By now you should have already received your Autodesk 2008 software. If you’re an IT professional, you may have some angst because it’s that time of year when your users are asking you why they don’t have the latest release installed on their machine? You’re probably wondering if it’s really worth the cost of deploying the latest software. If you’re an end-user, you may be eager to see the new features or perhaps you’re leery of what the learning curve may be.

AutoCAD 2008
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008
AutoCAD Land Desktop 2008
AutoCAD Map 3D 2008

AutoCAD 2008

  Mark Roach, Platform Applications Specialist

Summary
AutoCAD has been ever-changing over that last 20 or so years and AutoCAD 2008 is one of those releases that will make “AutoCAD History”.  With new External Data Linking, Annotative Object Scaling, and MultiLeaders alone, it is more than worth the upgrade!  New changes and improvements have been made to the interface, as well as Layers, MText, and Dimensions.

If you’ve been wondering if it’s worth installing the new version or getting the new upgrade, I’m telling you that now would be the time.  AutoCAD’s newest file format is AutoCAD 2007 and many companies are starting to use the newer versions (AutoCAD 2007 is the format for 2007 and 2008).

Let me break down some of the highlights and new features.  See if you don’t agree that using AutoCAD 2008 will increase production and give you those “things” you’ve always wanted in AutoCAD. 

Items to beware of before you do anything

1. If you’re familiar with AutoCAD 2006 or 2007 then you won’t be surprised by the new “startup” when you launch AutoCAD and get prompted for a “Workspace” to start (“AutoCAD Classic” is most likely going to be the most familiar looking setting).  Definitely check out and use Workspaces (they basically save AutoCAD the way you like it, toolbar buttons ‘n all). 
2. As mentioned above, AutoCAD 2008 uses the AutoCAD 2007 file format.  If you are working with others using previous versions, you can always “Save As” release 2004, 2000 and even 14 if needed.

Major new features and my Top 5 reasons for upgrading now

1. External Data Link 

These are basically XREFs for Excel spreadsheets.  If you have ever used 3rd party programs to link external files, there is no longer a need!  You can “link” Excel files right into AutoCAD.  If the Excel file changes, you get a notification to reload and update the file - you can even edit the Excel data all within AutoCAD.  You are able to bring in the entire spreadsheet, a single column, a group of rows, etc.  It’s flexible and even retains the Excel formatting if you’d like.

2. MTextand it’s changes

Columns in MText? Finally!  No longer do you need to break apart MText into separate entities when you have more than one column.  You can create dynamic or static columns and using the new grips you can make these adjustments while in the MText editor.  Justification has been modified so that you can have Centered text as well as right-justified text in the same text box.

3. MultiLeaders

There is a new Style in town…MultiLeader styles.  There are some great “out of the box” styles to choose from with attributed blocks, such as callout bubbles and delta triangles.  It’s a new and improved version of the QLeader command and gives you the ability to “auto-align” your leaders, “collect” your leaders, and add/subtract leaders to the same annotation – a great new feature with new grips and right-click functionality to make moving and adjusting your leaders easily.

4. Annotative Object Scaling

How many times have you changed a viewport scale and needed to scale up or down your text and symbols? Do you have more than one layer for your different text and dimension scales?  Annotative Scaling is the answer you’ve been waiting for.  You can “annotate” Text, Blocks, Dimensions, Hatches, and MultiLeaders, so they scale automatically based on Viewport scales.  I could go into much further detail about this long awaited feature, but that is its basic functionality.

5. Layers

Layers are the most important way to organize your drawings; it’s your object “filing system”.  Layer States Manager has been made easily available by a button added to the Layer toolbar.  So if you’ve been struggling with using the old LMAN and the new Layer States Manager, it’s now been made easier to use.  Some other major improvements would be the ability to change Color and Linetypes in a Viewport.  In the past we only had the Freeze/Thaw option for a Layer in a Viewport, now you can change any Layer property and make them Viewport specific.  For example, Layer “Walls” can be continuous and red in one Viewport and dashed and grey in another.  Another minor but significant addition is the ability to make new Layers that are frozen by default in all Viewports.

Items to beware of after you’ve been working with 2008

There is a new “Unreconciled Layer” notification that may not make sense right away.  It notifies you when a new “unrecognized” Layer shows up.  It doesn’t really do a whole lot, just filters out the Layer for your checking.  This can be edited and also disabled in the Layer dialog box under Settings.

