Editor’s Note: Welcome to Cadalyst's blog series by Patrick Hughes, A CAD Dinosaur's Journey into Modern Times.” In this three-month series, Hughes chronicles his transition from AutoCAD R14 to v2015 and from an outdated PC to a state-of-the-art professional workstation. Follow along and enjoy!

In my last post I discussed Mleaders. I’ll make good use of them, but to my dismay I’ve run into a little stumbling block. Nothing insurmountable mind you, but forewarned is forearmed as they say. Perhaps my problems started when I first established my standards. Rather than load my drawings with custom styles, I simply modified the Standard styles. I set my standard dimensions to display dimension and extension lines to one color and dimension text to another color. These standards applied to leaders as well.

It isn't uncommon among new technologies. After the initial excitement lulls, sales slow and enthusiasm wanes. Sometimes innovations in the product can regenerate interest in the marketplace; sometimes those innovations don't come or just don't make a difference. It happened to fiber optic cables (everyone uses Ethernet for network connectivity instead), the Laserdisc (the predecessor to DVDs, which didn't come along for another 20 years), and the QR code (developed in 1994, yet virtually unusable until the advent of social media just recently).

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Cadalyst's blog series by Patrick Hughes, A CAD Dinosaur's Journey into Modern Times.” In this three-month series, Hughes chronicles his transition from AutoCAD R14 to v2015 and from an outdated PC to a state-of-the-art professional workstation. Follow along and enjoy!

It has become clear that digging deeper into AutoCAD 2015 is going to take me away from how I worked in R14. Oh, I’ll be using much of the same approaches I’ve always used, but I will incorporate many of the best current tools 2015 offers.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Cadalyst's blog series by Patrick Hughes, A CAD Dinosaur's Journey into Modern Times.” In this three-month series, Hughes chronicles his transition from AutoCAD R14 to v2015 and from an outdated PC to a state-of-the-art professional workstation. Follow along and enjoy!

Earlier I mentioned that the most obvious difference I’d discovered between AutoCAD Release 14 and modern-day AutoCAD was the ribbon interface. In truth, that difference only scratches the surface of what’s in store when you update AutoCAD. Some users dislike the ribbon (undeservedly, in my opinion), there are several significant changes that are of great value.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Cadalyst's blog series by Patrick Hughes, A CAD Dinosaur's Journey into Modern Times.” In this three-month series, Hughes chronicles his transition from AutoCAD R14 to v2015 and from an outdated PC to a state-of-the-art professional workstation. Follow along and enjoy!

When AutoCAD 2015 arrived at my desk I eagerly ripped open the cellophane wrapper with my sharpened claws and inserted the 64-bit install CD. I had previously uninstalled the 2014 trial copy and was relieved that there were no conflicts during the 2015 install. The support files, block libraries, and customization files I had copied previously remained in place since they resided in a folder structure independent of the Autodesk files. I merely needed to adjust my file paths within the Options dialog box.

Hi I have a Logitech Performance MX mouse and was able to PAN with the left middle button, but reinstalled CAD and am not able to do that any longer, can you help me ???
I also have another mouse , may be 2 years old, Logitech Performance 6 with left button as well, would like to know of I can get it to PAN as well, I run CAD 2013 and ready to switch to 2015 in the next few weeks.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Cadalyst's blog series by Patrick Hughes, A CAD Dinosaur's Journey into Modern Times.” In this three-month series, Hughes chronicles his transition from AutoCAD R14 to v2015 and from an outdated PC to a state-of-the-art professional workstation. Follow along and enjoy!

Sometimes a group of technologies can be lumped together to create an entirely new technology. This is the case with rapid prototyping. Using a group of technologies developed for CAD design, ink jet printing, and other applications, rapid prototyping is revolutionizing the fields of engineering and manufacturing. What is rapid prototyping, and how is it relevant to the world of CAD?

Remember when it took eons for 2G mobile technology to give way to 3G? Then it took much less time for 3G to become 4G, which is now the standard. Already, mobile companies are buzzing about the promise of 5G. 3D printing technology might follow mobile technology in this manner, taking ages to progress and then seeing a phenomenal boom in a short period of time.

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Cadalyst's blog series by Patrick Hughes, A CAD Dinosaur's Journey into Modern Times.” In this three-month series, Hughes chronicles his transition from AutoCAD R14 to v2015 and from an outdated PC to a state-of-the-art professional workstation. Follow along and enjoy!