AutoCAD 2025 adds AI features

Spring is in the air, and that brings us AutoCAD 2025 plus industry-specific toolsets (like AutoCAD Mechanical and AutoCAD Architecture), AutoCAD web, and AutoCAD on mobile.

As with AutoCAD 2024, Autodesk touts the artificial intelligence (AI) it has added in AutoCAD 2025, but also sneaks in other improvements. I am loving the hatching improvements.

Also, AutoCAD got faster. Autodesk has made significant improvements in reducing the time to open 2D drawing files.

“Autodesk is committed to creating the most performant CAD tool in the market. In AutoCAD 2025, you’ll be able to open 2D files up to two times faster than in 2024,” said Marcus O’Brien, vice president of AutoCAD.

2D graphics are improved, specifically with how fonts display. When working in 3D, the Wireframe visual style is now included with the Fast modes. These visual styles use the full capabilities of modern GPUs and multicore CPUs to smooth the navigation experience for larger drawings.

To help diagnose graphics problems, use the new Diagnosis tab in the Graphics Performance dialog. I was relieved to see that I do not have any issues with my hardware.

AutoCAD 2025 requires you to restart your computer after it is installed, just as AutoCAD 2024 did. Autodesk, can we have it not do that in the next version?

If you have not heard your fill of AI, you will welcome the Autodesk Assistant updates. This is available only in English AutoCAD. Introduced in AutoCAD 2024.1, the Autodesk Assistant is your tour guide through the product documentation and can list resources that provide answers to your questions. New in AutoCAD 2025 is generative AI, which can curate the resources to provide better answers.

It’s not perfect. When I asked it to help me with an issue with Save to Web & Mobile command, the curated results had nothing to do with the command.

Fortunately, if the presented solutions do not answer your question, you can start a chat with a support agent.

Activity Insights, a non-AI enhancement in AutoCAD 2024, is valuable when you are working in a collaborative environment, as it shows who has accessed the drawing and when. It additionally shows who has inserted the drawing as an XREF and when the drawing was shared.

Activity Insights now logs more activities, like when the drawing was purged. It also shows more information. For example, with purge, it shows the number and types of objects that were removed.

As it is now redundant, Autodesk removed DWG History in AutoCAD 2025. This functionality is now merged into Activity Insights. So, when the file is saved on a supported cloud storage platform, a new file version appears as an activity. Use Compare to review the differences between the current and previous versions of a drawing.

As a nice bonus, from the Start tab, you can view the drawing’s activities without opening the file.

Traces are “safe spaces” to mark up and provide feedback on a drawing without the risk of altering the drawing. Consider it a piece of tracing paper overlaying the drawing where you can add notes, details and other annotations.

The Trace toolbar has gone through multiple iterations in its lifetime. In AutoCAD 2025, you can toggle modes using two buttons, which are clearly identified with an icon and text, as opposed to a singular icon. The hope is that it provides better recognition of the current mode.

My wish for future versions is to change the color as well. You can use the existing blue border while in Trace mode but switch to a different border color when in drawing mode.

Anything else with Trace? You can now pin the Settings so it stays visible even when you are moving the cursor away. These Settings also now behave as a palette, allowing you to drag it to a new location.

With a trace open and while in drawing mode, you can now access REFEDIT and make changes to Xrefs.

Markup Import is integrated with Autodesk Docs. After creating markups on a PDF in Autodesk Docs, you can import this PDF so the markups are available in the Trace workspace. The PDF stays synchronized so as changes occur within Autodesk Docs, they become available in AutoCAD as well.

“When AutoCAD customers use Autodesk Docs, they’ll be able to take advantage of a truly connected experience in the cloud,” said Dania El Hassan, director of AutoCAD Product Management.

AutoCAD 2023 introduced Markup Assist. It got smarter in AutoCAD 2024. AutoCAD 2025 tweaks it with some minor nice-to-have updates.

You can now run Markup Assist on external references.

While in Drawing mode, access the Annotation Styles from the Settings. This should make it easier to set the current text and leader styles.

With detected revision clouds, you can now choose to insert it as a rectangular or polygonal shape.

You can combine multiple text markups into a single text insertion.

AutoCAD 2024 introduced better block finding and smarter placement options. Working with blocks gets even smarter in AutoCAD 2025 with a new conversion workflow and a tech preview for detecting possible blocks.

“The new Smart Blocks features we’ve released in AutoCAD 2025 represent our commitment to innovation and delivering value to our customers,” said Dania El Hassan, director of AutoCAD Product Management.

Use the new BCONVERT command to convert multiple instances of selected objects into blocks.

As a side note, I find it odd that there is no button for BCONVERT in the ribbon, which will now be hard to discover.

After you select the geometry for conversion, AutoCAD finds and highlights instances of the same geometry. You choose which found instances to convert into a block.

You can choose to create a new block or use an existing one. When converting to an existing block, choose from the current drawing, a recently used block, or what AI has identified as similar using machine learning from your block libraries.

After verifying the insertion point and orientation, AutoCAD converts the repetitive geometry into blocks. I’m sure this will come in handy, especially when importing drawings from other formats.

The new Object Detection smart feature scans your drawing and using machine learning suggests objects to be converted into blocks.

This is BCONVERT but with machine learning doing the sleuthing to find the block candidates. As with BCONVERT, you can convert the instances into a new block or pick an existing one.

As a tech preview, the feature is functional and ready to be used, but it is still under development. Unlike a beta, tech previews are available to everyone. So, you get earlier access to the feature set but may run into issues. Autodesk appreciates your feedback and has baked feedback tools into the feature. It’s a machine learning-backed feature that is missing the history. Autodesk needs you to help train it to detect objects properly.

Object Detection is optimized for plan-view drawings. It currently works best with architectural objects, such as bathroom fixtures, doors and windows.

The only geometry creation tool with changes is Hatch. The new draw option allows the creation of a hatch without a preexisting boundary. This means you can add a hatch by selecting an existing boundary, selecting an internal point of an existing boundary or creating the boundary on the fly.

Surprisingly, everything to do with Draw is only accessible via the right-click menu or command line. The Draw command and its options do not appear in the ribbon.

Draw comes with two modes.

With Area, you pick points to build the boundary. This boundary is then filled with a hatch. Define this area by picking a rectangle, a circle, or points to create a polygonal shape.

Use Path to draw the boundary by picking an open or closed path. AutoCAD offsets the path by the set width to build the boundary. Use the Alignment option to set the direction of the offset.

The Path is the enhancement that made my day.  It simplifies the process in many instances. For example, here I use it to add a concrete pattern to the outside of a building.

We use AutoCAD’s Set Location feature to georeference drawings by specifying their geographic location. With AutoCAD 2025, we can now use the Esri mapping service.

And with this, there are also five new map styles to manage the appearance of this georeferenced information.

Action macros are a series of recorded commands (actions) that you can play back when needed. In AutoCAD 2025, you must migrate existing ACTM files to the new ACTMX file format before using them. Macros in the ACTMX format are not compatible with AutoCAD 2024 (or earlier versions).