So what happens when I “Save back” to earlier versions? All these new Annotative objects have a “representation” shown at a different scale.  Also, if I override a Layer property in a Viewport what happens when I save back? In your OPTIONS dialog box, on the Open and Save tab, there is a selection for “Maintain visual fidelity for annotative objects” (also the SAVEFIDELITY system variable).  This will save anonymous representation for blocks with different annotations as well as separate objects on new Layer names.  You can also use the Block or WBlock command for extra precautions.  Otherwise, simply leave this selected (or on) and you should be good to go when working with others using previous versions.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008

  Scott Wagner, P.E. Infrastructure Business Development Manager

Summary
Many people have been hesitant to move to Civil 3D because they aren’t confident that the product is mature and can handle the rigors of typical design projects.  After reviewing Civil 3D 2008, one thing is certain: Civil 3D 2008 is a mature product.  After five releases, it is more stable; the commands are more superior and faster than Land Desktop; and it is an excellent, well-rounded tool for Civil Engineers.  Civil 3D is the way of future and the product continues to improve with each passing year.    

This year AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 includes the much anticipated Sheet Manager functionality as well as better grading stability, and improved Vault functionality.  Also included are the Lines/Curves menu from Land Desktop, improved Pipe tables and labels, and better visualization tools.  The Hydrology calculators are now the only items from Land Desktop that are not included in Civil 3D. 

Items to beware of before you do anything

1. The minimum system requirements still recommend 2 GB RAM.   Our recommendation is 4 GB of RAM if you want to maximize the time savings and performance of Civil 3D. 
2. As mentioned, the Hydrology pulldown from Land Desktop is not in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008.  Land Desktop or additional hydrology/hydraulic calculators will still be needed to complete these calculations.
3. It is still highly recommended to create a template before implementing Civil 3D, especially if the program will be rolled out to a large number of users.  Creating the template will help eliminate confusion and has been found to be the best way to successfully implement Civil 3D.
4. Autodesk® Civil 3D® 2007 cannot edit or change the display styles of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 objects. If you are using any previous release of Civil 3D, you cannot have one user upgrade.  It must be a company-wide or project-wide decision to upgrade all users to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008.
5. Autodesk Civil 3D 2007 includes the Autodesk Data Management Server (ADMS) 5 and AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 includes the ADMS 2008 version. The ADMS 5 and the ADMS 2008 cannot be installed side-by-side on the same machine. The following support patch will allow you to connect to the ADMS 2008 from Autodesk Civil 3D 2007 (with Service Pack 3 installed), allowing you to upgrade to the new version of the server independent from your upgrade to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=9662033&linkID=9240698

Reasons to move to Civil 3D now

1. The stability of the program has improved so much that many companies are jumping straight to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 over Autodesk Civil 3D 2007, Service Pack 3.  If you will be using Civil 3D for grading or in conjunction with Autodesk® Vault, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 is the way to go.  The grading functionality is far improved over all of the previous versions.  As usual, there will likely be a service pack for 2008 at some point, but 2008 is so much more stable than 2007 that it is worth considering upgrading now.
2. Autodesk Vault for AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 now ships with SQL Server 2005 Express.  This means that there is no longer a 10 person limit on the number of people who can access the Vault at one time.  This also means that there is no longer the need to spend extra money to upgrade the Vault server in order to move to Civil 3D.  Autodesk Vault can now be rolled out as is for larger companies to test and use Civil 3D.
3. The Sheet Manager commands are excellent commands that are absolutely faster and easier to use than Land Desktop.  If you are a company that needs to create plan and profile sheets based on a roadway alignment, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 is the path to choose.
4. Civil 3D now incorporates the Lines and Curves functionality of Land Desktop.  There are now live and curve creation tools, as well as best fit utilities for line, curves, and utilities.

Major new features that will definitely save you time and money

1. Sheet Manager  

The Sheet Manager functionality of Land Desktop has now been added to Civil 3D, but in a supercharged way.  Civil 3D with its Plan Production tools can now very easily and very quickly create Plan and Profile sheets based on an alignment length and the scale. 

2. Increased Grading Stability

Autodesk dedicated an entire team to working on the stability of the grading tools of Civil 3D.  The grading functionality has now been substantially improved and grading objects and feature lines can be adjusted as expected to finalize a design. 

