Thank you Autodesk (DWG Viewer)

[JasonSelf]

I would like to thank Autodesk in this public letter, that they will probably never read nor care about if they did.....

I told my boss that there is no need to worry, although we did not budget him a copy of AutoCAD 2004 or 2005 autodesk themselves had a FREE viewer so that he could still read our files. As I tirelessly searched for Volo View Express I noticed that the buggy, memory hogging software was no longer available. Now I need to pay an additional $200 for two copies of Volo View....Even Mircro$oft provides free viewers for applications like powerpoint.

So, on top of my 24 $3,000 a seat installations of AutoCAD I can add another $200 for this silly viewer software that hopefully will run better than the last time I tried it (3 years ago or so)

Ok, Im done being grumpy now :-?

[BrenBren]

Since this isn't Autodesks website, you are right, they probably wont' read it.

You might want to look into a few things. DWF viewers and PDF viewers (aka Adobe Reader).

AutoCAD can be saved as a dwf file, and I believe there are free DWF viewers out there (not sure). Also, you can save as a pdf (there are cheap, if not free programs that will do that), and view the drawings in the free Adobe reader.

Just a couple ideas

[arcadia_x27]

The DWF viewer is free from the Autodesk website. Its the DWF Composer that isn't free, but that is only if you want to be able to markup and red line drawing files(which incedently if you want to mark up DWG's you still have to convert it to a DWF file). PDf995.com offers a free PDF creator of you'd rather use that format. HTH.

[BrenBren]

Thanks, I knew that info was out there, just too lazy to confirm it all :lol:

[Wanderer]

I would like to thank Autodesk in this public letter, that they will probably never read nor care about if they did.....

I told my boss that there is no need to worry, although we did not budget him a copy of AutoCAD 2004 or 2005 autodesk themselves had a FREE viewer so that he could still read our files. As I tirelessly searched for Volo View Express I noticed that the buggy, memory hogging software was no longer available. Now I need to pay an additional $200 for two copies of Volo View....Even Mircro$oft provides free viewers for applications like powerpoint.

So, on top of my 24 $3,000 a seat installations of AutoCAD I can add another $200 for this silly viewer software that hopefully will run better than the last time I tried it (3 years ago or so)

Ok, Im done being grumpy now :-?
Believe me, autodesk knows what a pain this is, but, you are right, I don't think they care enough about it. They will care when noone buys their drawing viewer, though. Please, have a look at this thread (2005 dwg viewer (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=4675&highlight=bentley)). There are still free programs available out there, as well as cheaper programs than autodesk's drawing viewer.

[jaberwok]

No, they won't care that no one buys the viewer. They will only care if we stop buying AutoCAD.
Now that's not going to happen, is it? :-)

[Wanderer]

No, they won't care that no one buys the viewer. They will only care if we stop buying AutoCAD. Now that's not going to happen, is it? :-)
:Oops: you are right... :wink: they know I am not buying the viewer, and I have told some adeskers that I am using the competition's viewer... and, you're right, they don't care that I'm not buying theirs...

and, no, I won't be getting rid of autocad. ~sigh~ I just can't win, no matter how defiant I try to be... :p

[michael.12445]

No, they won't care that no one buys the viewer. They will only care if we stop buying AutoCAD.
Now that's not going to happen, is it? :-)

I wouldn't be so sure. The boss here is still feeling burned about being strong-armed into upgrading our R14s to 2002, on pain of losing upgradeability forever, only to discover that 2002 introduced as many or more problems than it solved.

He's already decided that we will allow our 2002s to be orphaned when Autodesk decides to "retire" that version. Now he's looking at various BIM-based alternatives - and Revit is NOT on his list because he has no intention of installing a "subscription" pipeline between his bank account and Autodesk. In fact, he's gone even further - he bought a Mac, and has ordered a copy of VectorWorks' "Architect" package to try out on it.

Even so, I see no indications that Autodesk has any awareness of this kind of attrition away from its products, let alone cares to do anything about it.

Michael Evans

[JasonSelf]

Well, perhaps, since we are all linked to in Autocad 2005 that somebody will read this and see that while we understand the need to make profit it is starting to alienate their client base...(bad move unless you are Microsoft) I have been fickle since Acad dropped Mac as a platform, although I can't blame them, it just seems that if MS excel and powerpoint and visio for that matter have free viewers available ACAD would as well. The dwf stuff is, well, basically a rip-off and a ploy to get people to spend there hard erened money on something that they shouldn't need. At least the versions of Autocad get significantly better every 2 releases. I am waiting for them to start charging for VLIDE as a AutoCAD Developer edition.

