Be sure to upgrade to ai 2018 if you don't want your CADtools to work anymore

Hot Door did not "take advantage of the situation" with the Adobe Illustrator upgrade.  Instead, Hot Door continued just as it has in the last 20 years, offering a new version every 18-24 months.  CADtools 10 was released in April of 2016 and CADtools 11 was released 18 months later, in October of 2017. Each new release includes new tools and features, and also includes compatibility with the new Illustrator version.  Many customers use more than just the basic dimensioning tools, but even for those who only use those features, an upgrade costs $229.00.  As long as you have purchased one of Hot Door's three previous versions (CADtools 8, 9 or 10), an upgrade is all you need.  If you must be on the latest version of Illustrator, and you purchase when Hot Door releases, it will be 18-24 months before you will need to purchase another upgrade to stay current with a new Adobe release.  If it is 18 months, then Hot Door cost you $12.72 per month.  If it is 24 months, then Hot Door cost you $9.54 per month.  As much time as CADtools can save you, it is difficult to believe the time saved is not worth either or those prices.  But that is something each user must decide.  While Hot Door understands that everyone would like to purchase a license and have it remain compatible forever at no extra cost, that is not feasible for a company to remain in business, especially with the costly programming hours to create a new version.  Each version is backwards compatible, as well.  CADtools 11 is compatible with CC 2018, CC 2017, CC 2015.3, CC 2015, CC 2014, CC and CS6 -- seven versions of Illustrator!  Your comments, concerns and complaints will always receive a response from the support team at Hot Door:

support@hotdoor.com

So, they should subsidise Adobe instead. Good plan, Adobe need the money much more than the small software developers, who are only small because they are lazy.

it's a frustrating situation, but you can still install 2017.

the really sad thing about cadtools' pricing is that i personally only use the tracker and dimensioning tools. from those dimensioning tools, i only use the horizontal and vertical, point and by line. i don't care for any of the other features and have no use for them, so the price feels extra steep. i wish they had cadtools lite for people like me and bring down the price accordingly.

the underlying code doesn't change much for illustrator. they could literally just add illustrator 2018 to the target release of cadtools 10 and call it a day.

i predicted some plug in makers were gonna take advantage of illustrator's subscription model and here we are. luckily not everyone does this.