3. Improved  Vault Functionality

Autodesk® Vault Manager is now known as Autodesk® Data Management Server.  While the functionality hasn’t changed, Vault 2008 is now more user friendly.  There are many more warnings and instructions for loading Vault and checking drawings into the Vault.  Even more there is now much more documentation as to the best practices for using and setting up folders within the Vault. It is much easier to install Autodesk® Vault now. The new installation interface automatically checks for the all prerequisites and then installs.

4. Lines/Curves Menu

As mentioned previously, Civil 3D now incorporates the Lines and Curves functionality of Land Desktop.  There are live and curve creation tools, as well as best fit utilities for line, curves, and utilities. 

5. Better Visualizations with Image Draping and Google Earth

For years, people have been asking for the ability to drape an image over a DTM.  That functionality is now here and available in Civil 3D.  There is now also the ability to import/export Google Earth data for project presentations. 

6. Pipe Improvements

Pipes have improved in multiple ways.  You can now create pipe tables from pipe and structure data.  Additionally, labels can span multiple pipes, pipes now show better at bends, and crossing pipes can more easily be shown in profile. 

7. Surface Extraction Tools

Civil 3D 2008 now allows surface contours to be extracted to AutoCAD polylines.  This is a fantastic addition as intelligent surfaces no longer need to be exploded to take contours down to 3D polylines. 

8. Survey Data Translations

There were many additions to the Survey functionality this year, but this one takes the cake.  You can now easily translate survey data from an assumed coordinate system to a local system.

9. AutoCAD Improvements to Tables and Text

Although an AutoCAD improvement, these improvements are included with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 and will be of great benefit to Civil Engineers.  You can now link Excel tables with AutoCAD tables, as well as set up Mtext text columns for construction note sheets.

Other new tools to take note of:

• Enhanced Profile View Wizard
• New Workspace for Annotation and Drafting
• Split Region for Corridors
• Additional Roadway Assemblies

AutoCAD Land Desktop 2008

 Gaurav Bagga, Infrastructure Solutions Applications Specialist

Summary
Civil 3D is Autodesk’s civil engineering product of the future. As a result, little to no development time is being invested in new features for Land Desktop. Virtually, the only change is the new AutoCAD 2008 functions. In short, if your organization is still using Land Desktop, you should at minimum familiarize yourself with Civil 3D and start planning for a migration towards Civil 3D down the road.

Items to beware of before you do anything

1. There has been a major change in the licensing. If you are only using Land Desktop and not Civil Design and Survey, you will need to upgrade your licenses to AutoCAD Land Desktop 2008 – this is simple. However, if you are using Civil Design and Survey plug-ins on top of Land Desktop then you need to buy a Civil 3D license which has Land Desktop and Civil Design and Survey bundled together. The good thing is you do not need to install Civil Design or Survey separately. They get installed as one package with the Land Desktop installation.
2. If you’re looking for new features, you won’t find a whole lot.
3. Even though there were only a handful of new features in Autodesk® Land Desktop 2007, the initial release ended up having a number of bugs in it, especially with tried and true surface creation.  For this reason, we recommend waiting for the first Service Pack of AutoCAD® Land Desktop 2008 before upgrading to the new release.  This will insure that the potential of last year’s pattern is not repeated this year. 

Major new features that will definitely save you time and money

• Annotation Scaling of Text Objects with Drawing Setup
• AutoCAD 2008 brings with it improved Annotation Scaling of Text Objects.  The Drawing Setup Dialog Box in Land Desktop integrates this new functionality into Land Desktop. 
• AutoCAD Improvements to Tables and Text
• Although an AutoCAD improvement, these improvements are included with Land Desktop 2008 and will be of great benefit to Civil Engineers.  You can now link Excel tables with AutoCAD tables as well as set up Mtext text columns for construction note sheets.

AutoCAD Map 3D 2008

Jason Hill, GeoSpatial Business Development Manager

Summary
AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 has arrived and continues to prove why it is the leading engineering GIS platform for creating and managing spatial data all from within a CAD environment.  Whether in the private or public sector, if your organization currently utilizes both CAD and GIS technology or would like to incorporate GIS technology in the future, check out what’s new in this release and see how you can take advantage of leveraging GIS data using the precision of CAD.

Overall, I am sure that you, the user, will be very impressed with the improved capabilities of AutoCAD Map 3D 2008. While there are only a couple of new features, this release has capitalized on what it does have in terms of GIS data interoperability and performance - bridging the GIS and Engineering sectors. For instance, how would you like to directly load your DWG CAD data into a database format? Or, use a 3rd party FDO provider to connect directly to an ESRI Personal Geodatabase? Whatever your mission, I am sure you’ll be excited about the improved performance obtained in this new release of AutoCAD Map 3D and moving ahead into the Geospatial realm.

