AutoCAD LT 2010

Written by Martyn Day

Published Fri 18 Dec 2009

When it was first introduced AutoCAD LT was seen within many industries as the non-professional version of AutoCAD. Early versions lacked key features, especially the ability to run AutoLISP and add-on products. Despite still having some of the same drawbacks today, AutoCAD LT has managed to be accepted by most firms as being more than good enough to carry out a lot of the general grunt on production drawings. 

AutoCAD LT has become the de facto generic drafting tool. Popular within the construction industry as a companion seat to 3D Building Information Modelling systems, the new release builds yet further on its production drawing credentials

If you stepped back from the emotional connection of ‘I’m a professional I need full AutoCAD’, the demarcation lines between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT were fairly blurred, as both were essentially 2D drawing systems. Over time, AutoCAD has had more 3D functionality added, while LT improved strictly in the world of flat drawings. Looking at the two versions of AutoCAD today, there has never been such a wide gap in functionality, however, AutoCAD LT 2010 now packs a mighty 2D punch for its substantially lower cost.    

AutoCAD LT 2010 comes with a number of great functionality improvements, covering most areas of its capabilities. While it is still not getting all the 2D enhancements of full AutoCAD, there’s still plenty here to make it worthy of an upgrade. And while on the subject of value, LT has seen a limited period, retail price reduction of €290 until the end of October. This equates to a drop of almost 20%.

Parametric constraints

The biggest fundamental change to the full version of AutoCAD 2010 was the introduction of parametric and dimensional constraints. Basically this enables constraints to be applied to geometry so, when edited, the software will always attempt to maintain the constraints applied. For instance you can have two lines which must always remain parallel to one another, or a single line must always be a dimension of 10 metres. During any editing AutoCAD will attempt to maintain these conditions. 

Unfortunately, AutoCAD LT 2010 does not have the ability to create and apply parametric or dimensional constraints but it can view, use or delete them if they have already been created in AutoCAD. Constrained geometry is indicated when the cursor moves near them and an icon of two blue squares appears. It’s also possible to find out more by turning on the constraint display, which will switch on all the constraint icons, showing the various constraints styles applied to geometry in the drawing being edited.   

User Interface 

I am now fully used to the’ ribbon’ interface that has been added to all of Autodesk’s products. While change always come with a little  pain, the new process-led interface groups tools in a very well and organised way. The toolsets are: Home, Insert, Annotate, Parametric, View, Manage and Output.

Like the majority of Autodesk’s 2010 products, AutoCAD LT 2010 now sports the new ribbon interface which has allowed many of the drawing and editing commands to be consolidated into a fast process-driven menu tool bar.

Home includes the most used drafting features such as lines, modify, layers etc., in a quick access format while the others are pretty self explanatory. There’s a very powerful user interface customisation section which can make sure you have the most commonly used commands always at hand, either onscreen or with various mouse click combinations.   

PDF Underlay

This was the number one requested feature in the Autodesk User Group International’s (AUGI) wish list and allows PDFs to be attached like an externally referenced file, as you would do with a DWG, DWF or even a DGN. Once referenced, you can snap to key points on the PDF geometry using the standard AutoCAD snaps. 

In fact, the external reference tools have all been beefed up. To attach one of a number of file formats, use the Insert command. There’s a clip tool to allow only the portion of the file required to be attached. It’s also possible to hide either the geometry inside the clipped area or outside. Here contrast and fading and snapping can be set prior to drafting. Finally LT also gets the ability to directly open and or edit externally referenced files or block references. 

AutoCAD LT’s ability to produce and use Adobe PDF files reaches a new high in the 2010 release. Not only can LT now produce higher resolution PDFs with more control, but PDFs can be externally referenced and used as backgrounds and snapped to.

Hatch improvements are always greatly welcomed. When trying to hatch an area that isn’t properly closed, LT will now show you where the problem has occurred. The two ends of the ‘open’ lines are highlighted with red circles. Also, it’s possible that a hatch may have been placed which is not associative with the boundary - a common problem when dealing with old drawing files. Now it’s possible to easily modify the boundary using grips on the hatch. There is no need to delete and re-hatch.    

Blocks 

Dynamic Blocks have been updated to enable the use of the new AutoCAD constraints engine. While LT can’t create new constraints it can edit these dynamic blocks that have already had them applied. Using a new Test Block window it’s possible to try out any edits before committing to the change. There’s also an enhanced attribute editor ( a hand-me-down from the full AutoCAD), which allows a very quick ‘update attribute’ across a drawing if there have been enhancements to the previous definition.   

PDF Out   

The latest version of PDF Out has been greatly improved in both quality and capability. The default output resolution of PDFs has been increased from 400 to 600 dpi. TrueType fonts are now exported as text, as opposed to dumb graphics, enabling highlighting, searching and copying text when viewed in a PDF viewer. Layer merge and Layer information can also be controlled via the DWG to PDF plot configuration. Exporting, as opposed to plotting, allows the selection of an area, extents or window. The PDF format has also been added to the batch plot feature.

Drafting and Tools  

The Measure tab in the ribbon interface has enabled all the distance and area measuring commands to be grouped together - distance, radius, angle  and volume. There’s also a cumulative option that will measure as consecutive points are added, displaying in real time the total distance. The new volume option operates like the ‘measure area’ command, drawing a boundary to be measured but requires a height to be entered. Areas and volumes can also be subtracted in these calculations.   

There is a new ‘reverse’ line command, to alter the direction of lines, polylines or splines. This is mainly useful if linetypes contain symbols or text.
Splines can now be easily converted to polylines with variable precision.    

The Purge command has been updated to include an option to get rid of zero length geometry and empty text objects. 

A great new ‘Align’ command has been added but is only available from the command line. Simply select all the geometry to be aligned, then  specify a source point and a destination point. After selecting a second set of points, AutoCAD LT prompts if you would like to scale the object in the align process. This allows geometry to be moved, rotated and scaled all within one command!     

Conclusion

With over 15 years of development, AutoCAD LT has become a powerful and excellent 2D drawing tool which can be applied to a number of different industries. It is not surprising that many architectural firms have opted deploy LT as a companion seat to AutoCAD Architectural and Revit, or base their practices on AutoCAD LT alone.   

As it stands, the 2D drafting functionality of AutoCAD LT 2010 has the majority of the features you would want in a professional CAD tool. Maybe LT is the ‘new’ AutoCAD with AutoCAD on a journey to becoming something else. With increasing numbers of customers opting to move to AutoCAD Architecture and Revit, there is certainly a place for LT in practices that want to efficiently edit 2D general assembly drawings or augment their chosen 3D modelling system. 

Looking forward, there are some interesting decisions for Autodesk to make on its approach to the whole retail and professional 2D and 3D markets. Autodesk is most certainly working on retail drafting products, while it pushes ahead with its high-end 3D revolution.  

Over the years AutoCAD LT has seen considerable and regular price increases which have pushed it out of the traditional ‘retail’ market outlets. The recent price cut is an incentive and welcome but probably not enough to see it stocked in your local computer store. The LT price point or feature set needs to be worked on if other sub-functional drafting tools are to be introduced.   

AutoCAD vs AutoCAD LT

It’s worth noting what the core differences are between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. The divide between the products are mainly extensibility and 3D.

AutoCAD LT 2010 does not have the following AutoCAD features:

3D creation tools
customisation through LISP, ARX or VBA 3D or 3D print capability
any rendering capability
2D parametric creation 
a network licensed version
 

Product: AutoCAD LT 2010
Supplier: Autodesk
Price: e1450 but discounted 20% untill October
www.autodesk.com/autocadlt