Publish Materials or Textures using AutoCAD MEP

I thought that this recent conversation in our Autodesk Design Review Discussion Group would be worth  sharing:

Customer inquired..“Will materials/textures from AutoCAD MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) publish over to the Autodesk Design Review software? I would like to see the rendered view in Design Review like the shade mode in AutoCAD MEP 2008. Brick, CMU, etc...   Any way this is possible?”

Chris Blocher, Senior Technical Writer at Autodesk, replied...“If I understand what you're asking,

1. In AutoCAD, choose File > Publish.
2. In the Publish dialog box, select the model you want to publish in the list and, under the Page Setup / 3D DWF column heading, change <Default: None> to <3D DWF>.
3. Under Publish To, verify that DWF File is selected.
4. Click Publish Options.
5. In the Publish Options dialog box, under 3D DWF Options, the second option is Publish With Materials. Set that to Yes.
6. Click OK and finish publishing the file.”

Customer replied..."The publish option works fine... as long as you remember to set your material search path in the options dialog box. Thanks for the input.”

--Volker

Comments

[peter march]

The 'free viewer' is rubbish its not even as good as a JPG viewer you can't even turn a view if it come up landscape when it should be portrait!!! From your Download Examples as well!!

As an engineer I need much more fuctionality than just a simple and poor jPG viewer.
Please look at Catia, Solid edge, and many others to see how it should be done.

I've used Autocad never though it was up to it ... many cad users don't rate it either. And this engineers viewer reinforces that opinion.

The version I have just down loaded can't rotate a dwg or mark it up. Look at the VIS viewer that's not that good but it knocks spots of this offering... I will not be recommending this as an Engineers tool... Sorry Autocad but please try and join the 21st century some time soon. cheers. Disapointed Pete.

[Volker Joseph]

Thank you for the feedback.

The sheet rotate functionality is being considered for the next release at this point and yes you can insert DWG into ADR, once you have DWG TrueView installed on the same machine. That will convert DWG on the fly to DWF and hence allow you to apply markup and measure functionality.

Last but not least, you should get your facts straight. The company is called Autodesk and not AutoCAD; AutoCAD is one of our products.