Items to beware of before you do anything

1. If you’re looking for new features, this may not be the release for you. Although equipped with new GIS analysis tools such as buffering feature sources and creating ad-hoc joins to external tables, the 2008 release has nowhere near as many new features as 2007. Instead, it focuses primarily on enhancing interoperability and performance.
2. The minimum system requirements recommend is still at least 1 GB of RAM. We highly recommend using AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 on machines with at least this much RAM to maximize the time savings and performance of the software. For a complete listing of requirements, please visit: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8447740
3. Yes, I’m sure if you have been scanning the online discussion groups, you’ve probably heard that this release is sent out with 4 installation CDs and 2 sample data CDs. I agree, that is a lot of CDs.  But if you only have a CD drive, at least they are not DVDs. It also takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes to install - depending on your system. Please be patient though; it’s well worth the wait.
4. What about AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 and ArcSDE 92? Unfortunately, ArcSDE 9.2 is not officially supported with this release yet. However, it will be supported with MapGuide Enterprise 2008, and I hear that a 3rd party FDO provider for ArcSDE 9.2 is soon to be released through the Open Source community (http://fdo.osgeo.org).

Reasons to upgrade to AutoCAD MAP 3D 2008

1. With last year’s introduction of the FDO technology, Map 3D took a giant leap into the world of GIS with the ability to access, analyze, and distribute GIS data from various locations and formats. With this release, the GIS data interoperability has stretched even further with the ability to transfer CAD formatted data (DWG) directly into a feature source spatial file (SDF) with database-like capabilities. In addition, with some new 3rd party FDO providers - available for download at http://fdo.osgeo.org - you’ll be connecting to GIS data stored in ESRI Personal Geodatabases as well as MapInfo MID/MIF file format in no time.

2. Can you remember the painful waiting involved with using the first release of Autodeck Map 3D 2007 to connect to 100,000 plus parcels stored in an Oracle database? I can… and the only benefit from it was the coffee break I took in between connections. However, with the advent of SP3 now incorporated within AutoCAD Map 3D 2008, you can connect to large amounts of data stored within relational databases such as Oracle, MySQL, and ArcSDE and query out tons of information in mere seconds.

3. As a GIS Analyst at heart, one of my top reasons to upgrade to this new release is the ability to store your DWG drawing data directly within a database-like SDF file. In doing so, you can format the SDF schema according to the original object classification definition and eventually copy all that data straight into a relational database management system such as MySQL, Oracle, or ArcSDE. The advantage of storing CAD data in this format is that it makes data more accessible, analyzable, manageable, and scalable.

4. As government-mandated regulatory requirements and the need for enterprise-wide data analysis continue to escalate, many companies are now required to adhere to Metadata standards across the country. With AutoCAD Map 3D, users can now automatically generate metadata (data about data) for your spatial information to publish in standard government formats.

Major new features that will definitely save you time and money

1. GIS Buffer Analysis 

Performing buffer analysis using traditional Map topology tools is doable. It’s not always fun, but it’s definitely doable. However, in AutoCAD Map 3D 2008, you’ll find out just how easy it is to perform more advanced GIS spatial analysis such as performing traces as well as creating buffer zones on multiple features at once.

2. Ad Hoc Joins

If you are storing attribute data in external databases, you can now extend your data properties by linking to an external database. Create more in depth thematic maps, and perform analysis by turning linked data into visual information.

3. Metadata

Metadata is basically “data about data”. In this new release, you and your organization can adhere to government standards (FGDC) by automatically generating and publishing metadata internally and externally. In addition, you can create metadata templates from which to create future metadata.

4. Export to Oracle

AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 has virtually become a center for database management. Using the data management tools within this release, users can copy large amounts of spatial and attribute information from one data store to another. For example, once you classify your CAD data, you can then export it directly to an Oracle database and vice versa. 

5. Platform API

And finally, don’t forget, the leading Engineering GIS standard platform for creating and managing spatial data is still built on top of the standard CAD platform for data capture and editing - AutoCAD 2008. Along with the advanced new GIS/CAD mapping improvements, there are the additional new features within AutoCAD 2008, such as automatic annotation scaling, layers per viewport, and multiple leaders.