Tag: Sheet Sets

AutoCAD 2027: Redefining How You Create, Collaborate, and Deliver | AutoCAD Blog

Posted on by faz_business


AutoCAD 2027 delivers a connected, intelligent design experience that helps you move faster, collaborate with confidence, and focus on the work that matters most. This release helps you and your team maintain drawing standards, reduce time spent fixing geometry issues, and collaborate on shared DWG files without the conflicts of traditional file locking. With Autodesk AI-powered guidance, automated geometry cleanup, and cloud-connected workflows through Forma Data Management, AutoCAD 2027 helps you coordinate changes more easily and keep projects moving forward.

Whether you’re working solo or across distributed teams, AutoCAD 2027 is designed to help you create with greater clarity, speed, and control. If you’re eager to explore the latest AI-powered capabilities introduced in this release, open the Autodesk Access application to start your update now!

Work smarter with Autodesk AI

AutoCAD 2027 introduces a new level of AI-powered workflows that help reduce friction and surface the right guidance at the right time.

New Autodesk Assistant (tech preview)

Autodesk Assistant delivers intelligent, in-context guidance powered by Autodesk AI without disrupting your design flow, helping you and your team maintain consistency and quality with less manual effort. In AutoCAD 2027, you can use conversational prompts to validate drawings against your organization’s own CAD standards, by uploading a reference file and checking designs against it, helping to surface CAD standards issues earlier and making it easier to catch problems during the design process.

This experience is enabled by Autodesk Assistant beginning to leverage Model Context Protocol (MCP), which helps it better understand what you’re working on and what you’re trying to accomplish. This enables more situational, relevant responses directly inside AutoCAD. In this release, that capability is focused on alignment with CAD standards.

A truly collaborative design experience

As projects grow more complex and teams become more distributed, collaboration can’t be an afterthought. AutoCAD 2027 delivers new ways to work together securely and in parallel across desktop, web, and mobile.

Forma Data Management Essentials now included with a standalone subscription

With AutoCAD 2027, Forma Data Management Essentials is now included with standalone AutoCAD subscriptions, representing a significant added value for AutoCAD users. With this release, Forma is no longer a future vision: it’s now here, across the AutoCAD features you and your team use every day.

In AutoCAD, Forma Data Management Essentials enables essential collaboration in a shared project environment where teams can view and markup 2D and 3D models, track issues, apply folder-level permissions, and share files with controlled access and clear version visibility. This brings cloud-based DWG storage, version history, and access control directly into AutoCAD workflows that you’re already familiar with.

Whether you’re a drafter, designer, architect, engineer, or a CAD manager, it is well suited for small and mid-sized architecture and engineering firms, civil design practices, specialty consultants, and growing teams that need more structured collaboration and improved information exchange across projects.

Shared drawings managed in the cloud can now take advantage of advanced collaboration features like Checkout, multi-user markup, and Connected References, supporting parallel work while keeping your data easily accesible.

Introducing Checkout: Parallel work without the conflicts

Checkout finally introduces a new way for teams to collaboratively make controlled edits to the same DWG file at the same time when stored in Forma Data Management. Instead of locking entire drawings, contributors can check out only the geometry they need to modify, letting you make changes in an isolated editing environment and safely merge them back when you’re ready.

The result? No more unnecessary extra files just for editing, no accidental overwrites, and smoother collaboration especially on complex drawings with multiple contributors.

Connected References and Connected Support Files

Managing references and support files is easier and more reliable with deeper cloud connectivity in this release.

Connected References reserve Xref integrity for drawings stored in Forma Data Management. When referenced files are moved or renamed, AutoCAD detects the change and suggests automatic repairs directly from the Xref palette. With a single click, all your references can be restored.

Connected Support Files give CAD managers centralized control over cloud-managed support files, now enhanced to support tool palettes and CUI customizations for greater flexibility. With project-aware tool palettes and CUI, the right resources load automatically with each drawing, improving consistency and scalability across teams. In Forma Data Management, support files can be managed directly through the .autodesk.support folder within a project via a new “Manage Support Files” button that launches a configuration dialog.

Cleaner drawings, faster workflows

AutoCAD 2027 continues to focus on everyday productivity, helping you spend less time fixing issues and more time designing.

Automatically find and fix errors with Geometry Cleanup

Geometry Cleanup automatically identifies common geometry issues such as gaps, overshoots, undershoots, and misaligned angles, then suggests targeted fixes to resolve them. By streamlining error detection and correction, this tool reduces manual cleanup, improves drawing quality, and makes files more reliable for downstream workflows.

Performance and visualization improvements

Expanded support for the Graphics System Framework (GSF) improves performance and reliability across AutoCAD’s 3D workflows. With smoother navigation, broader 3D coverage, and support for Realistic visual styles, materials, and lighting, AutoCAD 2027 delivers more consistent and responsive 3D visualization.

Stronger workflows with AutoCAD on the web

AutoCAD on the web continues to evolve into a powerful extension of desktop workflows, especially for collaboration and coordination.

Issues, plotting, and sheet set improvements

  • Forma Data Management Issues integration allows you to view, create, and resolve issues directly within drawings, keeping feedback visible and actionable.

  • Plot improvements make it easier to save plots directly to the cloud, rename files, choose storage locations, preview PDFs, and confidently deliver final output.
  • Sheet Set Manager improvements fully adopt Connected Support Files, with enhanced templates, workflows, and reliability that make sheet management better suited for everyday production work.

