The Autodesk annual Right of Spring continues this week with the release of AutoCAD 2026 and the AutoCAD 2026 Toolsets. There is something new in this recent release of AutoCAD 2026 for almost everyone.
Yes. There are many Autodesk Cloud and Autodesk Docs based improvements included in the new AutoCAD. Trust me. Everyone will like the program Start and File Open performance tweaks that are built into the core AutoCAD 2026.
AutoCAD 2026 ships with a huge list of powerful AutoCAD Toolsets that include:
- AutoCAD Map
- AutoCAD Raster Design
- AutoCAD Architecture
- AutoCAD Plant 3D
- AutoCAD Electrical
- AutoCAD MEP
- AutoCAD Mechanical
All the 2026 release AutoCAD Toolsets received improvements and fixes too numerous to mention here.
AutoCAD 2026 New Features
Here the Autodesk official introduction to AutoCAD 2026 video.
Introducing AutoCAD 2026
The AutoCAD 2026 release Help file and all the AutoCAD Toolset Help files are live.
See our Autodesk Online Help page for the links to all the AutoCAD Toolset Help files and What’s New Details. There are too many goodies to list here.
See the What’s New in AutoCAD Map 3D 2026 page.
See the News page for recent releases of important Autodesk 2026 integration code:
- Autodesk Licensing Service 15.1.0.12803 Update
- Autodesk Access 2.13 Update
- Autodesk Desktop Connector 16.13.0.2489
- Autodesk CER Service 7.1.4
- Autodesk Identity Manager 1.01.15.0
Autodesk recently released a significant AutoCAD Update to update the object model of the older AutoCAD 2025 release code. We can also probably expect additional AutoCAD Updates for other older releases real soon now.
AutoCAD Performance First
As stated in the video above, the AutoCAD 2026 improves program Start, File Open and AutoCAD graphics performance. This matters to us all. This is particularly true for us AutoCAD Map 2026 and Autodesk Civil 3D 2026 users out here in Civil 3D Land.
Once again in the AutoCAD 2026 release there is no DWG file format change.
From the AutoCAD 2026 on-line Help resources here’s the official What’s New in AutoCAD 2026 overview video.
What’s New in AutoCAD 2026
Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the new features in AutoCAD 2026.
AutoCAD 2026 New Features
Cloud Connected Support Files in AutoCAD Profiles
Connected Support Files allow AutoCAD 2026 to locate dependencies, such as fonts, plot styles, templates, and other support files based on the configuration defined for an Autodesk Docs project. Connected support files are project-aware and linked to the Autodesk Docs project they belong to.
In other words, AutoCAD now can find the necessary support files for drawings in an Autodesk Docs project without requiring configuration for each AutoCAD installation.
A New Activity Insight – What’s Changed
Activity Insights provides an understanding of the past actions performed on drawings. Activity Insights tracks events whenever a drawing file is opened and being worked on in AutoCAD. It can also track some events outside AutoCAD such as a drawing rename or copy in Windows Explorer.
The new AutoCAD 2026 What's Changed insight provides an overview of edits made and workflows employed between Saves.
Markup Import and Markup Assist Improvements
- Markup Assist now detects text, strikethroughs, and boundary markups (which can be inserted as revclouds) on PDFs that are imported and synced from Autodesk Docs.
- Markup Assist now detects any existing markups on a PDF created by Adobe or other markup software when the file is uploaded to Autodesk Docs.
- AutoDesk Docs Issues created and published on a PDF markup in Autodesk Docs can now be viewed in AutoCAD.
- Improvements were made to the task dialogs when importing markups into AutoCAD from Autodesk Docs. When importing markups from Autodesk Docs, the default name of the associated trace now contains the name of the PDF and a version number.
Improvements to Smart Blocks
The BSEARCH command (formerly known as BCONVERT) will find all instances of the same geometry in a drawing for more efficient block conversion.
- AutoCAD finds and highlights all instances of the same geometry
- Choose to convert the selected geometry and the found instances into a block
- Pick a block from the current drawing, a recently used block, or similar blocks in a block library identified by the machine learning algorithm
- Convert the source object or the selected instances to a new block.
- In the Convert dialog box, define a new block by specifying a block name and insertion point. By default, the insertion point is set to the center of the selected geometry.
With the AutoCAD 2026 release, Search and Convert also finds text variations to convert into block attributes. This new capability is helpful for classifying repetitive but variable types of text, such as hotel room numbers, room names, or other repetitive text tags in drawings.
GDI Plot Enhancement
AutoCAD 2026 improves the compatibility with Windows system printers, handling custom configuration settings more effectively. This enhancement is enabled by default. Plot using your preferred Windows system printer as usual. The printer's custom settings will be used during printing and saved to a .PC3 file.
Improved Raster Performance
Raster images now load asynchronously in the background during the opening of a drawing file.
GPU Text
The selection effect of GPU text has been enhanced to improve display quality.
A new option in the Graphics Performance dialog box provides better control over the display of TrueType fonts while using GPU acceleration. GPU text processing has been optimized for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
GPU text optimization for TrueType fonts is available in DirectX 12 Advanced Mode only. Use the GRAPHICSCONFIG command to verify the support of the graphics device.
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