Here's what the Russians think of AutoCAD 2011

David Levin of LEDAS summarizes for us a Russian review of AutoCAD 2011 by Ilya Tatarnikov, who reports that Autodesk's new release contains nothing revolutionary -- in that most of its new features are already found in other CAD packages. For instance:

Inferred constraints for sketching certainly is not a market innovation, it can be found in many parametric systems, e.g. in SolidWorks, NX, Autodesk Inventor, and LEDAS Driving Dimensions for SketchUp.

While this is true, I would say that the inferred constraints and new 3D surface modeling will be revolutionary to one extra large group of users: the heads-down AutoCAD drafter. 

But by including these two features, will Autodesk reduce the market for third-party products that infer constraints and do surface modeling -- such as LEDAS own Driving Dimensions and Google's SketchUp?  

Perhaps not, for AutoCAD still has catching up to do. Mr Levin writes:

...despite the emergence of several new features of 3D modeling, AutoCAD still lacks parameterization in these areas: history tree is not accessible; one cannot specify geometric and dimensional constraints in 3D. In this aspect, we can expect further improvements in version 2012 or the following releases...

You can read his entire article at Not Just Russian CAD/PLM.

Mr Tatarnikov's in-depth review is in Russian at 3D шагает в массы с AutoCAD 2011, but contains lots of screen grabs.

(Google's English translation is at
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fisicad.ru%2Fru%2Farticles.php%3Farticle_num%3D13650&sl=auto&tl=en)