Scott recently posted about the new A360 Integrated Viewer which can view many native design file formats. It is integral in many of the A360 portals but is also available as a separate on-line viewer:
- Just open https://360.autodesk.com/viewer
Drag your file into the viewer to upload it (having read the associated terms and conditions…)
- View and share!
Scott’s post has a lot of info on the new viewer but the discussion about the future of Autodesk’s Design Web Format (DWF) and Autodesk Design Review (see the comments in addition to the article) is well worth reading for current users of DWF & ADR.
Autodesk Design Review development may have stalled at 2013 (which still works fine) but I’m glad to see DWF still has a future. It is an elegant way to share 3D model data with the object properties intact and still handles 2D sheet sets better than PDF (faster to publish, much smaller files and better view/print quality).
One huge advantage of an on-line viewer is elimination of the viewer install hurdle. That was often impossible due to IT lockdown or, in the case of iOS/OSX, the operating system not being supported.
While the ability to view native formats is awesome the A360 viewer is still rather primitive compared to Autodesk Design Review. Viewing is fine but limitations show when it comes to interacting with the model for mark-up/measure, sectioning tools and feeding mark-ups back to the authoring applications.
As Scott mentions they are working to close the gap — at least cloud based software is much easier to update — but there is still lots to do.
Check out the Autodesk 360 Integrated 3D Viewer - It is Alive in the Lab
I have been a participant in the Autodesk discussion forums for 21 years now. Wow, my participation is old enough to drink. As part of that participation I have mentioned:
The Design Web Format (DWF) is not dead. Autodesk will continue to use it for Autodesk Vault as well as our new cloud-based solutions.
Autodesk Design Review (ADR) 2013 is still freely available for download. Like DWF, it continues to be an integral part of Vault. The DWF format did not change with the 2014 and 2015 versions of our design applications, so ADR can still handle DWF files produced by our latest offerings.
People who lament the freezing of ADR wonder why…
DWF ‘n Me: Photo by Shaan Hurley @ Autodesk University 2005
