20

Drawing on the Internet

In This Chapter

Understanding AutoCAD’s Internet features

Exchanging drawing files via e-mail and FTP

Fixing file dependencies with Reference Manager

Viewing drawings with Design Web Format

Protecting drawings with passwords and digital signatures

Sharing and collaborating with AutoCAD WS and Autodesk 360

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 20 years, you know that the Internet is causing major changes in the way people work. Because of the ’Net, most of us communicate differently, exchange files more rapidly, and phone out for pizza less frequently. (Well, ordering pizza over the Internet is very easy, but they still have to work out a few of the details to be able to deliver it that way.)

In this chapter, we show you how and when to use AutoCAD Internet features. We also cover how the Internet features can connect with traditional CAD tasks, such as file sharing. The emphasis of this chapter is on useful, no-nonsense ways to take advantage of the Internet in your CAD work.

The Internet and AutoCAD: An Overview

The web is changing so quickly that it’s almost impossible to write the definitive chapter that spells out exactly how everything works and what’s best for you. Our intention in this chapter is to steer you toward the features that we feel are of most interest.

You send me

E-mail and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) have largely replaced blueline prints and overnight delivery as the standard means of exchanging drawings. Snail mail (at least for envelopes) is dead!

Sending and receiving drawing files doesn’t differ much from sending and receiving other kinds of files, except that

DWG files tend to be bigger than word processing documents and spreadsheets. Consequently, you may need to invest in a faster Internet connection, and you can easily run up against e-mail attachment size limits.

You can easily forget to include all the dependent files. An AutoCAD file may not be an island unto itself, but it may also require other files to go with it. We tell you in the next section how to make sure that you send all the necessary files.

It’s often not completely obvious how to plot what you receive. Read Chapter 16 and the “Bad reception?” section, later in this chapter, to solve plotting puzzles.

Whenever you send DWG files, ask the recipient to open the drawings you’ve sent as soon as they receive them so that you both have more time to respond if there’s any problem.

Send it with eTransmit

Many people naively assume that an AutoCAD drawing is always contained in a single DWG file, but that’s often not the case. Each drawing file created in AutoCAD can contain references to more than a dozen other kinds of files, the most important of which are described in Table 20-1. Thus, before you start exchanging drawings via e-mail or FTP, you need to assemble the drawings with all their dependent files.

Table 20-1 doesn’t exhaust the types of files that your DWG files might refer to. Custom plotter settings (such as custom paper sizes) may reside in PC3 or PMP files. If you use sheet sets, a DST file contains information about the sheet structure. (We don’t cover sheet sets in this book. If you’re interested, check the online Help system.) An FMP file controls some aspects of font mapping. Look up sheet sets and the FONTALT and FONTMAP system variables in the AutoCAD online help system for detailed information.

Rapid eTransmit

Fortunately, AutoCAD’s ETRANSMIT command pulls together all files that the main DWG file depends on. Follow these steps to assemble a drawing with all its dependent files by using ETRANSMIT:

1. Open the drawing that you want to run ETRANSMIT on.

If the drawing is already open, save it. You have to save the file before using ETRANSMIT.

  2. Click the Application button and choose Publish⇒eTransmit from the Application Menu.

The Create Transmittal dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 20-1.

Figure 20-1: Using eTransmit to share drawings.

3. On the Files Tree tab or the Files Table tab, remove the check mark next to any file that you want ETRANSMIT not to copy with the main drawing.

Unless you have assigned custom font mapping, you can omit the Acad.fmp file (in AutoCAD) or acadlt.fmp (in AutoCAD LT).

4. Select a transmittal setup from the list.

Transmittal setups contain settings that control how ETRANSMIT processes the drawings and creates the transmittal package. Click the Transmittal Setups button to create new setups or modify existing setups. The default Standard transmittal setup works fine for most purposes. In any case, you should view the settings (click the Modify button) just to see what options you can change if you need to later.

