Trick for DWF Compare using Custom Symbols

In April of last year, I published an article entitled Tips for Custom Symbols in Autodesk Design Review with information on markup from Solutions Engineer for Autodesk Collaboration Solutions, Jason Pratt. One of the tips in the article involved being able to compare two versions of the same DWF using a trick.

In a recent example supplied by Jason, he had two DWF files of the same name in different directories:

Revised: C:\revised\Caron.dwf
Original: C:\Documents and Settings\prattj\Desktop\Caron.dwf

The detailed steps to perform the comparison include.

1. Load the revised C:\revised\Caron.dwf into Autodesk Design Review.

2. 
   Select the ability to import custom symbols from the Autodesk Design Review stamps pull-down menu.

3. 
   Choose the original DWF file, in this case located on Jason's Desktop, to import as a custom symbol.

4. 
   Import each sheet as a symbol. In Jason's case, he got one symbol for each sheet in the Caron.dwf file.

5. 
   Now Autodesk Design Review has a new set of custom symbols. There is one symbol per sheet. So for, example, when looking at sheet "A0.3 Existing Site Plan" in the revised Caron.dwf, Jason can insert the "A0.3 Existing Site Plan" custom symbol. When he does this, he now has the revised sheet from the DWF along with the items from the original sheet as markup. This allows him to easily see what has changed between the two versions of the A0.3 Existing Site Plan sheet.

Thanks Jason.