Wm. J. Townsend hit the nail squarely and, if you look closely into what he outlines. Compare the reality – in relation to the development of MDT/Inventor and Mechanical – with the marketeers’ comments relating to product development, maintenance and life and you will very quickly conclude if you are going to trust Autodesk, it is for reasons other than their history.

It is well past time for consumers and users of software tools to take a more professional approach seeking assurances, from companies like Autodesk, in relation to their products ‘performance’ they can and will be held accountable for, in a tangible manner. Only when this happens will products of this type, and their developers (Autodesk), garner the level of trust that should exist.

If you haven’t already read it, you might find it a good read. And yes, kind of scary, too. It would seem to relate to many of the issues you raise. One of the things I found fascinating was how much faith we currently place on time-UNTESTED storage equipment. While many archives exist containing many centuries old paper/parchment documents, electronic archives are only decades old at most. Is it logical to rely so heavily on them? Yet, what other choices do we have?

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Ages-II-When-Digital/dp/0130661074/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254321002&sr=1-5

“COADE releases CADWorx P&ID Professional 2010 for process and instrumentation diagrams with support for AutoCAD 2010 plus other enhancements”

All your questions can be boiled down to one: “Is the data portable?”

Mechanical Desktop and I had an illicit affair ever since it was an underage Designer/AutoSurf way back in 1992. It was put to sleep with the (see recent 2010 whine) 2009 release. We had sixteen out of seventeen happy years together. Sharing those MDT files with others was never easy. Won’t be a problem in the future.

Autodesk wants me to embrace Inventor. I’ve had Inventor since June of 1999. Ten years. It has never worked for me during that decade. Won’t allow me to work the way I want. Takes four to five times longer than vanilla ACAD to make some of the odd-ball thingies I make. Results are okay if I don’t mind the huge time hit. And just like MDT, there’s no promise that it’ll be there next year. I have low expectations… But there is an upside! Just like Microstation and Solidworks – nobody has ever requested any of my projects be done with Inventor.

Then there’s Mechanical. Lots of features that should make my output better. But, same file differences and proxies that MDT choked on. Other companies need object enablers for many different ACAD versions and a handful of other CAD packages. They can all read some level of standard DWG files and most can work with DXF if need be. Too much bother for simple 2d enhancements that a fistful of LSP and blocks can cover without the file drama.

So, the plug has been pulled on MDT. I have no faith in Inventor, and there’s no guarantee that Mechanical will be an ongoing vertical. I do feel comfortable using straight (’tho heavily customized) vanilla AutoCAD. Almost everybody can read the files in one manner or another.