Standard PDF.pc3 option *

[Brian Myers]

PDF is the new thing right now and it's just frustrating because, it seems, everyone and their dog is on it. And it just creates an extra couple of time wasting steps to adapt to this new craze.

Actually, DWF is the new thing on the block. PDF's were around 7 years ago (when I first used them) and I know they existed before then. It just took years for PDF's to catch on and we can't expect DWF's to catch on faster.

I work in an office where CAD is by far the minority and MS Office dominates. I know if I send my PDF file to the company President he'll know how to open it because he's gotten PDF Word and Excel documents from outside sources in the past.... he wouldn't have a clue what a DWF is.

[Brian Myers]

Unless Autodesk makes a bid to buy Adobe...

Actually, it would be more likely for it to be the other way around:

Gross Revenue

Autodesk = US$1.2 billion (FY05)
Adobe = US$1.8 billion (run rate)

Market Capitalization

Autodesk = $6.8 billion
Adobe = $16.5 billion

This is another reason why Adobe has an advantage.. they have more money to spend in this endeavor and they make better revenue from Acrobat (PDF) than Autodesk likely does with DWF...

[Brian Myers]

I only have PDF995.

You can't beat the price of PDF995, but I've found many commercial options just function better. That's not an anti-PDF995 statement, it's good in it's own right, you simply get what you pay for. If you get a chance to use some of the better commercial products you might like PDF's more.

All this being said, I'm really not a PDF fan... simply for my personal use I've yet to find a program/file type that's better and more easily distributed to even novice users.

[noozybkk]

I recently bought Acrobat 7.0 Pro under pressure and against my will due to a very fussy client who was not ready to embrace DWF, despite my best efforts to promote it and directing them to the AutoDESK DWF Viewer download site.

I must admit the one click PDF creator button seems to be worthwhile. As yet, I've not had any problem with the orientation of the drawings (which, I agree was a real headache before)....having said that, I've yet to try it with model space plots.

My biggest problem with PDF is the file size. Great for text documents, but dreadful for drawings.

[Glenn Pope]

Actually, DWF is the new thing on the block. PDF's were around 7 years ago (when I first used them) and I know they existed before then. It just took years for PDF's to catch on and we can't expect DWF's to catch on faster.

DWF is making some stride to get to this point. I maintain the my divisions website. There we offer downloads of our city standard detail sheets in PDF and DWF formates. Majority of the time the DWF version is downloaded more then the PDF version. I think it mainly has to do with file size. I show the file size for each one next to the download link, and the DWF are always several times smaller then the PDF.

[Wanderer]

DWF is making some stride to get to this point. I maintain the my divisions website. There we offer downloads of our city standard detail sheets in PDF and DWF formates. Majority of the time the DWF version is downloaded more then the PDF version. I think it mainly has to do with file size. I show the file size for each one next to the download link, and the DWF are always several times smaller then the PDF.

Like, who is your typical customer who is downloading these files? And, how are they being used.

most of mine are pretty pc illiterate (not to mention without admin rights to install the dwf viewer), and are like, ok, I know what pdf is (and that's about it).
Most of them just want to print out a floor plan or a simple map, so I send them in pdf.

[Glenn Pope]

Like, who is your typical customer who is downloading these files? And, how are they being used.

most of mine are pretty pc illiterate (not to mention without admin rights to install the dwf viewer), and are like, ok, I know what pdf is (and that's about it).
Most of them just want to print out a floor plan or a simple map, so I send them in pdf.

These standard details have to be added to every construction plan for projects within the city limits. So that covers a wide range of people.

[Brian Myers]

DWF is making some stride to get to this point. I maintain the my divisions website. There we offer downloads of our city standard detail sheets in PDF and DWF formates. Majority of the time the DWF version is downloaded more then the PDF version. I think it mainly has to do with file size. I show the file size for each one next to the download link, and the DWF are always several times smaller then the PDF.

I think that's a good point, the size of the DWF is usually much smaller than the size of a PDF. It will be interesting to see if this continues to be an advantage as time goes on. In other words, 5 years from now almost everyone will have high speed connections with 100+ GB drives and CDR's (Half the places today already have this). At that point only loading time will be an issue and most computers by then will fairly easily handle a large PDF file (many today already do).

Another arguement I've heard pro-pdf is "Long Term Archiving". In other words, we don't know if DWF's (or more importantly, functional DWF readers) will be around 10 years from now. We do have a pretty good idea that PDF readers will still be around then.

On the other hand, how likely is it we'll need a 10 year old DWF??? Not very likely. I sound anti-DWF but I'm not... I think the idea is a good one. This might be a case where depending on your needs and the environment in which you work one file might be superior to the other.

[Wanderer]

These standard details have to be added to every construction plan for projects within the city limits. So that covers a wide range of people.

~nods~ ok, fair enough. what percentage would you say are actually involved with construction and/or maint of those projects, and how many are purely informational with non-technical people?
(and, of course, how does that compare with your percentage of pdf/dwf downloads? not picking, purely curiosity, of course... I really, really missed my calling as an actuary)

[Brian Myers]

~nods~ ok, fair enough. what percentage would you say are actually involved with construction and/or maint of those projects, and how many are purely informational with non-technical people?

I'd think they would all be people in the trades... I'd love to know why they chose using a DWF file. Is it because of file size? Download time? Ability to process them on their computer?