JTB World Blog: AutoCAD 2018

Monday, April 17, 2017

AutoCAD 2018

AutoCAD 2018 was released March 21, 2017. It’s the 32th version of AutoCAD.

There are not so many new features added. Especially if you already got the AutoCAD 2017.1 Update. Here are some of new ones listed:

The DWG file format is new: "AutoCAD 2018 Drawing".
Save performance is improved.
Better performance with low-end devices and high resolution displays, as well as for regen and redraw of hatch patterns.
External Reference Paths management is made easier.
The file navigation dialog boxes for operations such as Open, Save, Attach and many others now remember the sort order of the column. If, for example, you sort by file size or reverse sort by file name, the next time you access that dialog box it will automatically display files using that same sort order. This is great news for users of DWG Columns for Explorer that want to for example see the DWG version or other DWG file properties.

XREFREGAPPCTL is a new system variable that controls whether the registered application (RegApp) records stored in an xref being loaded are copied to the host drawing. By default records are no longer copied.
Quick Access Toolbar can show the Layer Control.

AutoCAD LT 2018 and the free DWG TrueView has also been released and are based on AutoCAD 2018.

AutoCAD verticals like AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, AutoCAD MEP are also now available as 2018 versions.

Surprise, the free Autodesk Design Review is also updated as told by Scott Sheppard’s It’s Alive in the Lab blog. Remember DWF? This update of Design Review includes:

Proper support for Windows 10
The Design Review toolbar now includes shortcuts to A360, BIM 360, and AutoCAD 360.
Design Review now includes InfoCenter, which is a tool that enables you to access to product-related information sources.
Design Review no longer supports HP Instant Printing.

If you want to open DWG files with it you need to install DWG TrueView as well.

Autodesk Design Review

AutoCAD 2018.0.1 was made available just a day or so after AutoCAD 2018 was released. A word of warning though. It causes a problem to load certain digitally signed AutoLISP files. You may want to wait for another update or hotfix unless the fixes below are more important for you.

Autodesk AutoCAD 2018.0.1 Update readme.

Download via Autodesk Account page or Autodesk Desktop App. (no longer available)

Direct link to download for 32-bit: AutoCAD_2018.0.1_32bit.exe
Direct link to download for 64-bit: AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe

Fixes:

Occasional crashes when ending an AutoCAD session using specific API code no longer occur.
Publishing annotative multiline attributes no longer results in incorrect annotative scaling.
PFB fonts can now be compiled successfully as SHX files.
The border of a mask is no longer plotted in PDFs when "Lines Merge" is turned on.

Introduced problem:

Some AutoCAD apps may fail to work.

A problem with Autodesk Desktop App was that even though the update was installed, Autodesk Desktop App notified that the update was not installed.

Just a few days ago this update was withdrawn, probably due to the problems with it. AutoCAD DevBlog posted about the problems with the signed VLX files. Autodesk found the root cause and if all set it may be shipped soon in another update.

For more details see our AutoCAD 2018 page. Other pages updated with AutoCAD 2018 information are:

JTB World’s apps are almost all updated to work with AutoCAD 2018.