Integration with Forma Board

Included as part of access to Forma, AutoCAD on the web now integrates with Forma Board, connecting detailed CAD drafting with collaborative early-design workflows. Teams can view and edit DWG files within a shared canvas, keeping documentation aligned with concept development and design storytelling from early planning through detailed design.

Start exploring AutoCAD 2027

AutoCAD 2027 is more than a feature update. It’s a step towards a more connected, intelligent, and collaborative design experience. From Autodesk AI-powered assistance and cleaner drawings to cloud-enabled collaboration across desktop, web, and mobile, this release is designed to help you work with confidence at every stage of your project.

Download a 15-day free trial of AutoCAD 2027 today and see how these new capabilities can help you focus on what matters most: creating better designs, faster.

Sheet Set Custom Properties in AutoCAD: Tuesday Tips With Frank | AutoCAD Blog

Posted on by faz_business


I often start these blogs with an anecdote, and today is no different. I imagine something similar has happened to most of you. Your project’s template file(s) have some pre-set information in the title block. The CAD manager sets the engineer’s initials as TAE, as he’s been there for twenty years and his initials are on every set that goes out. Besides, if left to individual users, you’d sometimes get TE, T.A.E., or Tae. You know it happens.

Midway through the project, old Thomas Alva Edison leaves for a new job. You get tasked with updating hundreds of drawings to reflect the new engineer’s initials. Let’s be honest: at this point, you wish you had scheduled that root canal for the day.

Wouldn’t it be great if this task was reduced to a couple of clicks? That’s where today’s topic comes in. With the proper custom properties created in your Sheet Set, that’s what you get: a fix in a couple of clicks.

Sheet Set Custom Properties

I wrote about the benefits of using the Sheet Set Manager awhile back. But I only touched on custom properties, and in all honesty, that’s one of its most powerful features.

Like many things in AutoCAD, you can access the Sheet Set Properties dialog via the right-click contextual menu.

Right-clicking on anything listed in the Sheets panel will get you a Properties entry, but the only place to define custom properties is via the top-level sheet set node. When the Sheet Set Properties dialog is displayed, you’ll see the first type of property available – the four built-in Project Control properties.

OK, handy information, but somewhat limited. The real power comes from the Edit Custom Properties button at the bottom of the dialog.

Screenshot of Edit Custom Properties button for Sheet Sets in AutoCAD

Click it to display the Custom Properties list dialog. We haven’t created any yet, so at this point, it’s empty. On the right are two buttons: Add and Delete. Choose the one that’s not disabled. You’ll finally get to the Add Custom Property dialog. It’s pretty simple; you’ll give your property a name and a default value.

But this is where you’ll also find the two other kinds of Sheet Set Properties. In the lower-left corner, you have two choices. Will this Custom Property be owned by the Sheet Set itself (a global property), or will individual sheets own it?

Screenshot of Add Custom Property button for Sheet Sets in AutoCAD

For our example, I’ll create a sheet-owned property of “Drawn By” – as that may differ from sheet to sheet. I’ll also make a couple of global sheet properties – the total number of sheets and our engineer, TAE. Since this is a tips blog, I have an insider tip for you. Notice there is no Edit button. If you’ve made a mistake, you must delete and recreate the custom property. When you’re done, keep clicking on OK to dismiss all the dialogs and save your settings.

Screenshot of Custom Property box for Sheet Sets in AutoCAD

The Next Step

OK, now you’ve got three types of properties in your Sheet Set… what’s next? Now, it’s time to map them to your title block. You’ll do this using AutoCAD’s fields. Since this isn’t a blog about fields, I’ll not spend much time deep diving into them, but if you’re curious, there are several past posts about them, including this one.

In the image below, I’ve applied the built-in project property of Project No., along with our normal engineer of TAE. Finally, the Custom Sheet Set property of Total Sheets has also been added. Let’s step through the important steps of applying our custom sheet property of Drawn By.

Screenshot of Enhanced Attribute Editor box for Sheet Sets in AutoCAD

In this case, we’re dealing with block attributes, but fields can also be applied to Mtext. Again, highlight the value and right-click to display the Field dialog. The first thing you’ll want to do is select the correct field category. Expand the pulldown and select SheetSet. The panel on the left will populate with all the fields available to you from within a sheet set.

We want to add the drafter’s initials for this sheet, which we applied to a custom property owned by the sheet. Select CurrentSheetCustom (those owned by the sheet set are in CurrentSheetSetCustom); since there are possibly multiple properties, a custom name dropdown menu will appear beneath the Format panel. Choose wisely if you have more than one, note the value that appears in the upper right box, click OK, and you’re good to go.

Screenshot of choosing Custom Property in AutoCAD

Summary

Back to our engineer leaving the company scenario… by using Sheet Sets and custom properties, all you have to do is replace the old engineer initials with the new ones. How’s that for saving hours of work? Trust me, it beats the alternative.

Sheet Sets, their custom properties, and Fields are all underutilized, in my opinion. They offer so much functionality, and you don’t even need to use everything they offer to gain a lot of productivity. In fact, while writing this, I’ve decided to make an aspect of fields the topic of my next Tuesday Tip. So, until then, stay tuned!

More Tuesday Tips

Check out our whole Tuesday Tips series for ideas on how to make AutoCAD work for you. Do you have any favorite AutoCAD tips? Tell us in the comments!