Printing without Revit??

[whf]

Does anyone know of an aftermarket viewer for opening/printing Revit files? Currently, I am the only one with our firm that utilizes Revit. I have my one stand-alone seat installed on my machine at the office, and the extra seat for the license is installed on another machine in our office for plotting only. The problem is, that while I am the only one creating Revit content, it is the estimating department that does most of the printing of the drawings. I would like to install my other seat on my home machine, but then I would be relegated to printing drawings for someone every half hour as I would be the only one with the ability to print from Revit, and thus would get nothing done. We really need the ability to print the files, but it doesn't seem like purchasing another seat just for plotting would be an effective use of resources. Outputting everything to pdf or similar is one way to go about things, but most of the Revit content that we use is created by a slew of other local firms and it can become a real pain trying to get everyone on the same page with creating standardized 24x36 pdfs...not to mention time consuming when working with ever-changing iterations. Please let me know if anyone knows of software or has a creative solution. Thanks!

Bill

[neb1998]

you can download a copy of revit and use in demo mode just for printing / viewing revit files for free.....i believe this is the actual intent of autodesk and they do not care how many copies you install as DEMO copies

[beegee]

you can download a copy of revit and use in demo mode just for printing / viewing revit files for free.....i believe this is the actual intent of autodesk and they do not care how many copies you install as DEMO copies

Just a note of clarification :-
Demo mode allows all features of Autodesk Revit, but you cannot save, plot or export your project after changes are made.

[neb1998]

Just a note of clarification :-
Demo mode allows all features of Autodesk Revit, but you cannot save, plot or export your project after changes are made.

Right, i believe his intent is just to print, not to make changes

[beegee]

>..not to mention time consuming when working with ever-changing iterations. >

..................

[john.s.algeo]

Print your sheet to a dwf file.

[iru69]

Just a note of clarification :-
Demo mode allows all features of Autodesk Revit, but you cannot save, plot or export your project after changes are made.

Further clarification needed - what constitutes "changes"? Changes to the model? To the sheets (for instance, a date)? Changing a shaded view to a hidden line one?

I can't imagine what practical harm it would cause to Autodesk's bottom line by allowing plotting even after changes are made.

Print your sheet to a dwf file.

That's missing the point of Bill's question. If he has to stop to print out paper, PDFs, DWFs, etc., every time someone requests them, he's not going to be very productive.

It's kind of funny... DWFs seem to fall into two camps: they're either the holy grail to every issue regarding printing, saving, and exchanging of files... or they're by and large completely pointless and a frustrating waste of development resources (maybe you can guess which camp I'm in).

[Steve_Stafford]

Further clarification needed - what constitutes "changes"? Changes to the model? To the sheets (for instance, a date)? Changing a shaded view to a hidden line one?

ANY change will prevent you from Saving, Printing or Exporting a Revit project. You just want to print out something from Revit, so you add a sheet, oops that's a change. You want to print a view using a different scale, oops that's a change.

You can print anything you want as long as it is just the way you found it. Sort of like, you can get Revit in any OS flavor you want as long as it is MS.

[nole]

Hi everyone!
To whf:
I don't see any trouble and extra work with organizing plotting with REVIT working in DEMO mode. It's free, simple and all work happens in one interface.
And, if you don't know what REVIT counts a change, do something in project, try to close file and, if file closes without any questions, that action is counted as "no change".

[iru69]

ANY change will prevent you from Saving, Printing or Exporting a Revit project.

As I suspected.

<addressed to no one in particular> So, Autodesk is concerned about exactly what? That firms are going to download the demo copy of Revit and draw entire buildings without ever saving the file and print it out and never have to buy the software? Boy, glad they closed that loophole! Or maybe they figure they can squeeze out a few more seats from firms desperate enough. I guess we should be lucky that we're allowed to open and print at all.

Actually, up to this point, none of this has been a problem for my workflow - but it's the principle of it that bothers me.

And while we're at it, it would serve Autodesk well if they not only allowed printing from demo mode under any circumstances, but also allowed saves up to a certain limit - let's say 3MB or so. This would more easily allow firms, manufacturers, content providers, etc. to create and provide Revit content.

These are the kinds of things that help spread Revit. It really drives me nuts that Autodesk doesn't seem to "get" these kind of things.