AutoCAD 2015 AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New TABLE of CONTENTS User Interaction......................................................................................... 4 New Tab................................................................................................ 4 Create.............................................................................................. 4 Learn................................................................................................ 5 Help.........................
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Paragraph tabs................................................................................ 24 Match Properties.............................................................................. 25 Text alignment................................................................................. 26 Dimension enhancements.................................................................... 26 Polyline enhancements..........................................................
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New User interaction New Tab One of the first things you’ll notice in Autodesk® AutoCAD® 2015 software is the New Tab. It displays as a file tab when you launch AutoCAD, when there are no drawings open, and when you create a new tab. The New Tab contains two sliding content frames: Learn and Create.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New In the Recent Documents column you can view and open your recent drawings. You can pin them to ensure they remain on the list. Icons at the bottom of the column enable you to change how you preview the recent drawings: thumbnail view, thumbnail and text view, or just text view. The third column displays notifications such as hardware acceleration, trial period, and where to download offline help.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Help The AutoCAD Help system includes a new way to help you locate tools in the AutoCAD user interface (UI) directly from the relevant Help content. In the Help window, click the tool you want to use or the Find link next to it. An animated arrow points you directly to that tool in the AutoCAD Ribbon.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Color schemes AutoCAD 2015 offers a modern, dark-themed interface that includes the Ribbon, status bar, and palettes. The new dark-themed interface combined with the traditional dark model space minimizes the contrast between the drawing space and the surrounding tools to help reduce eye strain. You can easily change between the dark theme and a more traditional light theme using the Color Scheme control on the Display tab of the Options dialog box.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Workspaces The Workspace drop-down list has been turned off in the Quick Access toolbar. You can turn it on or switch workspaces using the control on the status bar. The option for classic workspace has been removed. Ribbon enhancements The Ribbon is updated to support the dark color theme as well as improve efficiency for accessing tools.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New View Ribbon Tools on the reorganized View Ribbon tab make it easier to control the visibility of UI elements such as the UCS icon, ViewCube, Navigation bar, and Layout tabs. BIM 360 Ribbon A new BIM 360 Ribbon offers easy access to tools for sharing your AutoCAD models and viewing clash results with the project team using Autodesk® BIM 360 TM Glue® online service. Layouts Layout tabs are enhanced to include a new plus (+) icon for quickly adding new layouts.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New The appearance of layout sheets has been updated and a new color option, accessible from the Colors button on the Display tab of the Options dialog box, enables you to control the paper background color. Improved graphics AutoCAD 2015 offers an improved graphics experience without compromising performance. Line smoothing The LINESMOOTHING variable enables you to turn on anti-aliasing of drawings in viewports configured with the 2D wireframe visual style.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New You can enable Smooth Line Display in the Graphics Performance dialog box. It does not affect plotting. Create and edit enhancements AutoCAD 2015 offers improved visual feedback when creating and editing objects. During a move operation, the selected objects are displayed in their originalposition with a faded deletion effect instead of a dashed selection effect.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New AutoCAD 2015 displays color, linetype, and lineweight for lines and polylines as you draw them. Selection enhancements Lasso selection In AutoCAD 2015 you can click the cursor in a blank area of the drawing and then drag around objects to create a lasso selection. For a traditional rectangular window or crossing selection, click and release to pick each corner of the rectangle.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Selection effects AutoCAD 2015 offers modern and clear feedback when you preselect and select objects. As you pass the cursor over an object in the drawing, the line geometry appears thicker and darker or lighter depending on the background color. If hardware acceleration is turned on, selecting an object changes its color and it remains thickened to clearly identify it as part of the selection set.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Visual Effect Settings Improved graphics and performance in AutoCAD 2015 reduces the need to individually control line and face highlighting. Those controls and associated system variables (PREVIEWEFFECT and PREVIEWFACEEFFECT) have been removed from the Visual Effect Settings dialog box, which is accessible from the Selection tab of the Options dialog box.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Command Preview A new Command Preview control on the Selection tab of the Options dialog box enables you to preview the results of Trim, Extend, Lengthen, Break, and MatchProp operations prior to actually selecting the objects. The new Command Preview control also affects preview for Fillet, Chamfer, and Offset operations. The Trim and Extend tools are enhanced in AutoCAD 2015 to provide a preview of the results before you commit to the selection.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New When selecting an object to extend, it is clearly identified and temporarily extended. The Lengthen tool also supports command preview. It has been further enhanced in AutoCAD 2015 to default to the last lengthen option (delta, percent, total, dynamic) so you are no longer required to specify an option each time you launch the command. The Break tool displays the results of the Break operation prior to specifying the second break point.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New After selecting a source object from which to match properties, the MatchProp tool temporarily displays those properties on the destination objects as you pass the cursor over them to select. Cursor enhancements The cursor is enhanced in AutoCAD 2015 to provide contextual feedback. It includes badges to reflect the state of many common operations. The crosshairs have been removed from the inside of the pick box to make it easier to see what you’re picking.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Rotation badges are displayed when specifying the angle of rotation during a Rotate operation. The badge displays a clockwise or counter-clockwise arrow according to the direction specified by the Drawing Units. Relevant badges are displayed for other editing commands including Copy, Move, and Scale. Zoom and Erase/Delete also display relevant badges.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Model space viewports Model space viewports have been significantly enhanced in AutoCAD 2015 offering more flexibility and greater ease-of-use. After creating multiple viewports in model space, a bright blue boundary clearly identifies the active viewport. You can easily resize any of the viewports by dragging the horizontal or vertical viewport boundaries. Drag the intersection to resize viewports both horizontally and vertically at the same time.
