Autodesk Suing to Keep Format Closed

An anonymous reader writes "AutoCAD is by far the industry standard CAD tool for engineering drawings. When I was an engineering student it was on every computer in the college of engineering. Autodesk, the makers of the AutoCAD software, are attempting to quash an effort to reverse-engineer the proprietary binary format used by AutoCAD. Looking at the court order, their whole argument revolves around something called TrustedDWG that basically looks like a digital signature that verifies the file was created by an Autodesk product."

Comments

Who cares? AutoCAD is a toy for students

[realnowhereman]

It's been a while since I used AutoCAD, so perhaps it's moved on significantly since then; but I'd be surprised if anyone does any real work with AutoCAD any more. It's essentially a tool for teaching students about CAD.

If you're actually building any kind of real object, then you're probably using Pro/E or Solidworks. If you're not, then you're wasting a lot of your own time.

Am I wrong? Once you've done 3D parametric modelling, you wouldn't want to go back to AutoCAD.