If you want AutoCAD to include SHX and TTF font files, including any custom fonts that you’re using, you must turn on the Include Fonts setting in the transmittal setup. As we discuss in Chapter 13, however, many custom fonts work like licensed software: Sending them to others is just like sharing your AutoCAD program DVD or USB installation media with others: illegal and unethical. Don’t share custom text fonts outside of your organization.

5. Click the View Report button.

You see a report listing the files that ETRANSMIT will copy, along with warnings about any files that it can’t locate.

6. Review the report and make sure that ETRANSMIT was able to find all the files.

If files are missing, find them and move or copy them to the location where ETRANSMIT expects to find them. See the upcoming section, “Help from the Reference Manager.”

7. Click OK.

8. Specify the name and location of the transmittal package.

9. Click Save.

ETRANSMIT creates the transmittal package (which is a Zip file by default). Zipping creates a single, tidy, compact package of all your DWG, DGN, DWF, PDF, raster image, plot style table, and font files — all ready to be e-mailed.

FTP for you and me

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a system for sharing files over the Internet. A computer that’s connected to the Internet can act as an FTP server, which means that part of its hard drive is accessible over the Internet. The person who configures the FTP server can place restrictions so that only people who enter a particular logon name and password can see and download files. FTP overcomes the 10MB file size limitations that often occur with e-mail.

Because of all these FTP benefits, people at larger companies commonly place drawing files on their company’s FTP sites and tell you to get the files. This approach relieves them of having to e-mail you the files, and it relieves you of having to wait for that 9.9MB e-mail download when you least expected it.

The person making the files available to you via FTP usually sends you a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that looks like a web page address, except that it starts with ftp:// instead of http://. Simply enter the FTP URL into the address field of your web browser and follow any instructions regarding the login name, password, filename that may appear. As an alternative to FTP, see "Cloudy with a Shower of DWGs: AutoCad 360," later in this chapter.

Bad reception?

As soon as you receive an e-mail message or a FTP download that contains drawings (zipped, we hope!), copy the file to a new folder on your hard drive or a network disk and unzip the files.

Check at least a few drawings in the package to make sure that all the xrefs and other reference files, fonts, and raster image files are included. Open each main drawing in the folder, press F2 to view the AutoCAD text window, and look for missing font and xref error messages, like this example:

Substituting [simplex.shx] for [helv.shx].

Resolve Xref "GRID": C:HereThereNowheregrid.dwg

Can't find C:HereThereNowheregrid.dwg

Write down each missing file and then tell the sender to get on the ball (in a nice way, of course) and send you the missing pieces. While you’re at it, tell that person to buy this book and read this chapter! Or buy it for them yourself!

If you receive drawings with custom TrueType font files (files whose extensions are TTF), you must install those files in Windows (not in AutoCAD) before Windows and AutoCAD will recognize them. Refer to your Windows version’s online Help system for instructions on installing fonts.

Help from the Reference Manager

If you move project folders around or transfer drawings to or from somewhere else, AutoCAD may not be able to locate any raster image files and DWF/DWFx, DGN, and PDF underlays (described in Chapter 18) and for font files (described in Chapter 13). The ETRANSMIT command, described in the section “Rapid eTransmit,” earlier in this chapter, does a good job of gathering dependent reference files, raster files, and font files, but it can’t gather what AutoCAD can’t locate.

The AutoCAD Reference Manager utility (not included with AutoCAD LT) is a real lifesaver if you’re suffering from file-path perils, whether they occur in your own company or when sending files to, or receiving them from, others.

Reference Manager is a separate program, not a command inside AutoCAD. Follow these steps to launch the utility from the Windows desktop:

1. Choose Start⇒All Programs⇒Autodesk⇒AutoCAD 2014⇒Reference Manager. (On the Windows 8 Start screen, click the Reference Manager tile.)

The Reference Manager program opens, as shown in Figure 20-2.

