AutoCAD 2005

reprinted by permission of Ralph Grabowski, editor

September 16, 2003

A recent survey by Autodesk hints at the nature of the next release of AutoCAD. The survey asks customers for their level of interest in the following functions [my comments in square brackets]:

• Sharing symbols and styles across multiple drawings [I wonder if this means that a master drawing sets up blocks and styles for sub-drawings; change blocks or styles in the master drawing to update all related drawings].
• External references to layouts and blocks in other drawings [xrefs are currently limited to referencing model space; to xref entire layouts or just a single block is an interesting concept].
• Check-out and locking of subsets of large drawings [probably allows two or more users to work on different areas or layers of the same drawing; already found in MicroStation and ArchiCAD].
• Locking of layers in DWG files [I am guessing this means password-locking of layers].
• DWF markup [Autodesk has already stated that DWF import will find its way into a future release of AutoCAD; this adds markups of DWFs within AutoCAD; already in Volo View].
• Check-in and -out of DWG files by multiple authors [could this be an extension of Inventor Vault to AutoCAD?].
• Automated creation of grid lines, to which designs are snapped and aligned [about time!].
• Visual table creation [ability to interactively create tables, such as BOMs, within AutoCAD].
• Blocks with greater intelligence and metadata, such as interaction with other blocks [if this is Actrix intelligence is being added, then AutoCAD will have blocks that automatically orient themselves; blocks that move when attached block are moved; parametric blocks; and so on. Metadata sounds to me like an improvement on attributes, still clunky after all these years].
• Dynamic dimensioning, where changing the dimension text changes the object size [we see this in solid modelers, like SolidWorks].

Other questions in the survey hint that the next release could be distributed on a DVD, might include more interactive help, and may do away with printed documentation [fine with me, I never read printed docs anymore].

As little as a year ago, "big release" was a bad word at Autodesk; instead, major releases were called "roll ups" or "big R." The idea was to ship one or more Extensions every 3-4 months, which would feed AutoCAD subscribers one or two new features at a time -- replacing upgrades that historically came with a large number of features, which apparently overwhelm users. [We book authors dislike extensions.]

Extensions were supposed to be the reason for subscriptions. Even if Autodesk failed to deliver a new release of AutoCAD within the 12-month period (as it often has), subscribers would at least get most of the features new to the next release.

That system happened for a couple of years. Recently I realized there had been no extensions for some time; last week Martyn Day searched the entire Autodesk website and found no new extensions; and most tellingly, CEO Carol Bartz has failed to mention extensions in any recent quarterly calls with financial analysts.

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