CADTutor
6th Feb 2009, 11:39 am
AutoCAD 2010
Well, I sat down in front of my PC last night between 8pm and 9pm GMT and watched the live webcast from Autodesk that effectively launched the AutoCAD 2010 campaign. This morning I have just read through the AutoCAD 2010 Preview Guide (http://autodesk.blogs.com/files/acad10_prev_guide.pdf).
My first reaction is very, very positive. There are a number of "headline" new features but probably the two most impressive are the new parametric drawing tools and the 3D mesh modelling tools. However, there are lots of smaller tweaks that will help to make our existing work more efficient. There have been some major changes to the Ribbon and the menu browser - all good, as far as I can see but the one thing that made me whoop with joy was the ability to change layer colour from the layer pull-down menu - no need to go the the layer manager. A small thing, I know but an anomaly that has bugged me for years.
Like previous releases of AutoCAD, 2010 has been heralded as a "watershed" release and for once, I think that might be true. Autodesk seem to have a new roadmap for AutoCAD and have repositioned the product within their portfolio. This is very good news for all AutoCAD users. In recent years, we have become used to Autodesk treating AutoCAD like the rather dim older brother of some younger, brighter siblings (Revit and Inventor) with the youngsters getting the bulk of the attention. For years I've been expecting Autodesk to announce the death of AutoCAD; it certainly went through a wilderness period when new releases contained nothing much more than minor tweaks. AutoCAD 2007 was a major release with the first significant improvements to solid modelling in almost 10 years. But many of us suspected that this was simply a ploy to counter the increasing popularity of SketchUp.
Autodesk seem to have rethought their strategy with regard to AutoCAD, billing it as a "freeform conceptual design tool" with a clearly defined separation between it and the "intelligent" Revit with Revit now being seen as the second step in the BIM workflow rather than a one-stop solution.
So, now in terms of workflow, everything begins with AutoCAD, whether the end result is a BIM (via Revit) or high-end visualisation (via Max or Maya).
The result of this repositioning of AutoCAD (we could probably now refer to it as the "prodigal son") is that Autodesk have invested a great deal of time and effort in improving almost every aspect of the product and is now the focus of their development efforts.
Of course there will be questions over the stability of a product after such massive changes but on balance, we should consider this as short-term pain for long-term gain. Inevitably, with the inclusion of fundamentally new features (to AutoCAD), a change in the DWG format is required and this is always a pain but again, it's a reasonable trade-off.
It's a long time since I could honestly say that the future looks bright for AutoCAD, but I can now. Autodesk are even considering a version for the Mac - how times change!
Have a look at the archived version of the webcast (http://www-waa-akam.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=b8ee560d5f66fcdd2dd3434d24276a6f&portal_id=e8d6b2435410f82d299c3ce1bae6f1f3)and let me know what you think.
9987
Well, I sat down in front of my PC last night between 8pm and 9pm GMT and watched the live webcast from Autodesk that effectively launched the AutoCAD 2010 campaign. This morning I have just read through the AutoCAD 2010 Preview Guide (http://autodesk.blogs.com/files/acad10_prev_guide.pdf).
My first reaction is very, very positive. There are a number of "headline" new features but probably the two most impressive are the new parametric drawing tools and the 3D mesh modelling tools. However, there are lots of smaller tweaks that will help to make our existing work more efficient. There have been some major changes to the Ribbon and the menu browser - all good, as far as I can see but the one thing that made me whoop with joy was the ability to change layer colour from the layer pull-down menu - no need to go the the layer manager. A small thing, I know but an anomaly that has bugged me for years.
Like previous releases of AutoCAD, 2010 has been heralded as a "watershed" release and for once, I think that might be true. Autodesk seem to have a new roadmap for AutoCAD and have repositioned the product within their portfolio. This is very good news for all AutoCAD users. In recent years, we have become used to Autodesk treating AutoCAD like the rather dim older brother of some younger, brighter siblings (Revit and Inventor) with the youngsters getting the bulk of the attention. For years I've been expecting Autodesk to announce the death of AutoCAD; it certainly went through a wilderness period when new releases contained nothing much more than minor tweaks. AutoCAD 2007 was a major release with the first significant improvements to solid modelling in almost 10 years. But many of us suspected that this was simply a ploy to counter the increasing popularity of SketchUp.
Autodesk seem to have rethought their strategy with regard to AutoCAD, billing it as a "freeform conceptual design tool" with a clearly defined separation between it and the "intelligent" Revit with Revit now being seen as the second step in the BIM workflow rather than a one-stop solution.
So, now in terms of workflow, everything begins with AutoCAD, whether the end result is a BIM (via Revit) or high-end visualisation (via Max or Maya).
The result of this repositioning of AutoCAD (we could probably now refer to it as the "prodigal son") is that Autodesk have invested a great deal of time and effort in improving almost every aspect of the product and is now the focus of their development efforts.
Of course there will be questions over the stability of a product after such massive changes but on balance, we should consider this as short-term pain for long-term gain. Inevitably, with the inclusion of fundamentally new features (to AutoCAD), a change in the DWG format is required and this is always a pain but again, it's a reasonable trade-off.
It's a long time since I could honestly say that the future looks bright for AutoCAD, but I can now. Autodesk are even considering a version for the Mac - how times change!
Have a look at the archived version of the webcast (http://www-waa-akam.thomson-webcast.net/us/dispatching/?event_id=b8ee560d5f66fcdd2dd3434d24276a6f&portal_id=e8d6b2435410f82d299c3ce1bae6f1f3)and let me know what you think.
9987