Figure 20-2: The Reference Manager.

2. Click the Add Drawings button to add one or more DWG files to the Drawings pane on the left.

Navigate to the folder that contains the drawings you want to send, select them, and then click Open.

3. In the Reference Manager – Add Xrefs dialog box, choose Add All Xrefs Automatically Regardless of Nesting Level.

The Reference Manager processes the drawings and displays all referenced objects in its right pane.

4. Click Export Report to create a text report listing all dependent files and their paths, or click Edit Selected Paths to modify the paths of selected reference files.

5. If you choose to modify any selected paths, click Apply Changes.

When you’re finished exporting reports and repathing reference files (or finding reference files that you may never have suspected you had if you hadn’t run the Reference Manager), close the Reference Manager window. Click the Help button in the Reference Manager to find out more about the utility’s capabilities.

If you always store parent and child DWG files in the same folder, which is the simplest approach to dealing with xref paths, you probably don’t need to use the Reference Manager.

Design Web Format — Not Just for the Web

Earlier in this chapter, we 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:

DWF: A special, “lightweight” drawing format that Autodesk originally developed especially for putting drawings on the web

DWFx: An updated, XML-compliant version of the DWF format that can be viewed by using the Microsoft XPS Viewer that’s built in to Windows Vista, 7, and 8 or available as a plug-in for Windows XP

Autodesk Design Review: A free program from Autodesk 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: Design Web Format (DWF). A DWF file is a more compact representation of a DWG file. DWF uses less space and therefore 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.

Use the EXPORTDWF command to create a DWF file. Click the Application Menu (the big red A in the upper-left corner of the screen) and click the Export button to use the EXPORTDWF command.

DWFx is a version of regular DWF that’s compliant with Microsoft’s XML Paper Specification (XPS). 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 a topic that might be important in your work, look up DWFFORMAT in the online help system. Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 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.

DWFx files are essentially electronic-paper–like PDF files — or, more specifically, like a sheet of paper with transparent overlays stacked on top of it. Recipients can zoom, pan, turn layers on and off, apply markups, and print, but they can’t edit anything.

You can create DWF or DWFx files from your drawings and send those files to people who don't have AutoCAD. The recipients can view and plot the DWF files after they download the free Autodesk Design Review 2014 program, which is available at the Autodesk website, at http://usa.autodesk.com/design-review.

Many people outside CAD-using companies don’t have access to large-format plotters. They’re limited to 8¹⁄₂" x 11" or, at best, 11" x 17" reduced-size check plots. Consequently, many people won’t be able to plot your DWF files to scale, and they may not even be able to plot them large enough to read everything.

Autodesk Design Review 2014

After you create DWF files, you or the recipient of them can use Autodesk Design Review to view and print them. (Autodesk Design Review, the current release, is a free viewer from Autodesk.) If you send DWFs to people without AutoCAD, they can download Design Review from Autodesk's web page, http://usa.autodesk.com/design-review.

The Drawing Protection Racket

Whether you’re sending DWG or DWF files, you may be concerned about their misuse (that is, by the wrong people or for the wrong purposes), abuse (for example, modification without your consent), or reuse (on other projects or by other people without due compensation to you). AutoCAD has two features for securing your drawings when you send them to others:

Password protection: This feature enables you to lock a DWG or DWF file so that only someone who types the password you’ve specified can open, insert, or xref it.

AutoCAD LT users can’t apply a password, but they can open password-protected files if they know the password.

Add password protection to drawings only when you truly need it:

• If you forget the password, you can no longer open the drawing. Neither AutoCAD nor Autodesk has any magical way to extract the password or unlock the drawing.

• After you password-protect a drawing, others can’t insert the drawing as a block or attach it as an xref.

If you’re using a password, you probably should do it on a copy of the drawing that you send; keep an unprotected version for yourself.

