Autodesk has finally released AutoCAD 2019 for Mac and AutoCAD LT 2019 for Mac. The move comes nine months after the company released AutoCAD 2019 for PC.
Back in March, the company unveiled its new One AutoCAD strategy, which transformed multiple separate AutoCAD products (like AutoCAD Architectural, AutoCAD Electrical, and AutoCAD Mechanical) into a single subscription license for a slightly higher yearly fee. The new licensing adjustment gave users access to both PC and Mac versions. But at the time of the change, the company only released a Windows version and an online version of the software, and did not indicate a release date for the Mac version. Instead, Autodesk suggested that Mac customers use a virtual machine or Boot Camp on mac OS.
According to Autodesk, its Mac releases are timed around Apple's development cycle, as the company adopts Apple's most recent OS updates. While Autodesk tends to release its software at the start of its new fiscal year in February, Apple releases its software updates in the fall. This year, Apple released its new mac OS 10.14 Mojave in September.
Now, the Mac version is here, with new features like greater languages selection (adding Japanese and German to the previously available English and French), better viewing and UIs, and easier command of Xrefs.
The DWG Compare feature lets you easily identify the differences between revisions of a drawing or Xref to help you review for clashes and constructability, and the new UI for the Purge command lets you purge multiple objects at once. The Autodesk team has improved the Plot dialog, taking user feedback on which options are the most-used and shifting them to the top. Additionally, you can preview how your layout will look after the plot, and look at changes in realtime.
The new View Gallery lets you capture views while you're designing with the NEWVIEW command, and insert them directly from the toolbar. Finally, the new XREFLAYER system variable enables you to specify a default layer where new Xrefs will be inserted, and creates a new Xref Overrides layer filter as soon as overrides are applied.