact that their customer support slightly sucks! I would agree that our shop knows 10 times more about actually using EC that the people who you talk to (if able) on the phones.

As far as the bugs...I have been able to work around most of them that i've found so far...except the ones today where it locks up while i am setting up drawings. This keeps happening over and over and over...needless to say i'm getty pretty mad. Oh well who you gonna call right? Thank god for Ctrl+Alt+Delete!

gator412 - Mar 20, 2007 - 06:56 PM
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Cadman, don't you love this place...you can vent to people who actually know what you are talking about. I know it makes me feel better! What version are you running? They have 2007.1.0.13 which got rid of some of the bugs.

beernut - Mar 20, 2007 - 07:08 PM
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CadMan wrote:

...except the ones today where it locks up while i am setting up drawings. This keeps happening over and over and over...needless to say i'm getty pretty mad. Oh well who you gonna call right? Thank god for Ctrl+Alt+Delete!

Be careful if this happening to you when combining a drawing with say your title block if you already have duct drawn. Actually if you are combining any drawing say details and stuff after there is duct on the drawing. I lost all the spec information for my duct on two drawings. It happens when the drawing locks up sometimes so if that happens to me I immediately use the magic wand tool to verify my duct is OK. I had to download the duct into Maker then edit every piece for locks, connectors, gauge. etc.

CadMan - Mar 21, 2007 - 03:52 PM
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gator412 wrote:

Cadman, don't you love this place...you can vent to people who actually know what you are talking about. I know it makes me feel better! What version are you running? They have 2007.1.0.13 which got rid of some of the bugs.

Hey Gator, yeah this is a great place to vent....since doing it to EC does no good. Anyway i'm running 2007.1.0.11...they told us about a months ago that was the latest (during the ASHREA show in Dallas when the rep came to see us)...when did your version come out? As usual they do not let everybody know when they update. I'll check up on it. Thanks.

CadMan - Mar 21, 2007 - 03:54 PM
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Quote:

Be careful if this happening to you when combining a drawing with say your title block if you already have duct drawn. Actually if you are combining any drawing say details and stuff after there is duct on the drawing. I lost all the spec information for my duct on two drawings. It happens when the drawing locks up sometimes so if that happens to me I immediately use the magic wand tool to verify my duct is OK. I had to download the duct into Maker then edit every piece for locks, connectors, gauge. etc.

Hey thanks for the tip Beernut. Actually I am just setting the drawings up right now and have not had to do much with the duct. I'm pretty much the guinea pig for our company.

gator412 - Mar 21, 2007 - 04:52 PM
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Cadman...don't kid yourself...you are the guina pig for eccad....oh wait...I think I am too...dang.

I called about two weeks ago due to get an update for my second station to bring it up to the same version as my main station. They were both running older versions than what they had out. (Thanks for letting us know there were new versions out!)

legacy - Mar 22, 2007 - 06:58 PM
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I am curious if they (EC) teaches you the DOS comands to repair or delete a bad drawing?

When my old version (c.1992) was installed I was taught to use the follwing commands at the DOS prompt. CD\>!IDRAW\!PGS\DWGINI or DWGFIX. I used them so frequently because of incombatability of drawings and issues when I combine drawings, that I have it written in marker inside my desk drawer. I find that DWGFIX does not usually fix the drawing and I have to go to the DWGINI to wipe out a bad drawing and start over.

gator412 - Mar 22, 2007 - 08:17 PM
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legacy wrote:

I am curious if they (EC) teaches you the DOS comands to repair or delete a bad drawing?

When my old version (c.1992) was installed I was taught to use the follwing commands at the DOS prompt. CD\>!IDRAW\!PGS\DWGINI or DWGFIX. I used them so frequently because of incombatability of drawings and issues when I combine drawings, that I have it written in marker inside my desk drawer. I find that DWGFIX does not usually fix the drawing and I have to go to the DWGINI to wipe out a bad drawing and start over.

They have batch files now they have you run. I think they are installed when ever you load the program.

Gath3r - Apr 06, 2007 - 09:09 PM
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Hi

Ive been using EC CAD for awhile now. I find it to be the most user friendly and quickest on the market. I came from using some of their competitors software I.E. CAD Duct, CAD Pipe, TSI, etc.. ALL of them have bugs. Hell, Microsoft Word has bugs.

