Topic: Redlining programs?

[Craig Davis]

I had a quick look at the existing thread on redlining programs early last year but thought I'd ask again seeing as things change so quickly in this electronic age.

Our building department here is now receiving more and more electronic copies of buildings to check. They started just sending the AutoCAD files (.dwg) but seeing as the building dept. didn't have an AutoCAD license I got them to get them in Abobe PDF so they could print them themselves and the line scales would be correct.

Now they want to go the next step and be able to redline the drawings and send them back.

I'm thinking there's a possible 3 ways to go.
1. Consultants send in DWG files and our guys use AutoCADLT or equivalent to redline
2. Consultants send in PDF files our guys use Adobe to redline
3. Consultants send in DWF and our guys use Autodesk DWF Composer to redline

I haven't used the DWF at all, but it looks like it would keep the line scale (which has been a problem in the past with plotting) and allow layers to be turned off. I'm assuming this can then be saves as a DWF and then sent back to the consultants.

PDF has done the job quite well in the past purely for plotting, but now with the change in direction is DWF the best way to continue?

Any thoughts on the matter or experience would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Craig

[hudster]

DWF composer is about to be re-launched as "AUTODESK design review".

We are looking at this for our redlining product, especially now you can import a dwf into AutoCAD 2007 for working on.

[Draftek]

As much as I hate the way Autodesk has handled the dwf problems, we are also about to invenst quite a bit on using dwf's and composer for red line markups.

[SDETERS]

UGS has a program I would recomend for redlining

Visview and or Vismockup.  These are powerfull tools.  These porgrams can read PDF DWG and about any type of Tiff jpeg type file.  It has many handy tools and is very user friendly. Kind of high in price but I think you should take a look see. 

www.ugs.com

We use this program here and it works great.

[Craig Davis]

I've stayed clear of DWF in the past due to the poor quality of the prints etc I used to get out of it. PDF was way better and did the job for plotting.

Looks like DWF is the way to go. It will involve a little bit of education for the consultants sending in there plans, but that shouldn't be too hard you'd think.

Thank you all for the feedback.

[David Hall]

actuallytuallty really easy to use.  Just plot to DWF instead of a physical machine.