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AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Layer sort Layer lists are now displayed using natural ordered sort. For example, the layer names 1, 4, 25, 6, 21, 2, 10 are sorted as 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 21, 25 instead of 1, 10, 2, 25, 21, 4, 6. Natural ordered sort applies to all layer lists including the Hatch Editor Ribbon tab and Quick Select just to name a few. You can restore the ASCII sort used in previous releases by changing the new SORTORDER system variable to 0.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Document Mtext enhancements The Mtext editor is updated in AutoCAD 2015 offer better visibility and control. The background is now transparent when hardware acceleration is enabled so you can see drawing geometry even when the editor opens on top of it. A corner resizer offers more obvious and intuitive resizing of coumns, enabling you to adjust both the height and width at the same time.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Then when you begin a line with a symbol or with a number or letter followed by one of these characters and a space or tab, AutoCAD automatically creates a bullet or numbered list: “.”, “)”, “>”, “}”, “,” or “]”. An icon indicates that automatic bullets or numbering has started. You can click on the icon to access relevant controls including an option to remove bullets or numbering.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Autostack Autostacking of fractions is simplified in AutoCAD 2015. When you enter numbers with a forward slash, for example 1/20, AutoCAD automatically treats it as a fraction and displays it as such. An icon indicates that the text has been stacked. You can click on the icon to access relevant controls for that stacked fraction. For example, you can change between diagonal and horizontal stacking, unstack the characters, or access Stack Properties.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New A new Modify button in the Paragraph dialog box enables you to easily modify the values of existing tabs. Match Properties A Match Properties tool has been added to the Text Editor Ribbon tab and toolbar, enabling you to apply properties between selected text within an mtext object. It’s available for all objects that use mtext, including dimensions and tables. When you choose Match Properties in the Mtext editor, a paintbrush icon is displayed at the cursor.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Text alignment The new TEXTALIGN command enables you to quickly align single- and multi-text as well as attribute text by selecting the text objects to align and then picking the text you want them to align with or selecting points to manually define the alignment line.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New You can control object snap behavior for dimension extension lines with a new option on the Drafting tab of the Options dialog box. When you create continuous or baseline dimensions with the DIMCONTINUEMODE system variable set to 1, AutoCAD inherits the layer in addition to the dimension style of the dimension that is being continued or used as a baseline. Polyline enhancements You can now fillet polyline arc segments.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Geographic location Geographic location functionality is significantly streamlined and enhanced in AutoCAD 2015. You can set the geographic location from a map using the Set Location tool on the Insert Ribbon tab. You must be signed into your Autodesk 360 account to access Online Map Data.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New When you’re satisfied with the location, the Next button leads you to the second page where you specify the coordinate system. Based on the marker location, AutoCAD 2015 lists only relevant coordinate systems. You can use the search field to further filter the relevant coordinate systems selecting the most appropriate one.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New One of the most exciting enhancements to geographic location functionality is the ability to capture and plot map data. New tools on the Geolocation Ribbon tab enable you to capture an area or viewport for plotting purposes and to preserve the current map data. The map that you capture is embedded into the drawing, so that when you turn off online map data or have no Internet access, you can still view and plot the specified map area.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New You can select the embedded map image and use grips to move, resize, and even rotate the image boundary. When you change the image boundary, AutoCAD automatically re-queries the online map data and updates the image accordingly. A contextual Map Image Ribbon tab displays additional relevant tools when a map image is selected. Use these tools to choose from aerial, road, or hybrid representations of the map.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Slider bars on the Map Image Ribbon tab enable you to adjust the brightness, contrast, and fading of the map image so that you can more easily see relevant AutoCAD geometry. To avoid inadvertently changing the map data, the map image does not automatically update from the map service provider when you open the drawing. The map image is only updated when you move, scale, or edit the boundary of the map image or when you use the Reload Image tool.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New One of the most valuable enhancements to geographic location functionality is the ability to include this valuable map data when printing. If you attempt to print without previously capturing the map, a warning reminds you that the map will not be printed. Design Reality capture Support for reality capture is significantly enhanced in AutoCAD 2015 to provide better performance and more flexibility when working with point cloud files.