Autodesk Design Review Honors Scale Set in DWF File

A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey writes in:

Once in Buzzsaw, my DWF files that were converted from DWG files do not allow me to change the scale. Can you tell me how to create the DWF files so that the scale can be manipulated in Buzzsaw?

Unfortunately there is no way to change the scale once the DWF is created. DWF files can be created from Model space or Layouts.

1. Publishing from Layouts is the recommended method of creating DWF files. A Layout has a title block and a variety of viewports. These viewports have scaling information associated with them. Autodesk Design Review honors the scale factor on a per viewport basis. That is why Solutions Engineer, Jason Pratt, always recommends using Layouts to plot your DWFs from. "Choosy mothers choose JIF."

2. When you use Layouts to create DWF file, AutoCAD writes the scale into the DWF from the Layout. Once it does this, Autodesk Design Review locks that in and does not allow you to manipulate it anymore. When you don't use Layouts and publish from Model Space, there is no scale written in the DWF file, so Autodesk Design Review allows you to manipulate it. So if you are using Layouts, you want to make sure and set the proper scale up front, since you can't change it later.

One of the tenets of Autodesk Design Review is that it wants to preserve the publisher's intentions. If an AutoCAD user publishes a DWF file where one inch equals one mile, Autodesk Design Review should honor that. The Autodesk Design Review user should not be able to change it so that one inch equals one foot.

On the other hand, converting scale information is something that can easily be done by hand. For example, I could take a set of measurements in a DWF in inches, record them in a workbook, multiply by 2.54, and I would have the measurements in centimeters instead. So Autodesk Design Review allows you to change how measurements are reported:

Although Autodesk Design Review honors what is in the DWF file, what happens if an Autodesk Design Review user receives a DWF file with incorrect scale information? Resetting the scale would be quite handy then. A feature request has been passed on to our Product Managers. Thanks for the question Richard.

Comments

[Shawn]

How exactly do these "wrong scale" dwfs get created in the first place? My viewports are set to 1"=40' but my DWF "thinks" they are 1"=41.4' (i.e. when I use measure, it will measure a 100' feature as 103.5'). Paper space objects measure dead on however. This seems to only happen with certain random DWGs.

[Scott Sheppard]

Shawn:
The most likely scenario is that the DWF file was published at low precision. The remedy for this is to increase the vector DPI. You can associate use page setup to assciate model space with DWF6 ePlot pc3 and crank up the vector DPI to 30720 and see if that corrects the problem.

[john]

I noticed that markups do not change size based on scale. The cloud for example, uses the same arc-length all the time. This can be problematic depending on the scale of the DWF. Is there a way to control the GLOBAL scale of markups? This is a sorely needed feature. I have found that in Mapping for example, markups are basically unusable because they come in too big.

[Volker Joseph]

This is in the works.

[Ross]

I'd like to add my voice to the request for being able to set a custom scale (preferably with a simple graphical tool).

The drawings we use consist of multiple elements, nearly every DWF generated has a main layout at one scale, with details at a different scale.

Because of this, almost none of our DWF files have an appropriate scale set, and the measurement tools are useless.