As AutoCAD 2013 (yes, that’s what it’s called, shock, horror!) has now been released in Japan (Google translation), I can start to discuss it. I’m not yet free to go into details about anything that does not have publicly released information avaialable, but here’s a brief summary of what I can say. I will discuss some of these things in more detail later.

• It has a powerful tool for mosquito aggregation (allows you to effortlessly gather together a Cloud of bugs)

OK, I’m kidding around, that’s just the Google translator struggling a little. Let’s get serious and list some new things that are easy enough to understand from the translation:

• Command-line options that you can click on (could be good, depends on how it performs)
• Other command-line changes (you can see in some of the screenshots that the command line now looks very different)
• Property editing preview (similar to the Microsoft Office feature where you can hover over a user interface element and have the contents dynamically show you the changes before you confirm with a click)
• Viewport preview of the changes (same kind of thing but with viewport display)
• View and cross-sectional view detailed diagram (Model Documentation improvements including sections and details)
• Strikethrough in text, leaders, tables, etc. (some will find this very useful)
• Inventor file import (again, useful to some if it works well)
• Latest user templates (updated with new title blocks, styles, etc.)
• Boundary stretching tool according to the situation (PressPull improvements)
• Extract the surface dividing line (looks like you can pick a point on a surface and have a line generated on it)
• More context-sensitive Ribbon tabs have been added
• Tool palettes can now be migrated (not that I trust Migration with anything)
• Autodesk Cloud connection (you can export drawings to the Cloud; more on this in later posts)
• Social media connection (I’m sure you’re all delighted to see Facebook and Twitter incorporated into AutoCAD; this makes perfect sense in a production environment)
• Windows Vista is no longer supported. You can use XP or Windows 7, but not the OS inbetween.

Here are some things that are not so easy to understand from the translation, so I won’t be commenting on them for now:

• Customize synchronization and support files
• Application of AutoCAD Autodesk Exchange

There are also several things listed that are specific to AutoCAD 2013 for Mac. The additional functionality here is because it’s still playing catch-up to fill in some of the many functionality holes, but there are still plenty of obvious holes left (e.g. DCL):

• Project Manager (the Sheet Set Manager)
• Multi-Edit Hatch
• Leader line that is included in the text up to the front
• PDF underlay

So, AutoCAD users, what do you think? In the days before you were financially press-ganged into Subscription, would you have called this a Compelling Upgrade? The sort of thing you would berate your boss to upgrade to? Anything there reach out and grab you?