Beyond the Paper

Project Freewheel: The Cat's Out of the Bag

AECnews.com has reported: There’s a Redlining Easter Egg in Autodesk DWFit.

Redlining is under development. It's hidden in Project Freewheel in pseudo Easter Egg form, because it is not ready yet. Having it in there allows us to test it in its live environment. Hiding it prevents premature exposure for something that is in the conceptual stage. The implementation concept was first envisioned by Programmer/Software Engineer Jeffrey Klug.

At this point in its development, I am opposed to the laying down of rules or conditions to be observed in the redlining of DWF files via Freewheel lest the progress of improvement tomorrow might be embarrassed or shackled by recording or registering as law the prejudices or errors of today. :-)

The initial markup experiment is limited to freehand sketching, for example no text, and does not provide the ability to save your markups. This is another reason its implementation is somewhat hidden.

Project Freewheel: The requested DWF is not valid.

J. Paul Getty was an American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company. After becoming one of the richest men in the world, he was approached by an American magazine to write an article describing his success. He was offered a sizable sum of money in return. The magazine said that the article could be of any length. J. Paul Getty accepted their offer and wrote: "Some people find oil. Others don't."

If you see a "The requested DWF is not valid." error message and wonder what happened, keep two things in mind.

1. Recall how Project Freewheel works. A copy of your DWF file is uploaded to the Project Freewheel server. If something unexpected happens during this process, the resulting file that lands on the server may not be intact. Though this rarely happens, it is normally the result of internet file transfer issues and has nothing specifically to do with Project Freewheel itself. For example, it does not mean that the Project Freewheel server is being overloaded.

2. Project Freewheel is a technology preview. We know we have problems to work out and bugs to fix. We don’t pretend that this is a production level solution yet. At the same time, we welcome continued usage and hearing about the problems/bugs/ideas/successes people have with the project.

Such is the case with the Project Freewheel Viewer. To paraphrase J. Paul Getty: "Some DWF files work. Others don't." Actually most DWF files work.

Project Freewheel: Automatic Thumbnail Viewing via DWF Bookmarklet

Suppose you are browsing the web, looking for CAD parts, and you encounter a web page that contains several links to DWF files. To see each DWF file, you need to click on each link. If only there was a way to transform all of these links into thumbnails in one operation.

The change has come, [DWF's] under my thumb[nail].
"Under My Thumb," The Rolling Stones, 1966.

Software Engineer and Evangelist, Brian Pene, has come up with a solution - the DWF Bookmarklet.

For more information and steps to take advantage of this solution, see:

http://dwf.blogs.com/articles/bookmarklet.htm

Thanks Brian!

Project Freewheel: Can I print my DWF file?

Can I print my DWF file with the Project Freewheel Viewer?
As I have mentioned many times in this blog, for DWF to go beyond the paper, it needs to get to paper first. Although not present when first unveiled, the Project Freewheel technology preview now includes printing.

Project Freewheel: Can I view a 3D DWF file?

Can I view a 3D DWF with the Project Freewheel Viewer?
Yes. With more and more Autodesk customers moving from 2D to 3D, we were well aware of the need for viewing of 3D design data. Although the initial technology preview of the Project Freewheel Viewer was limited to 2D, 3D support has been added.

Project Freewheel: Can I view a DWF file on my Blackberry?

Can I view a DWF file on my Blackberry?
We recently made changes to Project Freewheel to support this. The home page, http://dwfit.com does not work. This index page contains incompatible elements. With this in mind, you can try viewing the hotel sample by entering http://dwfit.com/dwf.aspx on your mobile device. Not all devices are the same. We have only tried a few. Your mileage may vary.

Is viewing your design data predetermined, or do you possess freewheel? [pun intended :-)]

Project Freewheel: When is the software available?

When is the software available?
The Project Freewheel service is running now, but it is a technology preview, and thus, is not officially supported. We don't have any public plans for officially supporting the service or making the server software available at this time; however, the service is up and running and we don't have any plans to take it down or turn it off either... so if you want to try using it go ahead, but I wouldn't invest a huge amount of time or resources that depend on it for mission critical stuff. If we see continued interest in the service we will develop it further.