Most projects aren’t a solo endeavor, and timelines are rapidly shrinking. It takes communication and collaboration for successful outcomes. Now, AutoCAD 2024 delivers new enhancements for you to collaborate quickly and more effectively.

A subscription to AutoCAD 2024 and AutoCAD LT 2024 includes access to AutoCAD on the web and on mobile, enabling a new way to effectively communicate ideas with peers and stakeholders on the go. Here, we’ll take a look at some new enhancements in AutoCAD 2024 to create even more opportunities for a better collaboration process.

Trace Updates: Further Streamline Drawing Review Cycles

Trace is a multiplatform digital workflow that lets you collaborate with your team wherever they are, and it streamlines the drawing review cycle. Think of Trace as a digital version of tracing paper laid over a drawing. But now it’s digital and collaborative where teammates can add feedback right in the DWG file, without altering the existing drawing. It first debuted in AutoCAD 2022 and has quickly become a favorite feature for many users.

New improvements for Trace are now available in AutoCAD 2024. The COPYFROMTRACE command helps you to easily copy objects from a trace into the drawing. New settings include:

• Overlay Effect to control opaqueness of the tracing paper overlay.
• Geometry in Trace to control the amount of fading of the trace geometry in the background
• Drawing Background to control the transparency of the imported markup that is laid over the drawing when a digital markup is active
• Faded Markup to control the transparency of faded markups when a digital markup is active

Learn more about Trace Updates – What’s New in 2024.

Markup Import and Markup Assist Updates: Save More Time by Easily Incorporating Feedback

Feedback and revisions are critical in the collaboration process—but it can get messy sometimes.

AutoCAD 2023 debuted Markup Import and Markup Assist to make revisions simpler by using machine learning to identify markups and help you view and insert drawing revisions with less manual effort. With Markup Import, you can take feedback from the field on printed paper or a PDF and import them as a trace layer in AutoCAD. AutoCAD detects the markup and converts it to an object. Markup Assist then allows you to add the text or object to your drawing automatically with a click of a button.

New improvements to Markup Assist in AutoCAD 2024 make it even easier to bring markups into a drawing, including: 

• Update Existing Text: A new option in the Markup Assist dialog box to replace or amend existing text in the drawing with text from an imported markup.
• Strikethrough Text: Now Markup Assist recognizes text that has been crossed out, and allows you to erase the text or replace the text with text from a markup.
• Markups With Associated PDF Text Comments: Text comments that are added to a PDF using Adobe software will display and can be inserted into the drawing as an Mleader or Mtext, or used to update existing text.
• Fade Markup: Control the transparency of individual markups.
• Selecting Markups Within a Boundary: Using any command that prompts to “Select Objects,” click the blue highlighted border of a Markup Assist boundary to select all the AutoCAD objects within it. By clicking the highlighted border, all objects entirely within the border are added to the selection set.
• Instruction Text on a Markup: Markup Assist detects certain instructions in markup text that are linked to commands such as “MOVE,” “COPY,” or “DELETE.” When Markup Assist identifies an instruction, you can click that instruction to start the associated command.

New Commands

FADEMARKUP – Fades individual markups so they are less visible on a trace.

New System Variables

MARKUPSELECTIONMODE – Enables selection using boundary markup assist boxes as criteria.

COMMENTHIGHLIGHT – Controls the display of the indicator badge on PDF text comments.

TRACEMARKUPFADECTL – Controls the transparency of faded markups. The lower the number, the more visible the markup is.

TRACEVPSUPPORT – Controls whether markup assist boxes are actionable within a currently active model space viewport.

Learn more about Markup Assist – What’s New in AutoCAD 2024.

Get Started

Get started today and explore the new features by logging into your Autodesk Account and downloading the latest release. If you are not yet a subscriber, check out free 30-day trials of AutoCAD 2024 and AutoCAD LT 2024.