No, AutoCAD 2006 hasn’t started shipping so you haven’t missed anything yet. I have been given this rare opportunity to give you a glimpse at what has been in the works since AutoCAD 2005 has shipped. So before you call and ask your reseller where your copy is they might not even know yet. Now onto the sneak peak of AutoCAD 2006.
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There are many new and exciting features in AutoCAD 2006 that will help to improve your overall productivity with the product. The installation process and migration process has been fine tuned in this release to help get you up to speed much quicker than ever before. Below are some of the great new migration tools that Autodesk has improved upon or has built into this release.
• The New Feature Workshop has been updated to introduce you to many of the large and small enhancements in AutoCAD 2006.
• The Migration Custom Settings application that was introduced back in AutoCAD 2005 has been tweaked to improve the transitioning from a previous release. If you are transitioning for a release like 2002, 2004 or 2005 this will share make things easier on you.
• Menu customization has made a huge jump forward over AutoCAD 2005 and earlier releases. Autodesk has invested sometime in making it easy for just about any user of AutoCAD to be able to customize menus. They have introduced a new CUI (Customize User Interface) tool that allows you to visually make changes to the AutoCAD environment. With the introduction of the new CUI tool they changed the file format of the menu file to get rid of some confusion with the whole MNU vs. MNS debate. So there is now only one menu file that holds the menu content.
They have also introduced a couple new features when it comes to being able to working with the AutoCAD UI. These features include the ability to lock Toolbars and Tool Palettes on screen so they can’t be moved, a new Temporary Overrides feature and WorkSpaces.
Along with the many great new changes to be able to customize the AutoCAD User Interface and menus, they have made many great new changes to blocks. Have you ever looked at your block library and thought there must be an easier way to manage all these blocks. Do you have some blocks that are very close in-use to each other in your block library? Maybe you have 10 blocks for valves and they are just slightly different in representation by a little bit. Wouldn’t it be great to have the option of changing one block out for another which out have to search for it in your block library? I know Autodesk did because they have implemented a feature called Dynamic blocks.
Dynamic blocks allow you to build some intelligence into your block library. It allows you to move nested geometry in a block or even stretch a block and have it update the block with a new representation. To do this you use the new Block Editor feature that allows you to implement actions and parameters on geometry with in a block. Below is an example of a Dynamic Block that allows you to rotate the point of the arrow around the center of the circle.
This allows the attributes or text to remain correctly orientated. Notice that there is an arrow at the bottom of the symbol. This allows you to quickly flip or mirror the geometry around a defined plan. Just think. You could now create a single door block and provide a left-hand and right-hand option built into the block. Below is an image of what the Block Editor interface looks like. It is a drawing window with some special new tools like the Toolbar located along the top of the drawing window and the Block Authoring Palette.
Some other great enhancements for blocks is the ability to lock attributes in place so they can’t be moved, the ability to restrict a block from being exploded through the BMake command and the option to force blocks to be scaled only uniformly. These new features help CAD Managers sleep much better at night knowing their blocks can’t be exploded accidentally or voluntarily.
Some of the other features that are nice to see in this new release of AutoCAD are:
- The ability to edit the scale lists that are used throughout the application
(ie. Plot dialog box and Viewports) - The new ability to have formulas in Table cells (Sum, Count and mathematic symbols)
- The new changes to Mtext and Dimensions are nice touches. Mtext now supports bulleted lists and Dimensions have been expanded to include two new Dimension Objects. These two new dimension objects include Arc Lengths and Jogged symbols for arcs and circles.
If you couldn’t find a reason to upgrade to AutoCAD 2005, you will want to take a close look at AutoCAD 2006. There are just so many enhancements across the board that every user will benefit from this release. Keep an eye on this blog for more information on AutoCAD 2006 in the up coming weeks.
Sincerely,
Lee
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