I think you will find the the industry is changing and from what I gather, EC CAD will be the program to be using when, and while it does change. Over the past year I have been seeing more and more engineers drawing duct and pipe with ABS and soon to be released AutoCAD 2008. When you get these drawings you can use the already drawn Mechanical and Piping and bring it straight to Fabrication without having to redraw it. Talk about a Time & Money saver.

As far as support goes, Ive talked to there support guys a couple of times and the difference between EC Support and the "other guys" support is that the guys at EastCoast seem to actually give a shit. Also.. you might not want to admit it but, most the issues that you guys are bringing up and some of the own that I have experienced are usually related to..."User Error".

gator412 - Apr 07, 2007 - 03:20 AM
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Gath3r wrote:

Hi

Ive been using EC CAD for awhile now. I find it to be the most user friendly and quickest on the market. I came from using some of their competitors software I.E. CAD Duct, CAD Pipe, TSI, etc.. ALL of them have bugs. Hell, Microsoft Word has bugs.

I think you will find the the industry is changing and from what I gather, EC CAD will be the program to be using when, and while it does change. Over the past year I have been seeing more and more engineers drawing duct and pipe with ABS and soon to be released AutoCAD 2008. When you get these drawings you can use the already drawn Mechanical and Piping and bring it straight to Fabrication without having to redraw it. Talk about a Time & Money saver.

As far as support goes, Ive talked to there support guys a couple of times and the difference between EC Support and the "other guys" support is that the guys at EastCoast seem to actually give a shit. Also.. you might not want to admit it but, most the issues that you guys are bringing up and some of the own that I have experienced are usually related to..."User Error".

I bet you work for ECCAD.........because what you wrote does not at all go with what we actually experience. Also you are sadly mistaken about going from arch drawings to fab. The drawings are diagramatic now and will always be. To go straight to download is a pipedream...if you have been drawing for any length of time you would know this. Nothing personal, but I think you work for eccad.

gator412 - Apr 10, 2007 - 02:23 AM
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Oh I forgot to mention...you said all programs have bugs. This is true but for $12,000 a pop and $1995 a year for each station for "maintance" I should expect a program that works better than it actually does and service that that would be unequaled.

The subscription benefits include"priority access to product and techanical support." Some days I can't even get tech support on the phone or get emails returned. Read back thru some of my posts you will see the "priority access to product and techanical support" I received. Dang now I want a refund....I better quite typing cause I am getting mad and want to call my lawyer.

Anyone want to buy a station..I am selling one for $8000....no lie. Shoot me a pm if you are interested.

gator412 - Apr 15, 2007 - 05:36 AM
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Venting....Disappearing duct is back (or not). More bugs also...dang I am tired of this.

gator412 - Apr 16, 2007 - 07:15 PM
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another bug this time with the liner

Bud - Apr 16, 2007 - 07:47 PM
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Have they done anything to help you with these problems.

My cad crashed on me this morning, I'm about 5 versions behind? But it got to the point I was always upgrading because they offered it? Not in a long time because I was comfortable with it. It's not anything out of the ordinary for me with my computer and all the different software i use for programming? Most of which has bugs of some kind.

I get to the point to shut it down and walk away from it, it's not worth a heart grabber if you know what I mean?

ccrayjr - Apr 16, 2007 - 07:58 PM
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Try http://www.technicalsalesinternational.com/
Great Cad! Ask for an online demo!

gator412 - Apr 16, 2007 - 08:10 PM
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Bud,

I tell them and they "put it on the list". So I really don't have time to beta test their product. So I just vent in here now..lol keeps me from grabbing my heart.

Does your company have a maintance agreement with them? I just got my notice its time to pay close to $2000 again for the year for one station. I really am having second thought on this.

Bud - Apr 16, 2007 - 08:54 PM
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No, I use a snips Smile

Lifetime warranty from Sears and no software to load!

gator412 - Apr 19, 2007 - 06:26 PM
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Anyone notice that when you use the delete tool then move to another area to delete some more that the items you just deleted are still there. Well don't bother redeleteing them because they are really gone, they just reappear when you use the the dynamic move. Go out of the delete tool and you will see that they disapear.

