Between the Lines

The Autodesk DWF Writer 2 is Now Available for Download!

DWF Writer 2

The Autodesk® DWF™ Writer is a certified Microsoft® Windows® system printer driver, so you can publish DWF files by simply selecting Autodesk DWF Writer from your standard Printer Name drop-down list in any Windows application.

The DWF Writer is extensively tested with Autodesk Revit® to ensure full fidelity of Revit data. The DWF Writer also works with other CAD applications that do not offer built-in DWF publishing, such as Bentley® Microstation and Solidworks®.

DWF™ Writer requires one of the following operating systems: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home or Professional; Windows 2000; Windows 2003 Server.

Click Here
www.autodesk.com/dwfwriter

Cheers,
-Shaan

DWF vs PDF

Link to results of some testing for the formats with AutoCAD design data.Click Here

Cheers,
-Shaan

Autodesk Design Awards 2003

Professionals and students submitted their designs for the Autodesk Design Awards in the Fall of 2003. Winners were announced in December at Autodesk University in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Have a look at the winners as there are some really impressive designs:
Click Here

Cheers,
-Shaan

DWF Writer 2 Is Being Posted Any Day Now

The Free DWF Writer 2 which I mentioned the beta awhile back will be on the Autodesk web site very soon. When it is available I will post in here. It is a really nice Windows System printer driver to print to the DWF format from almost any Windows application.

Cheers,
-Shaan

Online Autodesk® DWF™ Writer Video Tutorial by CAD-1.com

CAD-1.com has posted an online streaming video tutorial on the Autodesk® DWF™ Writer (http://www.autodesk.com/dwfwriter). They show how to use it and discuss uses for it to print from any windows application to the DWF format.

http://www.cad-1.com/tips&tricks_janfebvid-04.htm

Cheers,
-Shaan

The Solar System on a 10,000" X 10,000" DWF

I actually just for fun created a high DPI multiple page DWF of the Solar System on a 10,000 inch by 10,000 in page size. It was only 34KB in size. I set the plot style to make all lines with 0.0" lineweight for more crisp lines.

I placed the DWF file for viewing Click Here

Please note you will need the free Autodesk Express Viewer 4 to view this DWF.
Download the Free Viewer Here
More about DWF HERE

Cheers,
-Shaan

DWF Precision Article by Brian Mathews of the DWF Team

DWF precision

One of the advantages (to some customers at least, maybe not you) is the security offered by DWF because it has the same restrictions as physical paper.  Many users don't want people stealing their model data.  Let me explain:
 
When you take a measurement in AutoCAD from a DWG file you have a 64-bit double-precision floating point value that gives you extreme levels of precision and accuracy.  You also have lots of model intelligence.  For example an ADT door knows it is a door and the wall knows that it needs to have a hole to contain the door and that the framing inside the wall needs to adjust based on the position of the door.  The door and walls aren't just pictures made of lines, they are intelligent objects with cross-linked relationships.
 
With physical paper and a physical ruler we all know there are limitations to the precision and accuracy; we all know you only have are a bunch of dumb pixels (the model intelligence is gone).
 
The DWF files you have today are essentially electronic plots, generated from AutoCAD's (or another application's) plot engine.  As such many of the same limitations apply to DWF as to paper.  This is where the security comes in: since the DWF doesn't have the same precision and accuracy, and since the DWF geometry is tessellated (blocks and objects get exploded into their individual graphic strokes) it isn't easy to turn a DWF back into a DWG (just like it isn't easy to turn paper into a DWG).  Even if you did the work to change the paper or DWF back into a DWG you'd be missing lots of model intelligence.  Many customers feel that physical-paper is sufficiently secure and they want that same level of security with DWF.
 
So why are your measurements not 100% accurate/precise with DWF?
 
