Design Web Format — Not Just for the Web
Earlier in this chapter, I explain how you can exchange drawings via e-mail and FTP. That's all the Internet connectivity that many AutoCAD users need, but if you're curious about connecting drawings to the Web or sharing drawings with people who don't have AutoCAD, this section is for you.
The AutoCAD Web features are built on three pieces of technology:
- A special “lightweight” drawing format called DWF that Autodesk originally developed especially for putting drawings on the Web.
- An updated, XML-compliant version of the DWF format called DWFx that can be viewed using the Microsoft XPS Viewer that's built in to Windows Vista and Windows 7 or available as a plug-in for Windows XP.
- A free program from Autodesk called Autodesk Design Review 2012 that enables anyone to view, mark up, and print DWF files without having AutoCAD.
All about DWF and DWFx
The AutoCAD DWG format works well for storing drawing information on local and network disks, but the high precision and large number of object properties that AutoCAD uses make for comparatively large files.
To overcome this size problem and encourage people to publish drawings on the Web, Autodesk developed an alternative lightweight vector format for representing AutoCAD drawings: DWF (Design Web Format). A DWF file is a more compact representation of a DWG file. DWF uses less space — and less transfer time over the Web and e-mail — because it's less precise and doesn't have all the information that's in the DWG file.
DWFx is a version of regular DWF that's compliant with Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (or XPS for short — had your fill of alphabet soup yet?). Everything about DWF in this chapter also applies to DWFx. The DWFFORMAT command determines whether the PUBLISH, 3DDWF, and EXPORT commands output to DWF or DWFx. If this sounds like something that might be important in your work, look up DWFFORMAT in the online help system. Windows Vista and Windows 7 include an XPS Viewer, and the long and the short of this feature is that drawings plotted to DWFx can be viewed automatically in these Windows versions without AutoCAD or any special viewing software.
You can create DWF or DWFx files from your drawings and send those files to people who don't have AutoCAD. Your recipients can view and plot the DWF files after they download the free Autodesk Design Review 2012 program, which is available on Autodesk's Web site, www.autodesk.com.
DWFs and DWFxs can be used just like external references. Here's one more file type — and one more reason — to use Reference Manager or ETRANSMIT to package up your drawings before you send them out. For more on DWF/DWFx underlays, see Chapter 18.
ePlot, not replot
A DWF file captures a single, plotted view of your drawing, so, unlike a DWG file, it can provide a clear-cut snapshot of what you want to see on paper. With a DWG file, on the other hand, you have to provide lots of information to other people — drawing view, scale, plot style settings, and so on — in order for them to get the same plotting results that you did.
Potential ePlotting scenarios include the following:
- Architects and other consultants on a building project periodically upload DWF files to the project Web site. Architects and engineers with some minimal CAD knowledge can review the drawings on-screen and create their own hard-copy plots, if necessary. Principals and clients who don't want anything to do with CAD, or even with computers, can have their employees create hard-copy plots for them to examine.
- When Internet-savvy people need hard-copy prints of your drawings, you e-mail a zipped file containing DWF files, along with the URL for Autodesk Design Review and simple instructions for creating plots from the DWF files. (Be ready to walk them through the process by phone the first time or two to reduce anxiety on everyone's part.)
- A CAD plotting service bureau encourages its customers to send DWF files instead of DWG files for plotting. The DWF files are much smaller and require less intervention on the part of the service bureau's employees.
Autodesk hopes to establish ePlot and the DWF/DWFx format as a standard for CAD documents similar to what Adobe's PDF has become for word processing documents. It remains to be seen whether ePlotting will become a popular way to generate hard-copy output (although DWFx will certainly push it that way). In particular, many people outside CAD-using companies don't have access to large-format plotters. They're limited to 8-1/2 × 11-inch — or, at best, 11 × 17-inch — reduced-size check plots. Consequently, many people won't be able to plot your DWF files to scale and may not even be able to plot them large enough to read everything.
Don't be afraid to try ePlotting with colleagues inside or outside your company, but don't become too dependent on it until you see whether the rest of the CAD world shares your enthusiasm. Otherwise you risk becoming the only one who's willing to use your DWF files for plotting — in which case, the next version of the feature will be called mePlot.
Making DWFs with ePlot
As I describe in the preceding section, AutoCAD treats DWF files like electronic plots, or ePlots. You create a DWF file from the current drawing just as if you were plotting it to a piece of paper, as I describe in Chapter 16. The only difference is that, in the Plot dialog box's Printer/Plotter area, you choose one of two plotter configurations: DWF6 ePlot.pc3 or DWFx ePlot (XPS Compatible).pc3, as shown in Figure 20-3. When you do so, AutoCAD automatically turns on the Plot to File setting. Then, when you click OK to generate the ePlot, AutoCAD displays a dialog box in which you specify a filename and location for the DWF file that gets created. The location can be a folder on a hard drive or a Web server.
