It comes as no surprise that the annual Autodesk Right of Spring began this year on the first day of spring with the release of AutoCAD 2018. AutoCAD 2018 introduces a new version of the DWG format which is both a performance and model capability upgrade to the 2013 DWG format employed in releases 2013-2017.
AutoCAD 2018
2018 is a classic core engine upgrade release. You can expect improved performance for more complex models and drawings with large annotative object collections. Some of the little things in the release are worth a considerable number of productive man-hours if you put them to use. A sortable Open box is a good thing as are better External reference management tools and feedback when things go awry and get lost in the project shuffle.
Here’s an AutoCAD 2018 video playlist. You can use the list control to pick your video.
The AutoCAD 2018 Playlist
Certainly for civil and survey folk, what the AutoCAD Civil 3D and Map 3D 2018 releases do with the new ACAD 2018 engine and database will be most significant in the long term.
You should note that many new AutoCAD 2018 features also appear in the AutoCAD 2017.1 update. Maybe you missed them.
The AutoCAD 2018 Preview Guide by Heidi Hewett with screen shot and short explanation of features.
Heidi’s blog post in available on the AutoCAD blog.
AutoCAD 2018 YouTube page with lots of short videos on the new features
AutoCAD 2018 System Requirements
Some of the new enhancements in AutoCAD 2018 already appeared in AutoCAD 2017.1 Service Pack.
Those include:
- Linetype gap selection enhancements
- Off screen selection
- PDF enhancements
- Text to MTEXT enhancements
- High resolution (4K) monitor support
- REGEN3 command
- 3D navigation performance
New in AutoCAD 2018 – see the Preview Guide and YouTube pages for details
- New DWG format
- Open Performance
- Save Performance
- New 3D solid and surface geometric modeler engine
- New File Open, Drafting Settings, and Select Color dialog boxes and capabilities
- Interface Improvements
- Better PDF import
- Improved External Reference management and feedback
- Share Design Views for AutoCAD 360
- AutoCAD Mobile