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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

That was probably true at some point but now there Emacs is a lot more widespread than AutoCAD.

I wondered about that. Are there more programmers or Autocad users? You're probably right; Emacs is free and that counts for a lot.

I think that in the US there are about three million programmers, of whom maybe 10% use Emacs, or about 300,000. There are about 110,000 NCARB-registered architects in the US, and presumably the number of architects is similar to the number of current AutoCAD users (of whom most of each group belong to the other.) But wait! The US Census Bureau estimates the number of US architects at 141,000.

So I thought at first that the answer was obvious but now I don't anymore.

A lot more professions use AutoCAD than just Architects. Mechanical Engineers, Structural Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Aerospace Engineers, etc.

I think mechanical engineers mostly use 3-D CAD systems by now — SolidWorks, Autodesk Fusion 360, or something, not AutoCAD. EEs don't use AutoCAD; they use EDA systems ranging from schematic capture and PCB layout (like KiCAD) to HDL synthesis systems, and they use SPICE, and they write a lot of C++. AutoCAD is useless for any of those things. I don't know what bridge builders and airframe designers use nowadays, but given the importance of 3D in those realms and your batting average on the things I do know about, I'm guessing they don't use AutoCAD either. I'm interested to hear what the truth is, though.

AutoCAD is a 3D program. Electrical and Mechanical Engineers that work in the AEC industry use AutoCAD. "Bridge Builders" aka structural engineers use AutoCAD.

In what way is AutoCAD not 3D?

If you're designing machine parts in AutoCAD 3D, do yourself a favor and upgrade to FreeCAD or SolidWorks or CATIA or at least Fusion 360. Heck, maybe even Blender or OpenSCAD.

> EEs don't use AutoCAD; they use EDA systems ranging from schematic capture and PCB layout (like KiCAD) to HDL synthesis systems, and they use SPICE, and they write a lot of C++.

If you're designing PCBs and chips, sure. For industrial automation design, AutoCAD Electrical is quite alive and well.

I didn't realize. Thank you!

All or most emacs users code, although a minimal amount of autocad users would script autocad stuff

The Stack Overflow survey shows only 4.1% emacs usage (even that sounds high to me).

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#technology-_-...

Yeah, that's probably a bit biased toward Microsoft developers, though.

It helps to be free! ;)

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