Figure 20-3: “Look ma, no paper!” Plotting to a DWF file.
When you make DWFs with ePlot, pay particular attention to the Scale setting in the Plot Scale area. If you're creating a DWF simply for viewing in a browser, you can select the Fit to Paper check box rather than worry about a specific plot scale. If you want to enable others to plot your DWF file to scale (as described earlier in this chapter), choose an appropriate plot scale factor (Chapter 16 describes how).
Making DWFs (or plots) with PUBLISH
The ePlot method of creating DWF files described in the previous section works fine for single drawings. But if you want to create DWF files for a lot of drawings or plot a bunch of drawings the good old-fashioned way (on paper, that is), you can use the Publish dialog box, as shown in Figure 20-4, to speed the process.
You access PUBLISH from the AutoCAD 2012 Application Menu — click the Application button, choose Print (not Publish!), and then choose Batch Plot. PDF is also a PUBLISH output option, and practically everything I describe here applies to both DWF and PDF.
Figure 20-4: Hot off the presses: AutoCAD's Publish dialog box.
Although the Publish dialog box is wired to support DWF, DWFx, and PDF as well as regular (paper) plotting, for now, more people are likely to use it for paper plotting. (An alternative use is creating plot files to send to a plotting service bureau.) But if you do decide to go into large-scale DWF publishing, including multisheet DWF or PDF files, use the Publish dialog box, as shown in the following steps:
- Click the Application button, choose Print, and then Batch Plot.
The Publish dialog box appears (refer to Figure 20-4). The dialog box lists all tabs (model and paper space layouts) of all currently open drawings for plotting. The Publish dialog box refers to each tab as a sheet.
- Click the buttons above the sheet list to preview any sheet, add sheets from other drawings, remove sheets from the to-be-plotted list, or rearrange the plotting order.
With the additional buttons, you can save and recall lists of sheets. See Step 4 for more information.
- After you select the sheets that you want to plot, specify whether you want to plot them to an actual plotter or plot (PLT) file or to a DWF/DWFx or PDF file.
You can select a specific plotter configuration for each sheet by choosing a Page Setup in the Sheet List. See Chapter 16 for more information about page setups.
- Click the Publish Options button to display a dialog box containing additional settings.
Most of these options are of concern only if you're creating DWF/DWFx or PDF files. The one exception is Default Output Directory, which also applies to creating plot (PLT) files.
- If you anticipate having to publish the same group of drawings again, click the Save Sheet List button to save the current drawings and settings list.
- Click the Publish button to start the process.
Don't confuse the PUBLISH command with the little-used PUBLISHTOWEB command. (Don't worry about starting it accidentally; unless you're working in the AutoCAD Classic workspace, you have to type the whole command name to start this command.) The PUBLISH command creates sets of DWF, DWFx, or PDF files, plot files, or actual plots. The PUBLISHTOWEB Wizard creates a Web page containing images of your drawings. The results of this wizard won't put any Web designers or programmers out of work, but you can use it to create primitive Web page paste-ups of your drawings. (See PUBLISHTOWEB command in the AutoCAD online help system if you'd like to give it a whirl.)
Hyper objects
No Web file format would be complete without hyperlinks, and DWF has those, too. You can attach a hyperlink to any drawing object in AutoCAD, not just to a text string. As you pass the crosshairs over an object with a hyperlink, the cursor changes from the ordinary pointer to a globe and two links of a chain (as in “World Wide Web” and “link,” not “world-wide chain gang”). Right-click the object and select the Hyperlink option from the menu, which opens your browser and navigates to the URL that's attached to the object. If you create a DWF file that includes objects with hyperlinks, Autodesk Design Review 2012 displays them in the DWF file so that you can click to navigate to them.
Hyperlinks on objects are a clever trick, but they're of limited practical value in most DWG and DWF files:
- The drawing images are so small that it's difficult to distinguish the hyperlink on one object from the hyperlink on another object.
- Most people aren't used to associating hyperlinks with individual lines and other objects. The interface is likely to leave them perplexed.
If you'd like to experiment with hyperlinks on objects, look up HYPERLINK command, about in the online help system.
Autodesk Design Review 2012
After you create DWF files, whether with ePlot or PUBLISH, you or the recipient of your DWF files can use Autodesk Design Review to view and print them. (Autodesk Design Review 2012, the current release, is a free viewer from Autodesk.) If you send DWFs to people without AutoCAD, they can download Design Review 2012 from Autodesk's Web page, www.autodesk.com.
When you install AutoCAD 2012, the setup program, by default, installs Autodesk Design Review 2012, as well. From your Windows desktop, choose Start
All ProgramsAutodeskAutodesk Design Review 2012 — or simply double-click a DWF file in Windows Explorer to launch the viewer.