By default AutoCAD 2004 generates DWF files at 400 dots-per-inch on whatever virtual paper size you are plotting to.  If you plot to 8.5x11 inch paper, that means in the horizontal dimension there are only about 4,000 dots or coordinates that the DWF lines can terminate at.  This effectively limits the precision of any measurement.  If your drawing represents a 300 foot long building, and if that floor plan (after you account for margins) is filling about 66% of the width of the page, that means there are only 4,000 * .66 = 2,640 dots at which the lines can end at.  This means that our precision is the 300 feet / 2,640 dots = 0.1136 feet (or 1.36 inches).  Wow!  So if I use the default 400 DPI on small 8.5x11 paper I can only take measurements that are accurate to within about 1 inch!  This is much less precision than AutoCAD (which can measure features smaller than an atom!).  Also note that the DWF in this example is actually HIGHER precision than what you would be able to do with a ruler and physical paper.
 
So how do I improve the precision?
 
The analogy is the same for DWF as it is for paper.  With paper if the author wants consumers to be able to make better measurements what do you do?  You print to larger paper (or you buy an electron microscope)!  If I make my 300 foot building and print to E-sized paper rather than Letter-sized, the result is better precision both with physical paper and for DWF (since the DWF will be using the same 400 DPI times a lot more inches of virtual paper which means there are a lot more dots).
 
But what do I do if I want to allow higher precision without changing the paper size (since my printer only prints to a specific paper size, that is the size I have to use)?
 
With physical paper you don't have many options here.  You could get a higher resolution printer (1000 DPI rather than 300 DPI for example), but it is still hard to get additional precision when using a ruler and the human eye.  For the most part you have to go to a bigger paper size to get higher precision measurements with physical paper.
 
With DWF you can leave the paper size alone (at 8.5x11) and change the DPI setting (in the plot options custom-properties dialog).  You can set this DPI up to a much higher number (the DPI times the paper width must be less than 2^31 which is 2,147,483,648).  If you used the maximum precision of DWF (which is still a lot less than for a DWG which uses 2^48) you can get great precision in your measurements.  For example: for 8.5x11 paper we could set the DPI in AutoCAD 2004 to be 195,225,786 DPI (try that with your laser printer!).  In our example above if you crank the math out you'll find that you can measure your 300 foot building down to 0.000028 inches!!  When was the last time you needed a measurement accurate to one-10,000th of an inch??

Let’s also consider a GIS mapping example. DWF has a maximum precision of 2,147,483,648 total dots when you increase either your DWF DPI or your DWF paper size (or a combination of both). If we say the continental USA is about 3,000 miles wide at what precision can a DWF resolve a map of the USA? Well that’s just (3000 mi * 5280 ft/mi * 12 in/ft) / 2,147,483,648 = 0.089 inches. In other words when making a DWF that represents the entire continental USA we can resolve objects down to a precision that is about 2.3 millimeters in size! Not many people need precision that high! However, if you use the default AutoCAD DWF precision of 400 DPI on an E-sized sheet of paper you’d only be using 14,400 out of the available 2,147,483,648 DWF dots and thus you’d only be able measure the USA down to +/- 1,100 feet.

I increased my DPI value very high but my measurements still aren't perfect. Why?
 
The paper size and the DPI setting are only part of the story.  That determines the absolute maximum possible precision that is available.  However, other factors influence the precision of your measurements.  For example, when you measure between two line endpoints, where exactly are you measuring between?  Remember that lines have width and they have end-caps.  As such they have volume.  Since some types of geometry become tessellated in the DWF file and many types have volume, the auto-snap technology sometimes can't tell exactly what piece of tessellated geometry or which part of the volume you are wanting to measure from.  For the line case, are you measuring from the line endpoint or from the edge of the line-cap semi-circle that extends past the endpoint?  Also, the auto-snap technology in certain cases may depend on the resolution of your screen (the mouse can only point at a particular screen pixel) and there are very few pixels on a screen.  Furthermore, the DWF coordinates have to pass through multiple coordinate transforms.  Each transform introduces round-off errors and precision errors which accumulate. For most drawings these issues are so extremely small that you can ignore their effect.
 