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New After attaching a point cloud file, you can select it to access the Point Cloud contextual Ribbon, which includes several valuable updates.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Display On the Display panel you can now control the point size. For example, if your point cloud file is sparse on points, you can increase the point size to visually fill in the gaps. In this example the point size was increased from 1 to 3. The Autoupdate tool was removed and the previous Density and Realtime Density sliders were replaced by a single Level of Detail slider.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Visualization New colorization options have been added to help you visualize the point cloud in more ways and the Color Mapping tool is enhanced to support those options. You can now visualize point cloud data based on elevation or classification in addition to scan colors, object color, normal, and intensity if the data exists in the point cloud. The former Point Cloud Intensity Color Mapping dialog box is replaced with the new Point cloud Color Map dialog box.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New New Lighting tools on the Visualization panel enable you to view point clouds with various lighting effects, such as single- or double-sided, diffuse or specular, and single- or double- source.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Cropping Previous point cloud clipping tools are replaced with more intuitive and flexible cropping tools. In AutoCAD 2015, the cropping boundary is always normal to the screen so you can easily specify the cropping boundary from the most intuitive viewpoint. Choose from rectangular, polygonal, or circular boundary shapes. The Invert tool enables you to easily invert the specified boundary to reverse displaying points inside or outside the boundary.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New After specifying an appropriate cropping boundary from one view (such as plan), change to another view (such as elevation) to intuitively specify the cropping boundary for the height. You can continue to change views and create cropping boundaries to focus on just the area of the point cloud that you need. Point Cloud Manager A new Point Cloud Manager makes it easier than ever to work with multiple point clouds.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Point cloud object snaps AutoCAD 2015 offers new Point cloud object snaps, which are accessible from the 3D Object Snap tab of the Drafting Settings dialog box. For easier access to point cloud object snaps, customize the status bar to display the 3D Object Snap tool.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New You can snap to points on the point cloud with the Node point cloud object snap. If the point cloud has segmentation data, you can snap to the nearest point on planar segments or perpendicular to planar segments. You can use the UCS tool and specify the Object function to align the current UCS to a plane in a point cloud. 3DOrbit To further help with navigation, 3DOrbit functionality is enhanced to offer better control of the target point of the orbit.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Connect Design Feed The Design Feed palette provides a way of adding messages and images to a drawing, which you can then share with colleagues, clients, and consultants online through Autodesk 360. The Design Feed posts are available in a drawing whether you access them on the desktop, on the web, or with a mobile device.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New If you associate your comment with a location or area within the drawing, a corresponding bubble is displayed. When you select a comment in Design Feed, AutoCAD zooms to the corresponding part of the drawing. If you select a bubble in the drawing, the corresponding comment is selected in Design Feed. The Settings drop-down menu on the Design Feed palette lets you control the display of the bubbles.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New If you save a local or network drawing under another file name, you can choose to copy the Design Feed comments as well. Choosing this option saves an independent copy of the Design Feed data for the new drawing. The Design Feed for both the original and the new drawing are initially identical, but any subsequent changes to the Design Feed of one of the drawings is not duplicated in the other.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New Autodesk Translation Framework The new Autodesk Translation Framework (ATF) is used when importing model data from popular file formats, including CATIA® (V4 and V5), Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks®, Parasolid®, JT, NX, STEP, Rhino®, and IGES/IGS. ATF supports importing of meshes and curves as well as object colors and layers when you select any of these file formats from the Import tool and when using the IGESIMPORT command.
AutoCAD 2015: Complete Guide to What’s New When Hardware Acceleration is turned on, you have access to a variety of controls that can improve the appearance of your display. Button images Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is added to the list of supported file formats for button images.
Application Manager The Autodesk Application Manager is integrated into AutoCAD 2015. You can access it from a new icon on the system tray. The Autodesk Application Manager is a desktop tool that helps you stay current with the latest updates for all your installed Autodesk applications and suites by delivering timely messages about new service packs, hotfixes, and other important files as they become available.
