Why You Need DWF

By Lynn Allen

You’ve been hearing about DWF™ (Design Web Format™) for years—but now it’s time to really listen! The DWF format is accelerating, and there’s no slowing the train now. You need it. You can use it. So just sit back, read this article, and start to think about the many ways the DWF format is going to save you time and money and make your design process more efficient.

The acronym DWF, which has been around for many releases of AutoCAD® software, originally entered our lives as Drawing Web Format. As the DWF format evolved into a more powerful, universal format, the acronym also evolved and now stands for Design Web Format. You’ll find that DWF is no longer limited to AutoCAD files and that all the major Autodesk® products now support it. You can use DWF files throughout the many stages of the design process (affectionately known as lifecycle management). A DWF file combined with the new (and free) Autodesk® Express Viewer is a powerful match that not only saves trees but also helps connect your extended design team. Let’s start at the beginning.

You have a set of 10 AutoCAD drawings you need to send to Client B…sometime yesterday. You’d like to save time by emailing the drawing files, but the client doesn’t have AutoCAD software. Not only that, but your drawing files add up to nearly 40 MB, and downloading that much data is not going to make your client happy. But the client does need to view and possibly even redline the drawing files. So you print the 10 drawing files, put a few nice strong staples on the left, roll them up, pack them in a tube, and trust your good friends at FedEx to get the drawing files to Client B. One day later Client B opens the tube, unrolls the curled drawings, grabs a red pen, and proceeds to mark up your drawings with changes. The client rolls them back up (muttering that you’re behind schedule) and sends them back to you via FedEx for updating. The clock continues to tick while you wait, and after the files finally arrive, you set out to painfully make all the changes. If you need to send them back for final approval, the process begins again.

So you’ve wasted two days (minimum) of a tight timeline on shipping alone. Was that really necessary? And isn’t it difficult to believe that in this technological age we’re still using a pen for redlining? And what if the client has several review teams who need to approve the designs (more staples, paper, tubes, postage, and definitely time). The process is terribly inefficient. Let’s look at a much more cost-effective means of achieving the same end and making everyone happier. Enter the world of DWF.

With DWF 6 you can create a set of multiple drawing sheets for your client, all encompassed in one small file. That same 40 MB of data could easily be 1/10 the size. The new Publish command in the AutoCAD® 2004 products makes it easy to create a set of drawing sheets with multiple layouts in a single file. You have complete control of the final output with page setups. And since DWF files can’t be edited, you are assured that your drawing cannot be changed. I know many people who use DWF files for this reason alone.

You don’t have the latest release of AutoCAD software? There’s a new tool available for the AutoCAD® 2002 platform that creates DWF 6 files for you. You can download the DWF™ Creator for AutoCAD® 2002 free of charge at www.autodesk.com/dwfcreator. Now there’s no excuse for missing out! Your client doesn’t have AutoCAD? Not a problem. You can attach the new lightweight Autodesk Express Viewer (about 2 MB) with the DWF file.

Your client installs the free viewer (there’s that word free again!), opens the DWF file, and views all 10 drawing sheets easily (and they won’t be all curled up!). If it improves the mood, your client can print the drawing sheets (to scale and with full fidelity), roll them up, and stick them in a tube for that just-mailed effect. You will find the link to download the awesome Autodesk Express Viewer right on the Autodesk homepage at www.autodesk.com (that’s how important Autodesk feels this technology is). Like Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®, this viewer can be distributed as needed.

The Autodesk Express Viewer is so easy to use that even nontechnical users feel at home. You can zoom and pan just as you would expect, turn layers on and off, and even go to predefined views. Printing the drawing sheets is easy; you control the scale factor and can even tile the print if needed. Figure 1 shows you what the Autodesk Express Viewer looks like.

If your client is intent on redlining your perfect drawings, new Volo® View 3 has redlining capabilities built right in. The client can redline the drawings electronically and import those markups into the original AutoCAD drawing for easy viewing and updating. Imagine the time saved here! Volo View, which used to sell for $195, is currently being offered for a limited time at $49 (also on the Autodesk website at www.autodesk.com/volo). In addition to the redlining capabilities, Volo View can view drawing files, Autodesk Inventor® files, DXF™ files, DWF files, and a variety of raster formats. It can also measure areas and distances and plot (as opposed to print) your files. If you feel you need these additional capabilities, then be sure to take a look at Volo View. I don’t want to sound like a Ginsu knife salesman here—but hurry before the price jumps back up!

If you use Autodesk® Revit® software and would like to convert your drawings to DWF format, check out the new DWFwriter™ printer driver on the Autodesk website (also for free!) at www.autodesk.com/dwfwriter. Imagine converting your Revit designs into a compact, viewable file that supports multiple page documents and intelligent cross-page hyperlinks. I’ve even heard rumors that some users have tried the DWFwriter on Microstation® and SolidWorks® files! If that’s something you need to do, why not give it a whirl (but you didn’t hear it from me—okay?).

And what about PDF files? I know you’re creating and distributing your drawing files via PDF. I think PDF is fantastic for files created in Microsoft Word, Excel, and so forth, but it was never intended to deal with the vector-rich data in design files. Have you ever tried to print a PDF to scale? Tried to explain to a PDF what a coordinate system is? Much easier said than done. Let’s face it, no one is going to understand your design data like Autodesk. DWF files are typically a third the size of PDF files because Autodesk knows the inner workings of a drawing file and knows the best means of compression. And you have to pay to create a PDF file, don’t you? I much prefer the concept of free. If you want to continue to pay for tools that produce a file that isn’t nearly as robust as a DWF file, I suppose you can.

And what is the future for these viewers and DWF? I heard through the grapevine that future products will follow in Volo View’s footsteps to include redlining and measuring capabilities, all on DWF. Rumor has it that it will also support redlines on top of redlines so multiple approvers can provide input on one file (wouldn’t that be nice?). DWF files will continue to get smarter as they support 3D models, information on mass properties, and so forth. Autodesk has made a huge investment in this arena, and it is clearly only going to get better.

With more than 3/4 of a million downloads to date (and about 5,000 downloads a day), it’s clear that Autodesk Express Viewer is catching on. And those are just the copies of the program Autodesk knows about! Since it’s a free-for-all, this number can probably be multiplied by 5 or 10 or even more. What are you waiting for? Save a few trees, a few days, and a few headaches by taking a good hard look at the world of DWF.