Beyond the Paper

Revit 2008 DWF Roundtripping

Another great media file, capturing the roundtrip from Revit to DWF and back to Revit.

The enclosed media file shows in detail:

• publish of 2D DWF using Revit 2008
• open and apply markups using Autodesk Design Review 2008
• import DWF file back into Revit 2008
• adjust the content according to markups applied earlier
• publish to 2D DWF
• open the files in Autodesk Design Review 2008 and compare the content using the DWF Compare functionality

Download Zip File

Note: At this point only 2D DWF files can be used for the roundtrip functionality with Revit 2008.

A similar article is planned for AutoCAD 2008 and other vertical products.

--Volker

Color Choices

Many users of Autodesk Design Review would like to choose their own colors when it comes to markups, backgrounds, highlight color or similar. However, they seem to be at a loss when having to take action.

Autodesk Design Review 2008 offers users to change the following color settings:

• Background Color
• Paper Color
• Dynamic Highlight Color
• Selection Color
• Sheet Hyperlink Color
• Model Edge Color
• Gradient Background Color
• Selection Color
• Additions & Deletions

Colors can be changed through the "Tools" > "Options" setting and are divided up as shown in the image.

Colors are changed in a similar way each time and detailed steps on how to select a predefined or  creating a custom color can be found in the Help section of the product.

--Volker

Inventor 2008 DWF Roundtripping

I thought that it would be great for us to capture the round trip from Inventor to DWF and back to Inventor in a short AVI. Said and done, enclosed is a short AVI of the same.

Download dwf_trip.avi (22426.0K)

Download Zip File

For those who are interested in forward and backward compatibility questions - a DWF  created with Inventor 2008 and marked up with Autodesk Design Review 2008, cannot be opened with Inventor 11 DWF Extension. However, DWF produced using Inventor 11 DWF Extension and marked up using Autodesk Design Review 2008 can be opened with Inventor 2008. Any DWF created with versions prior Inventor 11 DWF Extension, including Inventor 11 itself, cannot be opened with Inventor 2008, once marked up.

Similar articles are planned for Revit 2008 and AutoCAD 2008.

--Volker

Jennifer Toton: How Does Autodesk Design Review Speed Time to Market?

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Jennifer Toton, reports that Autodesk® Design Review software streamlines your design review process with measure, markup, and approval tools that help speed product development to completion. Securely enable team members to accurately review 2D and 3D designs digitally, offer feedback quickly and easily, and track and round-trip their changes while cutting days off the review cycle.

Download ADR_Workflow_Mfg.pdf (418.7K)

This is an update of a similar document provided for Autodesk Design Review 2007. Check it out.

--Scott

Jennifer Toton: How Does Autodesk Design Review Streamline Building Projects?

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Jennifer Toton, reports that Autodesk® Design Review software streamlines your design review process with custom markup and approval tools that help speed the project to completion. Now team members can accurately review 2D and 3D designs digitally, offer feedback quickly and easily, and track and round-trip their changes while cutting days off the review cycle.

Download ADR_Workflow_AEC.pdf (265.3K)

This is an update of a similar document provided for Autodesk Design Review 2007. Check it out.

--Scott

Jennifer Toton: How Does Autodesk Design Review Streamline Infrastructure Projects?

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Jennifer Toton, reports that Autodesk Design Review allows you to take full advantage of existing technology investments in Autodesk design software and third-party systems such as geospatial data storage, work management, or ERP (enterprise resource planning) to automate processes.

Download ADR_Workflow_Geo.pdf (240.2K)

This is an update of a similar document provided for Autodesk Design Review 2007. Check it out.

--Scott

Markup Compatibility between ADR 2007 and ADR 2008

With many companies still using Autodesk Design Review 2007 it is very likely that the question will come up as to whether one can create markups with Autodesk Design Review 2007 and send them for review and/or edit to Autodesk Design Review 2008.

Before addressing this particular question we should clarify that Autodesk Design Review 2007 will be removed from a machine should one install Autodesk Design Review 2008 on the same. This is as designed and a built-in function of the installer.

As far as markups are concerned:

• 2D markups are interchangeable between the 2007 and 2008 versions and can be edited and changed and send back and forth as many times as you like.
• 3D markups on the other hand cannot and should not be exchanged between the versions. This is a limitation and due to the 3D markup in Design Review 2008 being based on a different format.

What are the plans moving forward? - Honestly, we have no answer to the question at this point. Ask us again in 6 months time ...

--Volker

DWF and the Deathly Hallows: Why did Autodesk abandon RML?

A Mr. Harry Potter from Fort Lee, New Jersey writes in an asks:

Why did Autodesk abandon the use of RML files in favor of DWF?

Autodesk View was the first Autodesk product to provide a redline capability. When this application got combined with WHIP! to form Volo View, the markup information was saved in what was called a redline markup language (RML) file. To keep file sizes small, the RML file contained just the markup information. The design author and reviewer were both assumed to have the original drawing file. The RML file contained the name of the drawing that the markup applied to. This allowed Volo View to load the drawing when the RML file was loaded.

Having just the drawing file name in the RML file proved problematic in that the RML file did not identify which version of a drawing had been used. In many cases, the drawing had changed between the time it was marked up and the time that the recipient of the RML wanted to respond to a reviewer's comments. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the markup was done based on all of what the user could see when viewed in Volo View. This included XREFs and other files, but none of the names of the XREF references appeared in the RML file. So if an XREF had been added or dropped since the markup was created, there was no way to tell.

So rather than produce an RML file that just contained the markup and have to try to determine what it had been created against, we went the other direction. We decided to capture what was being viewed (source, XREFs, and all) in addition to the markup. We used a DWF file which captured the original drawing and allowed Autodesk Design Review to add markup information to that DWF file. It actually adds the markup information at the end - leaving the original DWF file in tact. For updating the original drawing file, we created a round trip process where the markup information could be culled from the DWF file and aligned with the source drawing. This removed all doubt as to what a drawing looked like when it was marked up but still allowed the markup to be viewed against the latest version of a drawing.

The markup information in a DWF is actually a combination of XML, an industry standard, and typical DWF geometry. The RML format predated XML and was proprietary.

One of the benefits of the RML file was that Volo View loaded it as an XREF against the original drawing. Thus you could load more than one reviewer's comments at the same time. This is also possible with Autodesk Design Review. Using Autodesk Design Review, you can combine multiple marked up sheets from several DWF files into one DWF file. You then load the combined DWF file in the Markup Set Manager of AutoCAD. The duplicated DWF geometry is ignored and only the markup items are shown. The result is that you see all of the reviewers comments against the original geometry in the drawing.

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.

St. Johns River Water Management District: A Convenient Truth

Protecting Resources— More Efficiently
E-permitting saves applicants and internal reviewers time thanks to Autodesk Design Review and DWF

Product Marketing Manager, Gabrielle Friedly, reports that St. Johns River Water Management District investigated technologies that might meet its e-permitting needs and decided that Autodesk offered a solution that fit perfectly: Autodesk Design Review and DWF. The agency then built an all-digital e-permitting process around the viewing, markup, and measurement capabilities within Autodesk Design Review:

Download Autodesk_SJRWM.pdf (546.2K)

Thanks Gabrielle. Check it out.