Arg, I thought I was done being grumpy.

[thomas.stright]

There's also the Darkside viewer... aka Bentley View.

[hand471037]

Just as an aside: the only reason I need Autocad is for dealing with legacy files and/or the messes consultants sometime send over to us. Otherwise all I use is Revit. I can see us (here at the firm I work for) not even touching it in a year or two, heck, once I get a way to bring a Revit model into Blender (or Autodesk adds some way to export 3DS from Revit ) & the rest of the people here learn how to detail in Revit (vs. drawing them in Autocad- which is slower!) we would have no use for Autocad at all.

As for the 'open a tube from Autodesk to the bank', well, sorry to say so, but with any commercial software, you're just sharecropping, you don't *own* anything. So planning upon a yearly cost for the software that you can plan for vs. getting hit by major upgrade costs more randomly (and forcibly) for something that you're damn near leasing anyways... Also it's not like Revit turns off when the subscription is up, it's just like AutoCAD/ADT now, in that you'll just be stuck with that version until you pay to get back into the subscription program.

Also, we make PDF's of almost everything for our clients to review. They love them, and they always work, and they always have the viewer, which is free. The DWF set thing is way cool, the viewer is free (the code is even somewhat open so that anyone can make a DWF viewer), and the new 3D stuff that's in there is really neat- but until the clients start noticing DWF, I doubt they will really care much about it.

[SteveChestnut]

Dear Jself,

I feel your pain. In my office the people who work on drawings have AutoCAD the people who occasionally needed to just look at or print a drawing used Volo View. Now with the viewer being taken away we are supposed to publish everything in another format (DWF or PDF) just so people down the hall can look at a drawing. You also get into the problem where you have to make sure that all your DWFs or PDFs are kept up to date.
I think Autodesk has abandoned its customers need for in-house viewing.

Some people have suggested using Bentley View. I'd be careful there. My office has used Microstation for years and many of our engineers use Bentley View to view/print DGN files. ...BUT... We do not use Bentley View to view/print AutoCAD DWG files. Bentley can sing and dance til they are blue in the face that they open DWG files "native". But it's not true. I've worked with Microstation over 20 years and I know what they are doing. They are still translating the DWG file into a DGN. They just hide the translation seed file settings and options so people don't see them and say "See we open DWG native". We had a very serious issue where an engineer was reviewing steel DWG files from a vendor and missed information that was not displaying correctly when he reviewed the drawings in Bentley View. I'd really be careful using Bentley View for viewing/printing DWG files. You could easily not see part of a drawing.

To solve the problem of no longer being able to just view DWG files "native" we had to spend some money. (Isn't that what all this is about?) We thought about buying DWF Composer in order to get the DWG viewer. But if you go to the Autodesk forums you'll see a lot of problems and dissatisfaction with DWF. We also were told that we could not have a demo copy to test things out ourselves. We could buy it and if we didn't like it we could ask for our money back. (This has since changed, Autodesk will now let you have a 30 day demo of DWF composer - I think the number of complaints and poor sales made them change their mind). I'm not one to buy something if I can't look at it first.

So we looked at 3rd party viewers. We ended buying CAD Viewer 4.0 from www.guthcad.com. It's a nice viewer and does some neat things. We bought 30 copies for a little over $40 each. I've since then replaced my engineers Volo View Express with CAD Viewer 4.0. It cost us some money to do this but I think this was cheaper in the long run than always having to either call up and/or print a drawing for someone without AutoCAD or set up and maintain a duplicate filing system with DWFs or PDFs of all our AutoCAD drawings.

Good luck in your quest for DWG viewing software.
Live long and prosper,
Steve

[thomas.stright]

Some people have suggested using Bentley View. I'd be careful there. My office has used Microstation for years and many of our engineers use Bentley View to view/print DGN files. ...BUT... We do not use Bentley View to view/print AutoCAD DWG files. Bentley can sing and dance til they are blue in the face that they open DWG files "native". But it's not true. I've worked with Microstation over 20 years and I know what they are doing. They are still translating the DWG file into a DGN. They just hide the translation seed file settings and options so people don't see them and say "See we open DWG native". We had a very serious issue where an engineer was reviewing steel DWG files from a vendor and missed information that was not displaying correctly when he reviewed the drawings in Bentley View. I'd really be careful using Bentley View for viewing/printing DWG files. You could easily not see part of a drawing.


Never said it was the best option, Just an option....