Digital signature: Original paper drawings can’t be modified without leaving evidence, and copies are obviously copies. Electronic files can be copied and/or modified without leaving any evidence, so a dispute can arise over which version is the original. Solution: AutoCAD supports digital signatures. Digital signatures don’t prevent unauthorized people from opening the file, nor do they prevent anyone from modifying it. All they do is verify that a file has or hasn’t been modified since it was signed, if there’s ever a dispute. You must first open an account with a digital-certificate provider before you can apply them. For more information, see digital signatures, about in the AutoCAD online help system.

Although electronic security features such as the ones described in this section can be useful as part of a strategy to protect your work from misuse, they don’t substitute for communicating clearly, preferably in the form of written contracts, what constitutes appropriate use of drawings that you send to or receive from others.

Autodesk Weather Forecast: Increasing Cloud

Even if you just came out from under your rock in the past two years, you may not have heard of “the cloud,” or may not really understand what it means. Okay, here’s the truth; the cloud really just means the Internet, which in turn really just means a huge network of interconnected computers. Some organizations have put together a large number of computers (a “cloud” of them, if you will) and connected them through and to the Internet. Collectively, they have tremendous computing and storage capabilities.

So far, there are two fundamental uses for the cloud:

Computing: Application software can live and run on the cloud, so your computer simply becomes a keyboard and monitor with very long cords back to the cloud of computers. This can involve relatively simple applications, such as AutoCAD WS (covered a little later in this chapter), but the collective power of the cloud of computers makes it possible to do things that are impossible, or at least highly impractical, on stand-alone units.

Probably the best example of this is the entertainment industry. Before you start producing your own blockbuster computer-generated movie, do the math. AutoCAD can produce high-quality, photorealistic images, but it can take anywhere from several minutes to a few hours to produce a single frame. Now you need 24 or 30 frames per second (fps; movies versus TV) for several hours. You soon hit geologic time frames. 3D movies, like Avatar and How to Tame Your Dragon, were produced on rendering farms containing 20,000 to 30,000 (that’s right; 20 to 30 thousand) computers. We have heard claims that if your personal computer costs one dollar per hour to run, several thousand cloud computers still cost you only about one dollar per hour.

File storage: Cloud servers can collectively contain literally tens of thousands of hard drives, each with many terabytes (TB) of storage capacity. A secondary benefit of cloud storage is collaboration. If you set things up properly, you can share your files instantly, live, with anyone anywhere in the world.

The following sections take a look at a couple of cloud computing solutions.

Free AutoCAD!

AutoCAD WS is a free version of AutoCAD that you don’t need a program or even a computer to use. The software itself and your drawing files live on an Autodesk web server (hence, AutoCAD WS). All you need is an Internet-enabled device like a smartphone or tablet, plus a free app for it. Okay, so maybe it isn’t realistic to do full-time drawing creation on an iPhone, but one can be suitable for reviewing drawings or checking on a specific dimension.

On the other hand, if you do want to run AutoCAD WS on your personal computer, you can simply access it via almost any web browser. You don’t need a plug-in for the browser, so you can even run it from Internet café stations.

Try it yourself. Simply go to www.autocadws.com, create a free account and log in. You'll find three sample drawings to play with, and you'll soon realize that AutoCAD WS isn't quite full-blown AutoCAD. Realistically, it isn't even AutoCAD LT. On the other hand, the price is right, and we think that you'll be amazed at what it can do. Disclaimer: Autodesk is always working on it, so we might state that certain things don't work, but you'll likely find that they do by the time you try them.

When you open a drawing, you’re faced with a simplified version of the now-familiar Ribbon interface, as shown in Figure 20-3.

Figure 20-3: AutoCAD WS runs on the web, not on your computer.

Autodesk is continually upgrading AutoCAD WS. The following lists of what you can and cannot do in AutoCAD WS are always changing.

What you can do

Here’s a quick list of what you can do with AutoCAD WS:

Draw most 2D objects (including revision clouds).

Use object snaps and Ortho mode.

