Suddenly, you could apply Geometric (parallel, perpendicular, concentric) and Dimensional constraints. You could tell a circle to always stay 5 units away from a line. You could change a dimension from "2.5" to "10," and the entire object scaled intelligently.

How does the decade-and-a-half-old giant stack up to today's versions?

Furthermore, the became fully customizable, allowing drafters to keep their most-used commands (Save, Undo, Plot) floating above the Ribbon, independent of which tab was active.

: A significant upgrade for everyday drafting, this command provided interactive highlighting (green for additions, red for subtractions) to make distance, radius, and area calculations more visual and intuitive.

AutoCAD 2011 added surface analysis and transparency. 2012 added associative arrays. 2013 introduced cloud saves.