Topic: Anyone using Design Review?

[sinc]

I finally downloaded the free Design Review from Autodesk, and it seems to be a hit around our office.  At least, the initial buzz is favorable.  It really streamlines the redlines.  We already see things we don't like about it and wish Autodesk would improve, but rarely do I see one of Autodesk's new features gain acceptance so quickly...   

We also have a couple of regular clients who always want us to email them PDFs of things, and then we get these PDFs faxed back to us with scribbles on them.  We'll have to see if we can get them to download the Design Review software, too, so we don't have to deal with that anymore.  But in any case, the fact that IE7 can display DWF files natively should help.  If we can convince everyone to forget about PDFs, that will sure get rid of a lot of headache...   

Anyone else using this software yet?

[Josh Nieman]

I'm semi-subtly introducing it.  Such a big sudden switch would be received, here, as "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality of resisting change, but I've gotten a few people to use it for viewing DWFs.  Since I and some of our clients deal in 3d, I'll simply DWF the model and send it for them to review for conflicts with their stuff during very preliminary conversations... we haven't used it for redlines yet, though.  We don't have much trouble with that...

How does Design Review expedite your redlines?  We currently print 'em, fling 'em to the engineer, he bleeds all over 'em and sends 'em back for revision.  I'm not sure the process could be expedited any more than that, but I'm unfamiliar with the redlining interface... we've only used it minorly.  I'm just beginning to actively employ it.

[architecture68-raff]

We have been using it since it was DWF Composer, or about 2-3 years now.  We're a pretty small operation here but even at our scale it has come in very handy for redlines and quick area calculations.  I could imagine a much larger firm using it extensively, especially now that Autocad 2007+ allows underlying of DWF's.  Loading markup sets is a little clumsy in 2005 (don't know if they've really improved it since then) but overall it is a good product.  Back when it cost $99 or $199, it was a little hard to justify the expense, but now that it's free you might as well dive in.

[sinc]

How does Design Review expedite your redlines?  We currently print 'em, fling 'em to the engineer, he bleeds all over 'em and sends 'em back for revision.  I'm not sure the process could be expedited any more than that, but I'm unfamiliar with the redlining interface... we've only used it minorly.  I'm just beginning to actively employ it.

It would be very similar, except you wouldn't have to print your redlines, DWFs can be easily emailed, and when the engineer sends the redlines back, they appear right there on-screen in Autocad as an overlay.  No need to look back and forth between the screen and a sheet of paper while editing.  Redlines maintain a history and a status, so as you fix each redline, you can flag it as complete.  Or if you don't understand the redline, you can flag it with a question and send it back to the engineer for clarification.

There are some quirks.  One thing we notice is that the redlines get highlighted by various colors in Design Review, according to their status, but not in Civil-3D.  We're hoping that the 2008 version of C3D (whenever it finally gets here) will fix this issue.

[Birdy]

We don't use it.*
Not that I'm opposed to it. 
It just seems like many of our "customers" won't bother to look at anything if it isn't plotted on paper and delivered FedEx.  (...let alone me try to explain to them how to install the viewer.)
Of course, we have more than a few "customers" who probably don't even own computers.

*yet

We also have a couple of regular clients who always want us to email them PDFs of things, and then we get these PDFs faxed back to us with scribbles on them.

We do have several of those "customers" as well.
Makes me wanna come up with some kinda uber-sabotage to impart to our fax machine. I HATE those things.

[CADaver]

NavisWorks

[Gliderider]

If a pdf is saved with commenting rights enabled in Adobe Acrobat, markups are available with Adobe Reader.

[Tramber]

Anyone else using this software yet?

Daily,

We publish 3D and send the file with an email and explanation how to use the viewer.

For now, we have no anoted file back.

In 3D, DWF files are the best.

[Kate M]

We've found that it works pretty well for verbal notes, but if you need to actually draw something, it's pretty limited. I'm just now getting into importing the markups back into AutoCAD, but so far it looks promising.

[sinc]

If a pdf is saved with commenting rights enabled in Adobe Acrobat, markups are available with Adobe Reader.

But can you import the markups back as an overlay in your DWG, and track their status from within Autocad?

DWFs are easier to create, too, since Autodesk prefers them.

However, the big issue we've been running into is printing DWFs.  We seem to have issue after issue, and problem after problem.  Wipeouts print as big black blobs on printers that print PDFs just fine.  The Print Dialog is difficult to control, and has this obnoxious tendency to want to throw pages on four sheets rather than print a 100% print on one sheet.

And the most recent issue I've run into:  I used to use DWFs solely as a means to create PDFs.  The only way I could get good PDFs was to print my drawings to DWF, then use the DWF viewer to print the DWF to PDF using AdobePDF.  But now, I can't seem to do that in Design Review.  Design Review seems incapable of noticing that my Adobe page size is 24x36, and keeps trying to reduce it to letter or ledger size.

We likey the red-line aspect, but we no-likey trying to print DWF files...