Use most of the editing commands, including Undo and Redo.

Create and manage layers.

Pan and zoom.

Switch between model space and paper space layouts.

Insert and edit blocks.

Use many of the keyboard mnemonics: L for Line, C for Circle, M for Move, and so on.

Upload existing files from your computer.

Download AutoCAD WS files, which are standard AutoCAD DWG files.

Print files.

Create folders and move files between them.

Xrefs are supported, including attached raster image files. (See Chapter 18 for a discussion on xref attachments.) Plot styles (discussed in Chapter 16) are supported, but the style definition files have to be uploaded separately.

So far, there seems to be no limitation on the file space available to individual users. Better yet, you can upload and download any file type (documents or spreadsheets, for example), but you can open only file types supported by AutoCAD, which includes DWG, DXF, and several raster formats such as BMP and JPG. Our brains hurt.

What AutoCAD WS can do that AutoCAD can’t do

What you’ll probably find to be surprising is that AutoCAD WS can do a few things that full AutoCAD can’t.

Does this scenario sound familiar? You’re trying to sell a component to someone, or you’re trying to buy a component from someone, or your company has another operation somewhere else, or you’re a consultant, and you need to discuss the drawing with them. In the (so-called) good old days, you’d have snail-mailed or couriered prints back and forth, with a turnaround time of several days for each iteration. These days, you probably e-mail the files and then phone the other party. You know the typical conversation: “No, the other hole on the other side!” So far, so good, but what if the recipient doesn’t own AutoCAD, or is not even CAD-literate? It’s AutoCAD WS to the rescue!

Just upload the file to AutoCAD WS, click the Share button, and enter one or more e-mail addresses. An e-mail invitation goes out to each person, inviting them to review the drawing. When the recipients click the link in their e-mail, they get signed into your account on AutoCAD WS, even if they don’t have an account. AutoCAD WS then opens the drawing that you invited them to share. Two or more people can log in to the same drawing at the same time, and everyone can see everyone else’s cursor. Anyone can make changes, and a text chat box is available. AutoCAD WS keeps a history of all changes. Just click to jump back and forth anywhere along the timeline. Try doing that in standard AutoCAD.

You can specify a variety of file rights when you issue the invitation. Perhaps you want some people to look but not touch, or look but don’t download, or maybe you just want them to be able to see a smaller, cropped region of the drawing. You can also unshare a file.

What AutoCAD WS can’t do

As we hint earlier in this chapter, there’s a surprisingly short list of things that AutoCAD WS cannot do (yet):

Create new files. However, as a work-around, simply upload a blank file, or erase everything from an existing one, and away you go.

Display 3D objects (see Chapters 21 and 22) on a web browser. The 2D viewports created from them (see Chapter 23) do display. Three-dimensional objects display on your mobile device if you download the free app.

Hatching can be created, but can’t be edited. It loses its associativity (Chapter 15) if the boundary is edited.

Layer management (see Chapter 6) is limited to changing the color of layers and to moving objects to different layers.

Parametrics (see Chapter 19) can’t be applied or edited, and they don’t update. On the other hand, they survive a round trip, and upon returning, will update any changes made to the related objects.

Annotative objects (see Chapters 13, 14, and 15) display only the configuration of the first scale factor that’s applied to them, but they survive a round trip.

Going once, going twice, going 123D

The free Autodesk product 123D Catch can be very useful if you need to document real objects. You can download it from www.123dapp.com/catch. Then simply "shoot circles" around any existing real-world object with any generic digital camera. Literally, shoot 20 to 30 pictures that overlap about 40 percent each, and then upload them to an Autodesk 360 site by using the Upload link in the software.

Here’s where the power of cloud computing kicks in. Within minutes, the Autodesk cloud service hands back a 3D computer model of the object, as shown in Figure 20-4. Now all you need is a 3D printer. Okay, you don’t even need to own one. When AutoCAD is running in its 3D Modeling workspace, the Ribbon includes an Output tab that contains a Send to 3D Print Service button. Upload the file and supply a credit card or PayPal identification, and a couple of days later a courier delivers the part. The Matter Replicator exists!

