Today the announcement of the next release of AutoCAD 2009 code named
"Raptor" (like a hawk) as well as many other products have been
announced from Autodesk World Press Day. The products will start
shipping later but are not currently. I will begin to post on the
features in more depth as well as link and trackbacks to those doing
the same as there is a huge CAD blogging community now. The official
new products content on the Autodesk.com website and public discussion
groups will go live in the next few weeks with further details as the
launch begins.

During beta I think the largest hurdle was
getting used to the User Interface changes of the new ribbon. Most got
used to it after using it and it is more customizable than the standard
MS Office ribbon and can also be turned off. The Release Candidate that
was last delivered to beta sites has now been updated based on their
feedback and reporting and we wish to sincerely thank them all for the
active feedback and helping shape the future of the products.