Summary:

To get better measurement precision:

The author must intentionally enable you to receive the extra precision as part of the security concept.

The author can increase the size of the virtual DWF paper.

The author can increase the DPI setting of the DWF driver to use more pixels and precision.  Increasing DPI will increase the DWF file size, so you don't want to use a crazy DPI.

Plotting without line weights or other settings that lead to tessellation *may* improve the precision (but this depends on a complex set of variables and may not change the precision at all).

DWF can measure the continental USA with a precision of +/- 2.4 millimeters when using the maximum DPI and paper size settings

http://www.autodesk.com/dwfit

Brian Mathews
 Autodesk, Inc.

Posted on January 7, 2004 at 04:10 PM in Announcements, AutoCAD, Autodesk, DWFit, Tips–n-Tricks | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thursday, January 01, 2004

First Post of 2004 - Happy New Years Everyone!

Well the West Coast has now rang in the new year. I hope everyone has a safe new years day and a better year than the last. Also please note it will take me the next 9 months to stop writing 2003 in my email and documents...

And now some of my new years resolutions...

Catch up on my email, I promise. I get almost a hundred a day and try not to get too far behind.

Post more product tutorials and tips and tricks in this blog.

Post a very special and exciting announcement very soon.

Get back to Germany for some well needed rest and great beer. :-)

Visit more worldwide Autodesk user group meetings and events. Just send the invites far enough in advance, and I will see what I can do. I almost got to New Zealand, but it was too short of notice. I can also do Autodesk/AutoCAD Technical Q&A for user groups via phone or web.

Get as many user requested features into the products as possible.

Gather much more research and use cases on non US localised product for usability or localised customer issues. I am currently gathering issues from Europe as we pretty much have a good handle now on the Asian issues like double byte fonts and are working to address many of these in the future.

And finally, at this years Autodesk University set up a more formal event and itinerary for my 4th annual CAD Geek Fest!
Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on January 1, 2004 at 12:00 AM in Announcements, AutoCAD, Autodesk University, Beta Info, DWFit, Inside the Desk, Misc., Tips–n-Tricks, Tutorials, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (2)

Monday, December 22, 2003

New Exciting DWF Usage for Facilities

I have seen some very clever usage of DWF files on a corporate network. You can show employee locations, printers and in many cases even install and map to the printers of an office as shown in Jimmy Bergmark’s intranet site.

I am showing a couple examples below.

Autodesk Facilities and Human Resources uses embedded DWF files to show the current office locations and associated information. Of course I have not made the clearest screen capture (below) on purpose due to the content such as office numbers in Autodesk facilities.

An employee goes to the corporate intranet site and then types in a search for an employee based on many different criteria just like a search engine. They then get the page with all the employee info and a link to their office shown in a daily updated database created DWF file. The web page has an embedded DWF showing the employee office and all current details at the top of the DWF window. It is originally zoomed in on the office but I grabbed the screen capture when zoomed out. Also the employee and office numbers have hyperlinks back to the intranet site so you know the phone number of the office in a reverse search.

Jimmy Bergmark’s excellent example of using a DWF in his facility in Sweden.
Jimmy uses the embedded DWF in his intranet to display many different office floor layouts. He says they do this because it allows employees at his company to easily connect printers since they move around quite a lot. In the floor plan layouts are all of their corporate networked printers and their mapped locations. Simply clicking on the hyperlinked printer device and you are all ready to print to the device just as you would by manually going through the network setup of a printer but this offers the visual and automated steps and it is so easy to do. Have you ever mapped to the wrong printer when searching through the network for the cryptically named device .

Some screen images of his DWF.

Jimmy's web site www.jtbworld.com

The possibilities are endless really when you consider the flexibility and lightweight format of DWF.