We have seen samples that range in size from a watch gear to people, cars, and buildings (and even Mount St. Helens produced from 30 screen captures of Google Earth) to a mountain that someone flew around in a light plane. The UNESCO World Heritage Center has collected postcards, travel brochures, and private tourists’ photos, and it has managed to create a 3D model of the giant statue of Buddha in Afghanistan that was destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban.

Figure 20-4: Four different views of a 3D computer model generated from 30 2D photos.

Your head planted firmly in the cloud

Besides file sharing, the other main use for the cloud is file storage. Many commercial sites store your files for you for a range of fees, including free sites such as Google Cloud Storage.

The pros

Here are some advantages of using the cloud for file storage:

Security: Do you keep your money under your mattress, or do you put it in a bank? The pro side claims that your personal computer is the least-secure place in the world to keep your data files. Viruses sneak in, hard drives fail, computers get stolen, buildings burn down, and you may not (or, more likely, don’t) have a proper backup procedure.

A competent cloud server service is probably using RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology. The users see it as a single disk drive, but, in reality, files are automatically copied to several physical drives. If one drive fails, the RAID operating system automatically disconnects that drive and continues working with the other drives. A technician swaps out the dead drive on the fly and plugs in the new one, and the RAID system automatically refreshes it from the good drives. The users don’t even know that anything has happened.

Convenience: Because the cloud server is part of the Internet, you can access your files “anytime” from “anywhere” in the world. Some services, such as Autodesk 360, can allow simultaneous access. Several people scattered all over the globe can access, discuss, and edit files at the same time. AutoCAD WS (discussed earlier in this chapter) is an example.

The cons

Here are some disadvantages of using the cloud for file storage:

Security: How do you know whether your cloud service is actually following proper RAID and backup procedures? Are your files stored in their native formats, or are they encrypted? How secure is the site against hackers and intruders? Who really owns your files? Can the site raise their rates and then hold your files for ransom until you agree to pay the new rates? What if it goes bankrupt?

Anything you post to anywhere on the Internet is there forever. You may think you have deleted a file, but all you have done is to flag as available the space it occupied. The raw data will survive until its disk space is needed and a new file overwrites it. (By the way, this is also true for a local hard drive. Many an embarrassing file has been recovered from a discarded drive.) In addition, RAID servers by definition hold multiple copies of the same file, and/or a competent cloud service makes regular backups.

Convenience: We want to slightly amend one statement from the pros so that it now reads, “. . . you can usually access your files almost anytime from almost anywhere in the world.” Here’s the scenario: Your four-hour flight to visit an important client has just taken off. The Fasten Your Seat Belt signs turn off, indicating that you can use electronic equipment. You have about an hour of work to do on one last critical drawing. You fire up your laptop, launch AutoCAD, and open — oh, poop! (or words to that effect). No Internet connection. No cloud service. No files. You’re doomed.

Cloudy with a Shower of DWGs: AutoCAD 360

Autodesk has entered the cloudy skies with its Autodesk 360 service, which gives anyone up to 3GB of free storage space, plus many other storage and collaboration options. (Note that subscription members get additional capacity.)

AutoCAD has a Ribbon tab, shown in Figure 20-5, specifically for connecting directly to Autodesk 360 for online file sharing, customized file syncing, and more.

Figure 20-5: Tie a ribbon around a cloud.

The Online tab from AutoCAD 2013 has been renamed Autodesk 360 for 2014. It includes a Design Feed button that lets you enter images and posts for online sharing, plus several other additions, changes, and deletions from earlier releases.

We don’t bore you with all the details of every option in every panel, because after we discuss the general principles, the options are obvious.

