1. You have to keep them anyway for editting.
2. Free utilities to view and print them are readily available.
3. PDF is widely supported but brings little to the table in the form of other features or benefits.
I agree with OTHGWayne, Autodesk now has a great & free DWG viewer for download called Trueview that allows you to view DWG & DXF files (both 2D and 3D). The software also allows you to convert between different versions of DWG files from version 12 to version 2008.
Autodesk also has another free viewer called "design review" that allows you to view, print, measure, and mark-up DWG drawings.
I like PDF better than DWF becasue almost everyone already has software to view PDF files on their computers. Also, the newer Adobe 3D software allows you to animate drawings in 3D, which works great for making 3D presentations, watching assembly parts explode & then implode, etc.. If Autodesk had features like this for DWF, that would be great.
DWF is Autodesk dream of substituting pdf format at least for CAD dwg related files.
Both format will end up complimenting each other rather than competing each other.
Conversion to pdf is much simplier and faster - just scan all your plan and output direct to pdf files. To convert to dwf you need the dwg files at first place.
Dwf is great if you need to extract out information contained in the plan. Design Review come with handy tools like length and area tools. It can even allow you to set the drawing units to real measurement unit - something that even AutoCAD 2k8 shy off. (I would like to made correction to John2004 - Design Review can only view, print, measure, and mark-up DWF format not DWG.)
Trueview is great effort by Autodesk to enable non-cad community to view and plot the dwg files. Strictly view and plot only - because you can't measure anything in Trueview - unless you plot it and measure physically using scale ruler.
Been using DWF now for about 1 week and its good. Can covert to pdf anytime thru DWF and files are smaller size. I have autocad express viewer V3.1. Dont like the newer version somewhat.
I like to use special hand-letter fonts in my drawing since they look like the old lettering. The folks I send drawings to have rudimentary autocad skills at best and cannot see some of my special characters like the Plate Symbol and Angle Symbol. I have sent my font files to them and they cannot figure out how to put them in their font directory. They keep calling and asking me to save the DWG in R12 format or some old format that they think will display the drawing. It got so ridiculous that they had us print out the drawing at our office and FAX it to them on 2 pages to make an 11x17 drawing then called to ask what the dimensions were because they could not read the FAX.
I finally started sending them PDF versions as an eMail attachment to stop all the confusion.
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I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.
Thanks for the additional info vlh75, I have not used design review, but at the autodesk link below, it says that is supports DWG and DXF files, I don't know the extent of the support, I would think that you should at least be able to view them...
It seems Autodesk should combine design review and trueview into one product, and perhaps add a few more features to allow better communication between the CAD drafter and people who either don't have CAD or are not very proficient with CAD.
I feel for design communication, 3D is the way to go. The ability to look at everything in 3D from different views, & a 3D orbit function is nice. The ability to explode and implode assemblies and do an animation of the device in operation is really helpful. All of this along with regular assembly drawings and 2D prints should pretty much explain the design. Adding audio narration would be another nice feature.
Of course all of this would be overkill for many simple designs, but I have often wished I had all of this for some things. Better to have it & not need it than to need it and not have it.
civeng80 said: Is this all because your using DWF files??
No, I was using Autocad LT 2002 and a DWG file. The fabricator had an old version of Autocad and users that could not figure out how to put a font file in the search path.
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I have been called "A storehouse of worthless information" many times.
John2004,
Design Review (DR) don't really open DWG or DXF files. Instead Autodesk has embedded a DWG to DWF converter to the DR. So every time you "force" DR to open DWG the program will convert the DWG to DWF first before able to read the file. But this process is slow and you not able to control the converted DWF quality (resolution, color, paper size etc). DR is actually raster image program so it can support inherently raster graphic like DWF, jpeg or bmp.
