Beyond the Paper

Manufacturing Design Information on a Roundtrip

From Inventor 2008 to Design Review 2008 and Back

Think of the review work flow as a trip for design information. Not only do you want to send the design information to visit the reviewers, but you also want it to return with reviewer feedback. The best vehicle to use for that round trip is a DWF file.

Pack a Suitcase and Go

Typically, the round trip begins in a design program, such as Autodesk® Inventor® 2008. Publishing a DWF file from Inventor is like packing a bag for a trip. The designer has to determine what design information is necessary for the trip (model, drawing, presentation, Bill of Materials or parts list, representations, and so on). Once the design information has been selected, the designer packs, or publishes, the information into a DWF file.

DWF round-tripping with Inventor 2008 is only supported for (2D) IDW files. However, markup, measurements, or other reviewer notations added to 3D models or presentations can be returned to the Inventor engineer within the DWF file.

To publish design information from an open Inventor drawing

1. Choose File > Publish.
The Publish dialog box opens.

2. Optional:
• Choose to disable measurements, markup, or printing by unchecking these options.
• Uncheck Display Published File in Viewer.
• Choose Password Protection for the DWF file you are publishing.

3. If necessary, on the Properties tab, select which properties to include in the DWF file.
By default, Properties with Values is selected.

Note: If you choose the Custom publishing option, other tabs are available for additional control over the published content.

4. Click Publish.
The Publish Document dialog box opens.

5. Type a file name and click Save to publish the file to DWF.

Send your DWF for Review

Once the DWF file has been published, you can send it to your reviewers who will use Autodesk® Design Review 2008 to perform the tasks necessary to your review work flow, such as adding markups with notes and statuses. When finished reviewing the DWF file, the reviewer saves their changes, closes the DWF file, and either passes it along to the next reviewer or returns it to the designer, so that the markups may be considered against the original Inventor drawing.

Get it Back and Unpack

To review the marked up DWF file in Inventor, use the Markups Browser. The Markups Browser can show or hide individual markups, created in Design Review, over the Inventor drawing in the graphics window. The Markups Browser also displays any information about a markup, such as who created it, when it was created, and any associated status or history. The Markups Browser can also be used to modify some markup detail, such as its status or responding to a note. When finished reviewing the markups, any changes or replies are added automatically to the DWF file when it’s republished.

To review the markups in Inventor

1. Open the original IDW file from which the DWF file was created.

2. Choose File > Load Markup Set.
The Open Markup DWF dialog box opens.

3. Navigate to and select the DWF file that contains the returned markups and click Open.
The Markups Browser opens and the tree view lists the individual markups, by sheet for multi-sheet drawing files, that were added to the DWF file during the review process.

4. In the Markups Browser, double-click a markup to open the Markup Properties dialog box.

5. Optional: Change the Markup Status or respond to the markup by adding a comment to the Notes text box.

6. Make changes to the original Inventor drawing file as necessary to incorporate the received feedback.
At this point, the round trip is complete. The design information was sent into the review work flow and returned with feedback.

If desired, you can republish the file and send it out for further design reviews.

A word of thanks to Jonathan Geary, who wrote this article for us.

--Volker

DWF Writer for 64bit ??

Though we have had many requests to offer the DWF Writer for 64bit, it is not certain that this is becoming a reality, yet.

At this point our DWF Writer for 32bit does not install on a 64bit system and no workaround is available.

The experts are still out to determine as to how useful such a printer driver will really be. Many believe that users are making it part of the design process - instead of using the built-in publish feature functionality offered in our Autodesk design applications - given they are part of the process.

I am a proponent of the 64bit DWF Writer but have still some distance to go before all hurdles are cleared. Needless to say that it would be extremely useful to hear from you.

Why do you think that we should offer a DWF Writer for 64bit platforms?

You can post your comments in this forum or email me directly at volker.joseph@autodesk.com. We are looking for your vote, telling us as to why you think that we should (absolutely!) introduce this printer driver.

It would also be helpful to understand as to what applications are used as part of your design process. And why, if you are using Autodesk applications, you think that the built-in publish features are not sufficient and require the DWF Writer for the design process.

DWF Writer for 64bit to the rescue!

--Volker

DWG TrueView 2009 is cool

I think people will really like the new Autodesk DWG TrueView 2009. Autodesk DWG TrueView 2009 is geared toward users who do not have extensive AutoCAD experience. It has a nice streamlined ribbon-based interface.

By the way - look at that DWG. How many people remember Shaan Hurley's helicool.dwg? He created it for AutoCAD 2007. I have always liked it. But I digress.

Autodesk DWG TrueView 2009 has historically been used to view DWG files and publish them to DWF. Users would then use Autodesk Design Review to markup and measure the resulting DWF. Autodesk Design Review and DWG TrueView interoperate in that a user can import a DWG into Autodesk Design Review, and Autodesk Design Review 2009 will use DWG TrueView to create a DWF file on the fly. These capabilities continue to exist in DWG TrueView 2009; however, for DWG TrueView 2009, a user can measure a DWG without converting it to DWF.

