The PDF vs DWF battle heats up with Acrobat 7.0

[Scott D Davis]

Here's the story form Cadalyst. New PDF's will have CAD layer capability, and the free Acrobat Reader will have mark-up capability, with mark-ups able to be brought back into AutoCAD.

http://www.cadalyst.com/cadalyst/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=133463

[Wes Macaulay]

Interesting read, Scott - thanks for that. What I'm wondering is whether they've made PDF work better with CAD in the first place, one of the reasons that DWF won me over. PDFs of CAD aren't as good as DWF and they can be a lot bigger.

Wonder what happens if I blast off some PDFs from Revit (using the Revit PDF Writer or PDF995) to the new Acrobat Reader? Will I be able to mark 'em up straightaway? Or do you have to create the PDFs with full blown Acrobat?

[sbrown]

Time for a show down and another cool cover song like "DWF IT"

[Scott D Davis]

Will I be able to mark 'em up straightaway? Or do you have to create the PDFs with full blown Acrobat?
not sure, but it sounds like Acrobat Reader 7.0 (the freebee reader) will have markup capabilities. I'm assuming only Acrobat will have the layer capability in the beginneing, but the other PDF software companies will probably latch onto the code pretty quickly.

[Chad Smith]

As long as Autodesk doesn't have a batch plotter function built into their DWF Viewer, we will only ever use PDF and will only ever accept PDF from external sources.

We are not going to waste our time printing drawings off one at a time, so we tell outside sources to provide us with the hard copies or convert them to PDF. Hopefully this puts pressure on those external sources to revert back to PDF.

So it's good that Adobe are continuing with their Acrobat product in the CAD field.

[narlee]

I'm not nuanced in this area. But, Autodesk claimns that their DWF products retain better resolution of the CAD docs than PDF. Anybody?

Geof Narlee.

[Chad Smith]

Without a doubt, DWF has a better resolution than PDF. Prints are better too.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

As long as Autodesk doesn't have a batch plotter function built into their DWF Viewer, we will only ever use PDF and will only ever accept PDF from external sources.


Chad,
The DWF format and the viewer allow for multiple page printing and plotting as far as I know.

[Chad Smith]

That's fair enough if all the drawings are in the one DWF file.
But we keep all drawings in their individual PDF's (and would do the same for DWF). That way we can email out only the relevant files, without having to unnecessarily send the entire set.

I've have never received all drawings in the one DWF file before. The company I work for and all others we deal with don't either.

While there are a lot of contacts that we use that insist on using DWF, I'm still surprised as to how many of them still use PDF on Buzzsaw, not how Autodesk intended Buzzsaw to be used.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Good point Chad. I didn't realize that because I have always plotted DWF's as complete files with multiple drawings. I find it great because the hyperlinks are maintained (as they are with a multi-page PDF) so whenever I send the drawings in this format the user can navigate through the set by ctrl+cliking on the links. Just like flipping through a printed set, without the paper cuts. 8-)

[Chad Smith]

I always have the feeling when it comes to DWF, that Autodesk are trying to tell people how they should be handling electronic file transfer and not listening to how people would like it done. :banghead:

I think they are trying to force people into using single DWF files for drawing sets, but that is just not practical for us and many others I know.

I don't want to dwell on the issue in this thread, but Autodesk has said on their newsgroup that batch plotting DWF's is just a far to complex issue, because of different plotters and different paper sizes, but that doesn't stop them from creating a batch plotter for AutoCAD, or helping Oce create a batch plotter for Oce only plotters. :screwy: Go figure.

Give me batch plotting, and Autodesk will have themselves another convert.

[mlgatzke]

Without a doubt, DWF has a better resolution than PDF. Prints are better too.
Sorry Chad, but I disagree. I don't know what PDF writer you are using, but I'm using the full version of Adobe Acrobat and the PDFs are absolutely clear. We, (I think it was Scott Brown) did a comparison of PDF versus DWF last year at AU and there was absolutely no difference. We can run another comparison this year too if anyone would be interested.

[sbrown]

There is a big diff. in the size of the pdf though to get the same quality as the DWF.

Here is a trick Jim Balding taught me, Print your whole set to DWF, then open the DWF and print your whole set to pdf. Much quicker than trying to print a whole set straight from revit to pdf. Since you can't currently create one pdf with all your sheets straight from Revit.

[Wes Macaulay]

Scott, why are you printing to DWF first and then to PDF? Just so you can get a multi-page PDF? Do the hyperlinks work in the PDF if you do this?

I've found DWF quality to be better than PDF...always. And smaller too. And Chad, I agree that DWF should have the option to print sheets to separate files as you say.

[sbrown]

If I had my way I'd only use DWF, however I still have to post / archive pdf since it is the standard and most clients have no idea what DWF is or how to view it.

[Phillip Miller]

Hi everyone

This is a great discussion. My vote would defiantly be for DWF. We are a totally ADT 2005 firm so I’m not totally sure of the procedure of printing from Revit to DWF, but this is very easy in ADT so I’m sure it is in Revit as well.

In ADT we do have the option of batch plotting our sheets all at once but to separate dwfs. All as we do is select the sheets we are wanting to plot in the project manager, right mouse click and go to publish, and in here there is an option of publish dialog. If you look in here the default is a multipage dwf, but you can change it to single page dwf. It then prints each selected sheet to a single page dwf. I'm sure Revit must have this ability somewhere?

I have also experienced that the quality of the dwf's & size are allot better that PDF's. A recent job that I completed for a client in the UK consited of 32 sheets of drawings. The dwf was about 4mb's. Unfortunately the client only had Macintoshes so he couldn't read them so I published the set to PDF. The size was near 100mb's so I reduced the resolution to 75dpi and it ended up being about 50mbs. Far too big to send by email. In the end he used his friend’s computer to view the dwf's. I could post this DWF here if anyone is interested as it was totally completed in ADT as a BIM building, Structural included.

As we post all of our dwfs to the internet our clients have up to date access of their jobs progress and they can comment on our direction. Another thing we have found very useful is the new 3d DWF's. The clients love them. Can Revit do this?

Well better get back to it. Great discussion.

Cheers

[Chunk]

Count me in with the PDF camp. All documents leaving our office electronically are PDF's with security applied...and before every jumps yes, we realize how readily available pdf-decrypters are on the internet. Point is from a liability concern we only need to prove legally we took all necessary precautions to secure our data when it left our network. And PDF's are the legally advised standard we have been advised of. All our contract documents, drawings, specs, change orders, etc., are printed to pdf and sent on to end recipients or our printing vendors. We've had a few issues with print quality but these have been directly related to pdf writer print settings or the end process our reprographic vendors were using.

[Phillip Miller]

By security, do you mean password protected? If so DWF can do that to

[Chunk]

Password encryption yes, but is DWF recognized in a court of law as a legally binding digital document? Given the global user base on AUGI I expect this will come down to local legal systems...