Also I had to have tech support bring in all my autocad drawings due to them being drawn in autocad 2007..seems the system does not yet support 2007. Also when you go to plot your completed drawings...it locks up. I have a call to tech support, but they are gone this week so I get the voice mail for Randy.
Gotta love it this program is sweet!

gator412 - Apr 28, 2007 - 01:15 AM
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Hey guys and gals...I received this email from a vistor to my website. I thought you might find it interesting.

"IF YOU ARE USING CADPIPE SOFTWARE I THOUGHT YOU MAY LIKE TO KNOW THEY ARE NOW IN CAHOOTS WITH INDIA AND GOING INTO THE SHOP DRAWING BUSINESS.

THEY UNDERCUT ME ON A JOB BY 35% WITH THAT CHEAP ASS LABOR.

I SAW THE DRAWINGS AND THEY SUCK HOWEVER THEY WILL SOMEDAY GAIN THE KNOWLEDGE THANKS TO CADPIPE. "

Any thoughts on this?

gator412 - May 08, 2007 - 05:52 AM
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Update...program locked up importing 2007 autcad drawings....would not respond to anything. The fix from tech support was to reload the program. It worked for awhile then I went to import another drawing and guess what...yup locked up again. Also got it to lock up trying to plot a newly imported drawing. Ya know I have been working on this program from the get go and I know a ton of fixes and "what not to do" so the program won;t crash..but they are getting harder to work around.

beernut - Jun 22, 2007 - 03:09 PM
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gator412 wrote:

Hey guys and gals...I received this email from a vistor to my website. I thought you might find it interesting.

"IF YOU ARE USING CADPIPE SOFTWARE I THOUGHT YOU MAY LIKE TO KNOW THEY ARE NOW IN CAHOOTS WITH INDIA AND GOING INTO THE SHOP DRAWING BUSINESS.

THEY UNDERCUT ME ON A JOB BY 35% WITH THAT CHEAP ASS LABOR.

I SAW THE DRAWINGS AND THEY SUCK HOWEVER THEY WILL SOMEDAY GAIN THE KNOWLEDGE THANKS TO CADPIPE. "

Any thoughts on this?

Anyone have any more insight into this?

The-Cad-Guy - Nov 30, 2007 - 05:25 AM
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beernut wrote:

Anyone have any more insight into this?

Hi All

I can indeed confirm this. I worked for a firm in DC on a 6mo contract gig. the whole 6mo I was fixing the work from this co in India. They were without question contracted via AEC Cadpipe.

The contract was for 9 mo but I could not take it anymore so I drug up. The owner was content on using them and I just could not see training these people to take my job. Will they ever gain the Knowledge? They may get better however; without field experience they will never get work from a quality minded contractor who relies on highly efficient shop dwgs.

That’s not to say that someone without field experience can't become an excellent detailer however it is very rare. One thing that really bothers me about any IT outsourcing is no taxes or tariffs are collected.

Cad techs who work for Engineering and Architectural firms have taken a hit from outsourcing over the years so I am guessing those of us who make a living as detailer s will also have to learn how to compete or move on.

My Thoughts Anyway.

The-Cad-Guy - Nov 30, 2007 - 05:42 AM
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gator412 wrote:

It's not a bug its a feature.

Also if this person had the wealth of experience he claims he would know that it is VERY VERY RARE that you will ever get a dwg from an engineer that is still in MEP format. They most always convert them to a vanilla AutoCAD file format. Not to mention that MEP will soon be a thing of the past as MEP revit takes over.

Getting backgrounds from A&E is like pulling teeth let a lone ADT or MEP Files.

MattM - Dec 02, 2007 - 02:02 PM
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When you say lock up, how long have you given it? What is the cpu speed/architecture, how much memory do you have, and what is the file size? CAD conversion is a memory hog process. You realize plotting is a conversion process, too, right?

You need anywhere from 2-1/2 to 4x the memory to make conversions for some file types. I suspect your "lock up" is simply due to the processing time of the file itself. They call this render time. And if the file's actual history is being processed, you know the layer by layer and step by step process of making it, then that could be just the problem. Plotters don't necessarily use the history, they re-render a drawing to optimally render it to paper to save ink. Larger files take that much more time and the plotters themselves need their own gobs of memory, which a lot of people don't seem to understand.

