Through the Interface

AutoCAD for Mac

, ,

Well, it's finally been announced. After months (probably evAutoCAD for Macen more) of intense speculation, Autodesk has just announced that after a break of several (perhaps 15, depending on how you count them) releases, we're planning to deliver a version of AutoCAD that once again works natively on Mac machines. [For some history regarding the original Mac port of AutoCAD, see the first part of my interview with John Walker – you'll need to scroll way down or just search for "Macintosh".]

To clarify something about this release, it is not AutoCAD LT – it has full 3D editing capabilities and support for applications. For now that means a subset of ObjectARX and AutoLISP will be available to developers and customers working on AutoCAD for Mac: we'll see how that changes, over time.

The overall feature set is pretty comparable with that of AutoCAD 2011 for Windows, although you will clearly find some gaps, for now. Notable omissions include layer states, layer filters, the Sheet Set Manager and DWF/DGN/PDF underlay support. But we're doing our best to provide a core set of features that will allow Mac users to take full advantage of AutoCAD running natively on OSX.

Another significant change: the user interface has been modified to suit the platform. I don't yet have a Mac, myself – although I'm about to buy a new system and suspect that the sensible choice, at this stage, would be to get a Mac (albeit one that makes heavy use of Boot Camp 🙂 - so I've had to borrow the below image to show you what it looks like.

AutoCAD for Mac

And here's the launch video accompanying the announcement, for your viewing pleasure.

With the same breath – well, in the same Press Release, at least – we announced a product called AutoCAD WS, a new incarnation of Project Butterfly for iPhone, iPad and iPad Touch.

I have a call scheduled with Tal Weiss, who kindly shared some information once before on the nature of Project Butterly, to understand the architectural differences that have come with the move to iOS. I'll be publishing the details of that discussion in the coming weeks.

AutoCAD WS on iPad

  1. Kerry Brown Avatar
    Kerry Brown

    [quote]
    For now that means a subset of ObjectARX and AutoLISP will be available to developers
    [/quote]
    Kean,
    Can you be more explicit about the limitations ?
    Does this mean that all VisualLisp is unusable ?
    What are the limitations for ObjectARX ?

    Regards,
    Kerry

    Reply
  2. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    Kerry,

    I don't have a complete list of the differences and as I haven't been working with this myself, as yet, anything I say is likely to be less than perfectly accurate.

    My understanding is that the ObjectARX headers are pretty complete, as far as it goes, and even for Visual LISP you'll hopefully be pleasantly surprised with what has been exposed (there are some vl- functions that are available, for instance, although I don't expect there to be anything to do with COM).

    I'll ask someone from my team who has some actual experience with/knowledge of the differences to comment.

    Regards,

    Kean

    Reply
  3. Stephen Preston Avatar
    Stephen Preston

    Hi Kerry,

    As you'd expect, the main omissions are AutoCAD APIs that use Windows-specific functionality. For example, there are no MFC UI classes in ObjectARX and no COM APIs in ObjectARX or LISP. And there is no Visual LISP IDE in this first release, but a LISP application compiled on Windows will work on the Mac if its not using any of the unavailable APIs.

    In many cases, if you're not using those Windows APIs, you can just recompile your ARX code and it works.

    There's really too much information to write it all in a comment here, so please be patient and Fenton and I will be discussing the APIs in our next devcast (coming soon :-)).

    Cheers,

    Stephen

    Reply
  4. Daniel Swords Avatar
    Daniel Swords

    As an electrical engineer in the industrial water/wastewater sector, I'm very excited to consider the possibilities of Autodesk applications on mobile devices. However, I am wary of anything that is implemented as SaaS for mobile use. When I go out in the field, one thing I can count on is that I will probably not get good cellular reception on site (and obviously be unlikely to have WiFi available). As such, native mobile apps are really going to be necessary for use in my industry (and other similar ones where the job site may not be within a crowded city center with excellent cellular reception).

    The one thing I would be most interested in would be a version of Design Review for the iPad. I would love to be able to load up an iPad with documents and DWF drawings to carry into the field rather than carrying 15lbs of paper documents. In addition, it would give me the ability to make quick markups on the DWFs and send them back to the office while I am still in the field.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *