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We are working on a 100,000 sq ft library in my office and are trying to optimize our workflow in AutoCAD 2011 and come up with effective ways to share our building models with our engineers, contractors, and client. I feel like the traditional way of showing black and white 2D drawings printed from AutoCAD has become somewhat superfluous with today's technology so we are trying to use the tools available to us to produce some kind of 3D model in which building and parts information can be embedded into the actual file. For example, my contractor clicks on a floor slab and it displays square footage, thickness, type, materials... I know it's possible to do this by publishing to DWF in AutoCAD so that the model can be opened by anyone (who has software to open DWFs) and be able to click on a beam or column for example and see what size it is or other information we choose to be displayed. Has anyone tried this method with success? It seems like a lot of work when dealing with a building of this size. I made a 3D PDF with pretty good success using our AutoCAD model which by the way is drawn using ADT which means everything we draw is a 3-dimensional object. I imported the CAD model into Sketchup and used a trial software to convert to a 3D PDF which is viewable by anyone. This is very practical for everyone involved in the project to be able to see a 3D structural model and rotate around and so on. The layers that were made in Sketchup can be turned on/off (if you know where to look in adobe reader). I would love to share with you the 3D PDF so you can see as a reference but I don't know how to attach it to this post. I was wondering if anyone is dealing with these issues and what solution they have found for it. Thanks!

I am really impressed in some ways with AutoDesk's attempts in this department. When project managers ask me to send them 'drawings' they can print out to their desktop A3 printers - the format they ALWAYS ask for is PDF. Not DWG or DWF or anything, PDF is the one they want exclusively. I always liked DWFs myself, and would have tried to encourage it as a format. However, what they have done to the 'DWF Viewer' of old is simply horrible. When Adobe PDF went 3D a while back (I haven't much experience with 3D dwfs or PDFs, but my structural eng pals use it for long distance collaboration a lot), AutoDesk followed suit, and now the modern day equivalent of the old simple DWF viewer is something called AutoDesk Design Review. A mix and match of what used to be their upgrade from the DWF viewer, the DWF composer. And the new AutoDesk Design Review product is trying to be as good as the new Acrobat Reader of course also. On a side note, after Acrobat Reader 6.0 and 7.0, I got so disillusioned with it, I went to Foxit reader for most ordinary PDF documents. But Adobe Reader 8.0 and after seem to have come back with a bang, and as I said, the 3D capability now, which structural engineers friends of mine use. But that is on the DWF side of the equation. Now lets go back to my project manager and his desktop A3 deskjet printer and what format to send to him. I would rather e-Transmit or bind an AutoCAD file and mail it to him. He could open it in AutoDesk TruView. But I suppose the project manager I work with has wasted days in the past messing around with DWGs, with other consultants who email him stuff, and he just doesn't trust the format anymore. There are all sorts of things that can go pear shaped. Any of you deeply familiar with AutoCAD as a software will know what I mean and there is no need to wade into that discussion. (Maybe AUGI World forums or somewhere else, if you care to clash swords on AutoCAD and AutoDesk matters) I got around to seeing what AutoDesk TruView is like lately. I had a Vista laptop I carry around a lot. I didn't really like the way the old 'Convert' utility is wrapped up into 'Truview' these days. But I guess it make sense to be able to view and convert at the same time. But I do miss the clean-ness of the old 'Convert' utility. It is sort of like the DWF viewer used to be a joy to use in the old days. Now this Truview business is required for batch file conversions, and quite frankly I find Truview too clunky and too awkward. The only thing I did like about Truview when I installed and used it on the Vista laptop was its ability to create PDFs from DWGs. I do use that a bit now. I have also used Truview's ability to measure areas and distances in AutoCAD files a little bit. I have to confess, that did get me out of danger on one occasion when I only had an internet connection and a laptop. But all in all, I think that Tru View is only a 'get out of danger' kind of facility - and it tries to do so many things at the same time, it ends up doing nothing very well. In Truview, they even have a 'markup' sort of capability integrated now. Presumably, on some other planet, there are project managers who were hard hats who have laptops on site and squiggle markups on the native DWG format to fling around by email to consultants elsewhere. This is a borrowed idea from DWF composer and the newer AutoDesk Design Review product. But frankly I think it is all a bit much to handle. I know that many visualisation artists here at CG Architect use these viewer applications along side your 3DS VIZ and so forth. Feel free to vent any comments, complaints or otherwise here. I just felt like a good rant about this today, and there you go. Brian O' Hanlon I notice some discussions on this topic over at AutoDesk, but I haven't carefully read any of them yet. http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums

Hello all... I am trying to get a handle on exteriors of houses for modelling in 3ds. I have AutoCAD 2006 and even that freebie program from AutoDesk that converts higher versions of Cad files down so I can read them (TrueView?). I found a company in the UK that has a bunch of house plans on a CD for pretty cheap. Thing is, their example is a DWF format. I can view the example file in AutoDesk Design Review but cannot export/convert it to a dwg. I fire up AutoCAD 2006 and cannot seem to do anything with the dxf file. I've even tried to 'cheat' and just drag-n-drop the file onto my open AutoCAD. It just sits there as a red icon... My knowledge of AutoCAD is very limited. I can muck around with the Layer Manager, make poly lines, snap, ortho, etc. Just the basics really to clean up an existing autocad file and get it ready for bringing into 3ds. I'm sure I'm overlooking something. I did a search of the forum for DWF but nothing turned up for what I was looking for. Maybe it's too noobish a question...? Thanking you...