AutoCAD

Happy New Year! Now, What’s Coming In 2013?

2012 has been a year of achievements for AutoCAD WS. With nearly 10,000,000 users worldwide, AutoCAD WS has become the leading mobile and web CAD app for on-site work, collaboration and design. As we’re wrapping up 2012, let’s take a look back at what we’ve done in this passing year and what we’re working on for 2013.

Let’s start with exploring some of the milestones we had in 2012: Early this year we introduced viewing of 3D designs within AutoCAD WS and a set of geo-location tools based on the device’s GPS sensor. Our next version introduced the Design Feed, a popular new feature gaining more and more momentum and offers you a new way to manage your markups and comments in the design and review or discuss them with your colleague, engineer, architect or contractor. We also featured attaching images to the design and last but not least, we’ve made significant improvements in the application’s interface, turning the viewing and editing experience smoother and even more enjoyable. 2012 was a fascinating year for us as we expended the boundaries on one hand and on the other constantly kept improving the existing tools. We saw the amazing changes that AutoCAD WS has brought into different industries and how taking your tablet to the field can significantly increase your productivity and collaborative work.

So, what’s coming in 2013 you ask? well, 2013 is going to be a huge year for AutoCAD WS. If you think 2012 was packed with goodies, just wait, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In 2013 you can expect big announcements along with some long awaited features. We don’t want to give away too many spoilers but what we can say is that if this has been a repeating request, there’s a good chance you’ll see it even sooner than you think. Is it going to be creation of new drawings? Coordinates and ID? Supporting larger files? Additional design and annotation tools? Win8 version? The list of possibilities is so long.. who knows.. (well, we do but you will too soon).

We would like to thank our millions of users again for your amazing support and feedback in 2012. As AutoCAD WS continues to grow as a rich, secured and robust CAD application, we would like to invite you all to share your thoughts and feedback with us. If you want to share your story about how you or your company use AutoCAD WS, if you like to see other features in the product or if you just want to say hello, please write to us at feedback@autocadws.com

We wish you all a Happy New Year!

The AutoCAD WS team.

Introducing the Design Feed – AutoCAD WS 1.5 Available Now

The first thing you need to know is that the latest update for AutoCAD WS is available now.

You can download version 1.5 of the AutoCAD WS Mobile App now on the App Store or from Google Play. The web version of the app will be automatically updated the next time you log in with your browser at www.autocadws.com.

The second thing you should know is that this is no ordinary update. We have taken the best things about the social web and infused them into the design process.  We recognized the need to provide tools that help you collaborate with your team on your own time in an intuitive and streamlined way.

With this new release we have added the Design Feed to both the mobile and the web app. The Design Feed is a major leap forward for AutoCAD WS giving users an in-drawing, interactive feed that enables context-specific posts and responses to turn your drawing into a living document.

Design Feed

Using the Design Feed you can attach a post to a specific point or area in your drawing to draw attention to a feature of your design and encourage discussion.

Your can target specific colleagues or friends with a post by tagging their email address. The people you tag will receive an automated email letting them know that the drawing has been shared with them and that a post has been created that requires their attention.

Add Photo

The latest release of AutoCAD WS allows users to add photos to their drawings. You can attach an image to your posts to provide clarity or to brainstorm ideas. You can place a photo anywhere in your drawing and move and resize it just like any other object.

You can also add an image to a post in the Design Feed to further illustrate your point and drive the discussion forwards.

For more information about the new Design Feed, watch our video below:

New Features In AutoCAD WS Web Version

In addition to the changes that have been made to the AutoCAD WS Mobile App for iOS and Android, we have also added a number of features specifically to the web version of AutoCAD WS that you can find at www.autocadws.com.

There are four features key features that have been added to the web version AutoCAD WS to reflect the way users traditionally interact with AutoCAD.

Command Line Toggle

We have added a simple button to the bottom of the screen alongside the toggle for Snap, Ortho and Line Weight. Even with the Command Line turned off, you can still type any of the usual commands that are present in AutoCAD WS to activate them as normal.

ID Point

You can now determine the in-drawing co-ordinates of any given point by typing “ID” within the web version of AutoCAD WS. Once you are prompted to select a point you can do so by clicking or by using the Snap feature to click a specific point on an object. The co-ordinates are given as an x, y, z reference relative to the origin point of the drawing.

Align

The Align function has been added to the Drawing ribbon in the web version of AutoCAD WS. It functions in the same way as the align function in AutoCAD, except that while AutoCAD WS only supports 2D objects, Align will only require two source and destination points rather than the usual three.

To align an object or objects click the Align button. You will be prompted to select all the objects you wish to align. The Align command can be performed on any shape that can be moved or scaled. You will then be prompted to identify a first source and destination point and then a second source and destination point. The objects will be aligned based on the vectors selected.

You can also trigger the Align command by typing AL or ALIGN.

Radius and Diameter Dimension

We have added two new dimension measuring options to the toolbar to allow you to determine the radius and diameter of any arc or circle. Click on the Radius or the Diameter button from the Dimension drop down list and then select the arc or circle you want to measure to add the dimension annotation to your drawing.

What would you like to see next?

We are already planning the features for inclusion in the next release of AutoCAD WS. Let us know in the comments or on our Facebook page what you would like to see added next.

Learning to Share with AutoCAD WS

One of the things we were most proud of when we launched AutoCAD WS was that the functionality we had included in the app might herald a new era of collaboration and sharing among CAD users. Until the arrival of AutoCAD WS, if you wanted to show your work to others, you had a number of options:

  • You could send the original file to people and then try to manage the different versions you got back with different markups.
  • You could save your drawing to another format, like PDF, and email that.
  • You could print out your drawing and deliver it via bicycle messenger.
  • Or, for a truly read-only experience, you could invite people to come and look at your computer screen!

AutoCAD WS is a great leap forward enabling you to share your work with anyone with an email address and a web browser.

But for many people, sharing is as much a matter of temperament as it is functionality. One customer of ours who works in construction told me that he loves the share functionality, but that no architect has ever let him see a soft copy of the plans. Not everyone wants to share.

For those of you having difficulty letting go, here is a recap of the permission types that are available in both the web and the mobile versions of AutoCAD WS.

Permissions

There are two types of permissions:

  • Edit
  • Download

This means there are four different combinations of permissions:

  • Edit and Download – Users can edit the drawing using AutoCAD WS and download it to work on it offline.
  • Edit but not Download – Users can edit the drawing online using AutoCAD WS but they cannot download the file from within the app.
  • Download but not Edit – Users cannot edit existing objects with AutoCAD WS. They can only add to and mark up the drawing. In addition, the drawing may be downloaded (including additions and markups) and edited offline.
  • Not Edit and not Download – Users cannot edit existing objects with AutoCAD WS. They can only add to and mark up the drawing. Users cannot download the drawing

Sharing

I hope this will give you the confidence you need to start sharing your work with others. It’s a great way to mark design milestones with clients and colleagues and it will help you collect feedback and achieve consensus.

Tell us about the last project you shared with AutoCAD WS either in the comments or on our Facebook page.

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