Riverbed accelerates AutoCAD again

Easier solution

Try out the upgrade to see if it works before deploying it company wide. Of course that would mean everyone was still using the 2006 release and would have had the bonus of not migrating their entire library of files to the broken file format. Now for the suckers that did stay current, each existing file they need to access will need to be converted the first time... very slowly.

The true question is, did they just roll back the file format?

Fishy Alright

A few years ago I worked at a 10,000+ employee consulting firm using AutoCAD 2006 over a WAN using Steelhead 'optimization'. I had never seen such hideously slow file use over a WAN in years of working in the industry. Ok perhaps that sounds like hyperbole, but you had to be there. This article explains the problem, finally.

Experienced AutoCAD operators will know that any latency between operator 'drafting speed' and file operations over a LAN or WAN make concentration difficult. Our IT WAN optimization specialists, 4 time zones away, not understanding the issue was really how AutoCAD files were handled by the WAN accelerator, located the latency at an interface between two telecommunications infrastructure service providers. Perhaps that was part of the problem. I'll give IT credit, they persisted in trying to improve and tune the Steelhead and file servers. The problem only affected AutoCAD users in the firm's 'remote' offices. M$Office users and those in larger offices with their own file servers didn't have the problem. Those few of us that had the problem started to feel like idiots. In the end I left the firm after a year of holding my breath, the unsolved latency issue was such a distraction to my work.

I hope this AutoCAD 2010 is truly improved, but if it's merely recreated pre-2007 conditions, I don't think that will cut it. Happily I'm not in an AutoCAD shop currently and my stress level is just fine if not my finances. My hope is that this issue becomes better understood in AutoCAD shops running Steehead WAN optimizers. Sadly my ex-employer, one of the world's largest consulting firms, didn't understand the issue. But then that was 2 years ago.