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
[email protected]