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on December 22, 2003 at 04:50 PM in Autodesk, DWFit, Inside the Desk, Tips–n-Tricks, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Autodesk® Express Viewer 4 Press Release

Click Here

With the latest version of Autodesk Express Viewer 4, customers can take advantage of the following enhancements:

Easier Navigation

The latest Express Viewer improves the navigation of multi-sheet drawing sets. New features include thumbnail images, an index list of the sheets and bookmarks to make it easier to find information in a clear and efficient structure. Hyperlinks can be utilized to further enrich any drawing by linking to related information in the drawing set or on the Internet.

Expanded Access to Design Data

Users can gain access to object properties published from the Interoperability and Productivity extension for Autodesk® Architectural Desktop 2004. For example, users can view details about all the doors in a specific drawing, including dimensions, material, manufacturer, and model number. Or, they can view detailed file information for all sheets in the DWF file—including who created the document, and when.

Advanced Markup Capabilities

Users can further enhance their workflow by distributing designs for review as DWF and viewing markups (created using Volo® View) with Autodesk Express Viewer. The design review process can be enhanced by comparing the original design with the markups and enabling all team members to easily review markups and annotations.

Customization Options

The combination of new flexibility and control over the interface via application settings as well as a powerful application programming interface (API), provide a means for users to customize the look and feel of the viewer to meet their own needs.

www.autodesk.com/dwf

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on November 5, 2003 at 11:43 AM in Announcements, Autodesk, DWFit, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 24, 2003

Autodesk Express Viewer 4 is now Live!

You can click on the image to see a larger sized screen capture of Autodesk Express Viewer 4.

To download this new DWF viewer Click Here

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on October 24, 2003 at 02:15 PM in Announcements, AutoCAD, Autodesk, DWFit, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

DWF-it!

I have received some great feedback from Autodesk customers
after they tried the DWF format at my recommendation. I thought
I might share the raw comments used with their permission of
course and perhaps you might give it a try as well. What do you
have to lose besides getting the smaller files, faster loading times,
and smaller viewer with DWF than with the other format?

As an exclusive to this blog, you may be interested to know
that the new Autodesk Express Viewer 4 I posted in this blog
about, with all of the nice new features such as thumbnails is
planned to be released to the world between this Friday and
the end of the month. Keep a watch on the web page for the
release announcement then download and become a believer
in DWF like many others around the world.
http://www.autodesk.com/expressviewer

Believe it or not, I was once a PDF fanatic and actually assisted
many customers including large ones like the US Navy convert
their design documents to large E size format PDFs but now I
have also converted and see the benefit of using the right tool
for the job. In the case of design drawings whether they be AutoCAD,
MicroStation, or others DWF is it. There is the new DWFWriter 2
driver in beta that allows you to print DWF files from virtually any
Windows application. I posted the information on this new
DWFWriter 2 beta on Wednesday, October 15, 2003.

"Thought you might like to hear this.
I put together a small project (only 15 plans) for our IT staff laying
out a new networking loop with drop points and racks. I provide the
first set of preliminary plans in PDF. I just provided the 90%'s in DWF
and he loved the speed and ease of use of Autodesk Express Viewer
over Acrobat. He plans on re-imaging most of the PC's here soon and
wants to make sure everyone has this installed so they can view DWF's,
which my intranet site is filled with.
Thanks, I think the thumbnails alone will make the people here a
happier bunch." Don Wilson Airport Planning and Facilities Sacramento, California

"All right, Shaan, I'm a believer now.
We sent DWF files out to one of ourhomebuilders after directing him
to download the ExpressViewer. He's a complete believer now. Loves
being able to control the layers, etc.
I'm in!" James Wedding, P.E. Jones & Boyd, Inc. Dallas, TX

"I've got a bunch of new converts here as well.
After using PDF for a lot of the electronic signatures on files we decided
to try putting these on the web for general accessibility. We ran into a
problem right away with the plotting of the files to scale and the fact that
some of the files took as long as 20 minutes to plot to our Hp 5000 printer
(even got extra ram to no avail). After converting the files to DWF and
placing them on our intranet and setting the viewer to install automatically,
I’m having a hard time to get anyone to use the Adobe view to view the
signatures on the files. They now want to get the viewer (or AutoCAD ) to
use electronic signatures. Thanks for all the extra work, I should have kept
my big mouth shut about DWF .....BG" Shawn Romkey P.Geo Noranda Mining

Do you have a conversion story you want to share? Send me an email with the subject line of "DWF Believer" so that I can spot the email in my constantly growing email inbox.

Cheers,
-Shaan
shaan@autodesk.com

Posted on October 22, 2003 at 01:08 PM in Autodesk, DWFit, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

DWFWriter 2 Beta Now Available

In the image below I printed DWF files from a non Autodesk CAD application as well as even the almost 10 year old AutoCAD R12 for Windows. I have printed from many non Autodesk applications. The DWF format is a very nice and much smaller file than an Adobe PDF which is appropriate for your Word documents, not your design data. There is a free viewer that is a small download and loads very fast. All you need to do is enroll for the DWFwriter 2 beta at:
http://betaprograms.autodesk.com/betaweb.htm
or wait for the final release. It is a very nice tool and installs as a standard Windows system printer driver so you can virtually print a DWF from any Windows based application.

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on October 15, 2003 at 10:51 PM in Announcements, Autodesk, Beta Info, DWFit, Web/Tech | Permalink

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Merge Multiple DWF Files Into One

I hear the request to be able to merge multiple DWF files into one quite often. In the downloadable DWF Toolkit there is sample code to do this.

We have compiled this for those that would like to download and try it.
Click Here to download the 1Mb file

DWF “Merge Files” sample application is attached.
All you need to do is unzip this package and make sure all the files stay in the same directory.

To use MergeFiles, just drag-and-drop a bunch of DWF’s onto the application and publish. You’ll get all your files into a single DWF 6 file that you can then print in a batch using AEV.

This is not supported and at your own risk.

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on September 25, 2003 at 09:09 AM in DWFit, Tips–n-Tricks, Tutorials, Web/Tech | Permalink

DWFwriter 2 Alpha Download

Printing from MS Word 2003 to the new DWFwriter 2 printer driver

The new version of the DWFwriter driver for Windows is much more optimized than the release 1.

DWFwriter Alpha: Click Here

On install you nwill get a message about the driver not being signed by Microsoft, ignore that message as the driver under development is not signed yet and you can ignore and continue the installation. After installation the DWFwriter will show in your Windows System printers.

Please note this is early alpha and is unsupported so use at your own risk.

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on September 25, 2003 at 08:42 AM in Beta Info, DWFit | Permalink

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Nice Article on DWF by Lynn

My friend and fellow Autodesker Lynn Allen posted a great article on autodesk.com on "Why We Need DWF". You may find this article helpful.

Click Here

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on September 23, 2003 at 12:41 PM in Announcements, DWFit, Tips–n-Tricks, Tutorials | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, September 19, 2003

Shhhh Dont tell Anyone, You Can Print to DWF in Windows Applications ;-)

Are you aware that the DWFWriter available for Autodesk Revit after being installed acts as a standard Windows System Printer? DWFwriter is a certified Microsoft® Windows® system printer driver. What does that mean, well you could print to DWF from almost any application on your machine. Of course this is not supported but works fairly well especially for CAD.

Click Here to download and try it.

Remember this is not supported but imagine the shock of some when they receive a MS Word document or another document in DWF format.

Below is a screen shot of the next free Autodesk Express Viewer viewing a DWF of a MS Word document about AutoCAD 2004. You can use th current Autodesk Express Viewer to view the created DWF files.

Pretty cool, eh?
Are you as convinced as I am that DWF is powerful?

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on September 19, 2003 at 08:31 AM in DWFit, Tips–n-Tricks | Permalink

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

DWF!

In case you may not be aware there are few exciting press releases from today and yesterday.

Autodesk Announces DWF 6 for Mac OS X Users and Developers

Autodesk Announces Agreement with Océ to Support DWF

Cheers,
-Shaan

Posted on September 10, 2003 at 10:49 AM in Autodesk, DWFit, Web/Tech | Permalink