This has been an often requested feature by those engineering teams who work with DWG files on internal networks.

For extended teams connected via the internet, DWF continues to offer the advantages of smaller file size, one stop shopping (no missing XREFs), and some protection of intellectual property (DWF only contains what you put in it; it's not your original DWG). // more

--Scott 

Embed Autodesk Design Review 2008 into Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

Many of us used to embed the past DWF Viewer into earlier versions of Microsoft PowerPoint and it appeared that this functionality had gone lost in the process, looking at Autodesk Design Review and Microsoft PowerPoint today.

Well, it is still possible - not quite as straight forward as it used to be - but nevertheless possible.

Enclosed are the steps as well as a download link to a video, outlining a step by step description of the process.

Download the video HERE.

To activate a DWF File in PPT slide show mode please do the following :

1. Open PPT with a blank slide

2. To Fix your security settings (you only need to do this once and not every time you want to insert an ADR control):
a. Open PPT and click the Office Button in the top-left
b. Click “PowerPoint Options” in the bottom right. The options dialog will pop up
c. Click “trust Center” tab on the left. The trust center tab will open
d. Click the “trust Center Settings...” button. The settings dialog will open.
e. Click “ActiveX” settings. It will open the active tab
f. Make sure “Disable all controls without notification” radio button is NOT checked. I have the radio button “Prompt me before enabling all controls with minimal restrictions” checked

3.  To show the Developer tool bar (you only need to do this once and not every time you want to insert an ADR control):
a. In the PowerPoint Options dialog, click the “Popular” tab on the left.
b. In the “Popular” tab, check the box labeled “Show Developer Tab In ribbon”

4. To Insert ADR control:
a. Click on the developer tab
b. In the “Controls” tool bar, click the “More Controls” button. It will take some time for a dialog with all registered controls to pop up
c. Scroll down and pick “Autodesk DWF Viewer Control”. If you do not see this option it means ADR is not registered on your machine.
d. Your cursor will change to a crossbar. In your slide, click and drag to draw a rectangle. When you mouse-up, the ADR control will be drawn in the rectangle.

5. To set a file on the Control:
a. Right-click the control you just created. Open the “Autodesk DWF Viewer Control Object” cascade menu and click “Properties”
b. The properties dialog will pop up and the “Source Path” tab will be open. Browse to the path of the file you want to insert in the object. Hit OK.
c. The file is now drawn in the control.

6. To activate the control
a. Run the slide show
b. Click on the control. It will activate and you can use it.

Note: The DWF file is only linked to, and a meta file is embedded in the PPT. If the DWF file doesn’t exist at the same location you defined in step 5b, you will get a warning message when opening the PPT stating there is a missing file, but the PPT will open. When you run the slide show, you will see another warn message. When you dismiss the message, you will again see the meta file but you won’t be able to activate it.

--Volker

So what's new with Autodesk Design Review 2009?

Autodesk Design Review 2009 is this year's release of the Autodesk Design Review software. I am proud to say that we have managed to integrate some great new features including a number of feature requests, outstanding and new.

This makes this release - in my honest opinion - rise above the rest.

I am using this article to outline some of the new features that will be available with Autodesk Design Review 2009. A more detailed description for each will follow in the coming weeks.

1. New default file format. DWFx is now the default file format for Design Review. DWFx files can be viewed on Windows Vista without installing additional software or plug-ins. Actually DWFx files can be viewed anywhere an XPS viewer is already present. Some customers have added XPS viewing to their Windows XP systems.
2. Enhanced user interface. Design Review now has a more customizable interface.
3. Find text. Locate text in an open DWF file. This was a much requested feature.
4. Rotate 2D content. In addition to raster images, you can now rotate 2D sheets that do not contain markup. You no longer have to turn your head sideways to see those portrait layouts.
5. Flexible component support. Design Review can display flexible components in a DWF file. A flexible component is an object published by Inventor that illustrates a connection between other objects, such as a wire strung between two telephone poles. If one pole is moved farther from the other pole, the wire (the flexible component) appears to stretch to accommodate the new pole position.
6. Updated plug-ins. Design Review plug-ins have been improved. For example, this includes Batch Print, DGN import, and JT import.
7. Project Freewheel. Design Review can now share DWF files on the Project Freewheel Web site so DWF files can be reviewed by others without requiring customers to install Autodesk Design Review. Choose File->Freewheel... to learn more about the plug-in. (The Autodesk Project Freewheel Web site and the Freewheel plug-in are available in English only.)
8. Batch print directly from Design Review. You can now print multiple DWF files without having to download and install a plug-in.

The new features of Autodesk Design Review 2009 continue to help DWF go beyond what can be done with paper.

--Volker