The Autodesk website has had its out of season "Happy New Year make-over" for 2010. Many of the 2010 products are shipping including several* that matter to me: AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, Autodesk Design Review and 3ds Max Design.
I have been reliably informed the little plastic boxes with DVDs inside are in New Zealand already but the courier has not yet called at work, or home. If you're on Subscription, as I am, you can download many of the applications rather than wait for the shiny discs. If you're in the United States or Canada and just want to try AutoCAD there is also a free 30 day trial download. Other countries need to contact their dealers regarding the trial versions which seems quaintly regional in these days of border-less communication.
I have spent quite a bit of time with the beta versions but it's always interesting to see the final release. At work I'm considering a major shift to 64 bit O/S along with our 2010 deployments. It's not required for 2010, although there are some processor requirements that you should check out, but the increasing complexity of our data, bigger more complex models, means XP32 bit memory allocation limitations have become very real.
At home I'm using 2010 as an excuse to stop procrastinating and rebuild my machine. It has been running unchanged, apart from Windows & applications updates, since it arrived several years ago so it's time for a clean out. Again this isn't required for 2010, which will run alongside many earlier versions, but I have been looking at a once shiny new hard drive, sitting on the desk waiting to be fitted, for far too long!
Press Release Links
Autodesk 2010 Design and Engineering Software Product Line Now Available
Autodesk Introduces 3ds Max 2010 Software at Game Developers Conference
* No sign of Revit yet.
