AutoCAD Electrical 2019 – Drawing Compare

By Miles Nicholson

The New Drawing Compare tools in AutoCAD Electrical 2019 enables you to easily identify graphical visual differences between two revisions of any drawing. For example, changes made to a schematic. What are the differences between the two drawings? Changes might be difficult to see but may be critical.

DWG1

DWG2

With the Drawing Compare functionality, this is what you can see:

DWG1 vs DWG2

The green and red graphics highlight the differences between the first version of the drawing (green) and the second version (red). All unchanged elements are shown in grey. Having displayed this difference, you can decide whether to maintain the changes or change to the original design.

How Do You Start a Drawing Comparison?

You can also access it from the new Collaborate ribbon tab:

If the current drawing has been saved, it is used as DWG1 in the DWG Compare dialog box. The drop list provides easy access to current and recently opened drawings. Or you can use the browse buttons […] to select a drawing from the file navigation dialog.

Viewing Results

The results of the comparison are displayed in a third drawing. Three categories of objects or parts of objects are displayed: those which are located only in the first drawing, those which are located only in the second drawing and those which are identical in the two drawings. The default name of the new drawing is “Compare_DWG1 vs DWG2” (where DWG1 & DWG2 = the names of the two drawings being compared). This can be changed when you save the comparison result drawing.

DWG1 vs DWG2