  ONLINEDOCS is the basic command for signing in to Autodesk 360. After you’re signed in, you can save and upload files to the cloud, share and collaborate with others, and download from the cloud. The first time, you’re asked to set up your preferences. These can always be changed later, using the other Ribbon buttons that we cover a little later.

You sign in to Autodesk 360 by using your Autodesk Single Sign-on Account. You create the account when you install and activate AutoCAD. For a variety of reasons, though, you may not have an account or may not know your account information; for example, you may not be the person who installed AutoCAD on the computer that you’re using. No problem — you can always create an account on the fly as you log in.

For that matter, you can also go directly to the following URL and create an account, even if you don’t own AutoCAD. All you need is a valid e-mail address that isn’t already linked to an Autodesk account:

https://documents.cloud.autodesk.com/Landing/Index

Don’t select the Keep Me Signed In check box in the Account Sign In dialog box if you’re using a computer to which other people have access. If you do, and you simply close the browser when you’re finished, ONLINEDOCS doesn’t ask for a sign-in name or password the next time it’s invoked. It just signs in directly to your account, no matter who is using the computer.

After you’re logged in, ONLINEDOCS opens your Autodesk 360 Documents list and folders in a browser.

Right-click a file to bring up a contextual menu of the various things you can do to, or with, the file.

You’re not restricted to uploading AutoCAD drawing files to your Autodesk 360 account. The Select Documents button in the Upload Documents dialog box lets you browse to any drive or folder that’s accessible on your computer, including network drives, and it lets you select any type of file.

Your Autodesk 360 documents are also available from many Select File dialog boxes throughout AutoCAD. For example, when you open, save, or attach a file, you can access the cloud directly from the Places list on the left side of the dialog box.

Now here’s one of the many magic aspects of uploading drawing files to Autodesk 360. An AutoCAD drawing may not be an island unto itself, but it may require access to several supporting files — text, dimensions, hatches, plots, and xrefs. This is often a problem when you try to send a drawing to someone, because if you miss one of the required supporting files, the recipient can have problems opening your drawing. Now comes the magic: When you upload drawings directly from AutoCAD to the cloud, external references and other dependent files are automatically included with the upload. Problem solved.

The optional extras

Autodesk 360 has a number of options that you can adjust to suit yourself. We don’t go into all the gory details, but here are a few highlights of what can be done:

You can have AutoCAD automatically save an encrypted copy to the cloud every time you save a file or have it copy only files that you select. Autodesk recommends the save-every-time option, but you might want to read the sections “The pros” and “The cons,” earlier in this chapter, before you decide.

Autodesk 360 can let you pimp your ride (oops — we mean sync your settings). If you customized AutoCAD and its settings, and if you often use two or more different computers, you can have Autodesk 360 save your personal settings and customization to the cloud on the fly while you work.

Now when you go to a different computer and log in, all your settings and customizations are downloaded from the cloud, and AutoCAD on the second machine looks and runs exactly the same as on your personalized computer. The two machines stay synchronized. When you log out, you’re prompted to either keep the new settings on the second machine (the perfect option if you switch back and forth between your main computer and a laptop) or restore the original settings. (It’s Kindergarten 102: Be polite. After you finish playing with someone else’s toys, you should always put them back where you found them.)

You can specify which settings to synchronize and which to ignore. The list includes options (almost everything in the Options dialog box), customization files, printer support files, custom hatch patterns, custom fonts, shapes, and linetypes, tool palettes, and drawing templates. You may not want to synchronize everything. For example, different computers may have different printers.

Sharing and collaborating

With Autodesk 360, you can share the current drawing with other AutoCAD users. It signs you in to the cloud and copies the current drawing to the cloud if it isn’t already there. You can specify the e-mail addresses of specific individuals, or you can declare it to be public, and you can control the access level of shared documents.

Collaboration involves using AutoCAD WS in a collaboration session with another WS user. We describe AutoCAD WS earlier in this chapter.