The following is an overview of the changes made to the AutoCAD 2019 release, including the AutoCAD 2018 Update, AutoCAD 2018, and AutoCAD 2017 Update releases.
The following is a summary of the primary improvements to the AutoCAD 2019 release.
You can Share designs with clients and colleagues within or outside your organization without releasing your drawing files. This feature replaces Share Design View.
The Shared Views feature extracts design data from your current drawing, stores it in the cloud, and generates a link that you can share with colleagues and clients. The Shared Views palette displays a list of all your shared views, where you can access comments, delete views, or extend them beyond their 30-day lifespan.
When your colleagues or clients receive the link from you, they can use Autodesk Viewer, which operates from their web browser, to view, review, comment, and mark up views from any web-enabled PC, tablet, or mobile device.
Primary commands: SHAREDVIEWS, SHAREVIEW
You can now open and save your drawings with your online Autodesk Web & Mobile Account in a remote location using a tablet or desktop computer.
Save To AutoCAD Web & Mobile is a subscription feature that stores your drawing files in your online Autodesk Web & Mobile Account. Your drawings then become accessible for viewing and editing from any of your internet-connected devices, such as a tablet when you're in the field or using a desktop computer in a remote location with an internet connection and a web browser.
This feature is available only on 64-bit systems.
Primary commands: OPENFROMWEBMOBILE, SAVETOWEBMOBILE
With the DWG Compare feature, you can highlight the differences in model space between two revisions of the same drawing or different drawings. Using colors, you can differentiate between the objects that are unique to each drawing and the objects that are in common. You can exclude objects from being compared by turning off their layers.
Primary commands: COMPARE, COMPAREINFO
Potential security exploits are continuously being researched, identified, and closed. For AutoCAD 2019-based products, a new system variable, SECUREREMOTEACCESS, is introduced, which can be set to restrict access to files from internet or remote server locations.
Due to persistent and accelerating cyber security threats, the AutoCAD Security feature team continues to strongly recommend that you install all AutoCAD-based product updates as they become available.
For this release, Autodesk invested the software engineering resources equivalent to a new AutoCAD feature dedicated to improving software performance. Additional work continues to improve 2D and 3D graphics performance. Performance gains vary significantly depending on your system resources and the size and content of the drawing.
For example, here are some typical results in one of our test drawings that included a number of attached images. The time required for commands that changed the color, layer, or linetype properties in the drawing was reduced from around 4 seconds to around 0.6 seconds, QSAVE in that same drawing was reduced from 1.4 seconds to around 0.5 seconds, and a REGEN was reduced from about 0.7 seconds to 0.1 seconds. While performance varies in each situation, it's more crisp overall. Additional investment in fixing customer-reported defects also contributed to increasing product quality.
The following is a summary of the primary improvements to the AutoCAD 2018 Update release.
You can now easily create, retrieve, and place model views together with automatically sized and scaled layout viewports onto the current layout. When selected, layout viewport objects display two additional grips, one for moving the viewport, and the other for setting the display scale from a list of commonly used scales.
Primary commands and system variables: MVIEW, NEWVIEW
The 3D graphics performance for the Wireframe, Realistic, and Shaded visual styles continues to increase depending on the content of the DWG files tested. For example, the median value for the frames-per-second performance in the six large benchmark models used increased by 37% in the AutoCAD 2018 Update as compared to AutoCAD 2018.
Primary commands and system variables: 3DORBIT, ZOOM, PAN, VSCURRENT
Support for high resolution monitors continues to be improved in the AutoCAD 2018.1 Update. More than 200 dialog boxes and other User Interface elements have been updated to ensure a quality viewing experience on high-resolution (4K) displays. Examples include the Edit Layer State and Insert Table dialog boxes as well as the Visual LISP editor.
Potential security exploits are continuously being researched, identified, and closed. Significant Autodesk engineering resources are invested in response to increased activity by cyber criminals and foreign intelligence services. Due to persistent and accelerating cyber security threats, the AutoCAD Security feature team strongly recommends that you install all AutoCAD-based product updates as they become available.
To provide more flexibility for controlling xref overrides, the Layer Settings dialog box, which is accessed from the Layer Properties Manager, includes new controls for managing Xref layer properties. When the option to retain overrides to xref layer properties is turned on with the VISRETAIN system variable, you can now specify which xref layer properties that you want to reload. The various layer property options are stored in the registry as specified by the new VISRETAINMODE system variable. The Layer Properties Manager also includes a new status icon to indicate when a layer associated with an xref includes overrides.
Primary commands and system variables: LAYER, VISRETAIN, VISRETAINMODE, XREFOVERRIDE
The Help home page now includes a new heading called Have You Tried. If you click the link under it, you'll see that the topic is organized into two sections:
You can also access the Have You Tried topic by clicking here: Have You Tried . . .
The following is a summary of the primary improvements to the AutoCAD 2018 and AutoCAD 2017 Update releases.
User interface elements such as the cursor, navigation bar, and UCS icon display correctly on high-resolution (4K) monitors. Most dialog boxes, palettes, and toolbars are correctly adjusted to the Windows setting for the display scale. For the best results use Windows 10 due to operation system limitations, and use a DX11-capable graphics card.
PDF files generated from AutoCAD drawings that contain SHX text store the text as geometric objects. You can use the PDFSHXTEXT command to convert the SHX geometry back into text, which now includes an option to use the best matching SHX font. The TXT2MTXT command has been enhanced with several improvements including the option to force uniform line spacing.
Primary commands: PDFIMPORT, PDFSHXTEXT, TXT2MTXT
The improvements include the following:
Primary system variables: LINESMOOTHING, HQGEOM, SELECTIONOFFSCREEN, OPTIONS
The default path type for external references is now set to Relative. Two new path options are available: Select New Path, and Find and Replace. Additional capabilities include the following:
Primary command and system variable: EXTERNALREFERENCES, REFPATHTYPE
Additional performance improvements have been made when using 3DORBIT, and panning and zooming with the following 3D visual styles: Wireframe, Realistic, and Shaded. For best results, we recommend that you use a 64-bit machine and a compatible graphics card.
Primary commands: 3DORBIT, ZOOM, PAN, VSCURRENT
The DWG format has been updated to provide improvements in the efficiency of open and save operations, especially for drawings that contain many annotative objects and viewports. Additionally, 3D solid and surface creation now uses the newest geometric modeler (ASM), which provides improved security and stability.
Primary commands: OPEN, QSAVE, SAVEAS
On January 16, 2017, Autodesk transferred the operations and customer support obligations related to the Autodesk Seek business to BIMobject Corporation (see bimobject.com). Access to BIM content is now accessible through a BIMobject app on the Add-ins ribbon tab, and other access has been removed from the AutoCAD user interface.