One of the hats I wore years ago was a LAN guy. I supported engineers that used Auto CAD and Bentley\Microstation. File conversion between the two was stupendously long if they did not have massive amounts of memory. The key to listen for was the hard drive spinning excessively. You get very little hard drive time during the process if the memory is sufficient.

gator412 - Dec 02, 2007 - 06:10 PM
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I have two stations and I use one for plotting and importing. So I allow sometimes over an hour due to me getting busy on the other station. Plus tech support knows there is a problem and can replicate it. I run two Dell Dimensions 9150s each with dual x86 family model 4 stepping 4 genuineIntel 2992Mhz processors with 2 gigs of memory. My plotter has a 3 gig hard drive with 2 gigs of memory. So I don't think the computer is the problem.
I agree that the key is to watch (or listen) to the hard drive to see how hard the computer is working on the files. I have very little hard drive spin on the processing.

MattM - Dec 02, 2007 - 11:05 PM
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Ever hear of process affinity? You might try to contain the process to a single cpu.

I googled a quick reference: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/51 ... 68870.html

Programs developed with one cpu in mind sometimes go into endless loops with hyperthreading/multiple cpu's. I'm guessing the latter could be a problem.

MattM - Dec 02, 2007 - 11:07 PM
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btw- Is it Vista or XP Pro? Because Vista is a dog on 2gigs.

gator412 - Dec 03, 2007 - 12:38 AM
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If process affinity is a problem than the program has bigger problems. The program was the latest and greatest and the computers were bought/built for cad use. But I have a work around that seems to work everytime now. So it is a non-issue....using ec-cad ones learns to figure out work arounds. Oh yea it is XP pro I use...no vista for me..I wait for new programs/OS to be several years old before I change over due to the large amout of bugs in them. I use other cad programs that are as intense or more so than ec-cad. I can do 3D renderings of complete multiple story buildings and not bog down my Dells. I also do conflict checks with multiple trades 3D drawings.

What program do you run for cad drawings?

MattM - Dec 03, 2007 - 06:29 AM
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I grew up in a family business that does sheet metal, so its something I migrated back to after stints in other job fields. (You know how a college degree tends to steer one in multiple directions.) We don't use CAD at all because we're mostly an exterior sheet metal shop and just work off of blue prints. It is already incredibly difficult at times to get our numbskulls around here to read plain drawings on paper let alone anything on a screen. Smile

Microstation was the main CAD program I supported in my former job. Otherwise I've learnt way more about networking and different software packages across a smorgasboard of business units than one would ever want. I don't miss the old job at all. Always fixing problems for people that shouldn't of been qualified to operate said machinery in the first place.

Wicked - Feb 29, 2008 - 02:06 AM
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I was ec cads second user "1987" I dumped them 2 years ago for a standard acad then upgraded to cadduct a year ago. The change over was not to bad because most of my backgrounds were cleaned up in acad before I imported to ec cad. Everthing today is given to me in acad format its a pain in the but to keep converting and editing just to stay on ec cad if you don't have to. I am glad of swiching to cadduct. My east coast cad blocks/keys are now just a paperweights!!!!

tnbndr - Feb 29, 2008 - 03:36 PM
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I have been using CadDuct for going on 5 years now. Support is there, the programmers listen to the users and make changes and issue updates quarterly if not more often. Any company that believes they can download to fabrication from an engineers drawing will be out of business in no time. As stated before they are diagrammatic only. I have not listened to EC CAD's latest sales pitch but if that is what they are hawking I would have to laugh and walk away, Quickly.

gator412 - Feb 29, 2008 - 07:21 PM
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ECCAD does not really listen to its customers. It seems to be doing what ever they think is needed. They have made updates (downdates?) to the sheetmetal cad but they always create other problems with areas that were working. Like the symbol set. Plus now they went back to the dongle. So all of us that bought the cryp key version...what will happen when we need a new key. They do not have a "permanent" key so you have to keep calling back for a key everytime the dang thing craps out or you change computers, etc. Seems to me that they will have to give us a permanent key or furnish us a dongle for free since we did buy the program and it will time out...

They also claim no error downloading..yea right we can't get it to work error free.

(dang were is the spell check....)