Spring always brings new beginnings, including the new releases from Autodesk. This year is no different as the new version of AutoCAD is upon us. Although nothing earth-shattering like last years user interface “refresh”, this years version still proves to be chocked full of enhancements that will make your day-to-day life easier, as well as adding new features and functionality to take your design and collaboration in new directions.
What’s New?
Others might slice-and-dice it differently, but to me the new features and improvements fall into five categories
The User Interface (UI) enhancements is a continuation of what they introduced with the darker / sleeker 2015 interface. Take for example the File tab introduced in 2015. It is now known as the Start page and is persistent, but based on user feedback, can be disabled during installation. Layout tabs are drag-and-dropable (finally), the status bar automatically wraps to the next line, and the help makes it easier to find things.
The new System Monitor is constantly watching those troublesome system variables that seem to have a mind of themselves. It lets you know that they have changed and allows for a reset directly from the status bar.
Documentation Enhancements? Yep, its got them…
Revision Clouds behave more like polylines, making modifications significantly easier and actually achievable now… no more deleting and redrawing.
The enhanced DIM command will make you seriously reconsider how you dimension from now on. Think of it as Quick Dimensions but on steroids. Its a one-stop, do-all dimension feature which actually previews the dimension before you make your selection.
PDF support? Still there of course, but now it’s much more flexible, with its own publishing dialog and options. It should also be much faster.
Reality Computing (Point Clouds) got its fair share of loving too, including support for sectioning, transparency control, point cloud-specific object snaps, and Dynamic UCS support.
Any visualization changes? Oh yeah! The Render engine has gone, replaced with a new and improved version. It is physically based, making it easier yet creating much better results.
Design & BIM based collaboration gets some love. External Reference support is expanded to include Navisworks Files (NWD or NWC). This allows for the attachment of the “Coordination Model”, for an additional collaboration option.
What’s Next?
Over the next week (or so), we’ll be posting deeper dives into the new features.
- Conducting Your Best Drawing Ever With AutoCAD 2016 [User Interface & Installation]
- Drawing Circles around the Competition with AutoCAD 2016 [Documentation]
- Orchestrating the Drawing of a Lifetime (with AutoCAD 2016) [Design & BIM]
