Autodesk Design Review 2009

Scott Onstott
Book & Video Author

This product was reviewed four years ago in AECbytes when it went by the name DWF Composer. Autodesk began promoting their Design Web Format (DWF) at the dawn of the millennium, and began positioning it as a competitor to PDF somewhat more recently. According to Autodesk, there have been over 15 million downloads of their DWF viewing and markup software since inception. The DWF format has recently been gaining momentum with Autodesk Design Review 2009 being downloaded over 200,000 times per month.

Free is a hard price to beat, and you're getting a lot of excellent functionality without charge in Autodesk Design Review. In addition to being a drawing, model, and map viewer that technical and non-technical people alike can use, Design Review also allows you to markup, measure, search, compare, print, and/or collaborate on the web—all without the original design creation software.

Larger than the software itself, Design Review enables an all-digital collaborative design process via the medium of DWF, or more properly, DWFx files (more on that distinction later in this review).

Customizable UI

Design Review 2009 has a new customizable user interface shown in Figure 1. This might not sound like much, but it is quite helpful to be able to drag palettes and toolbars around the screen and dock them according to your specific needs. Design Review is used not only in AEC, but also has a following in the Geospatial and Manufacturing industries, so there may be some functionality you'd prefer not to see.

You can hide all the UI elements you're not using to reduce visual clutter, or go full screen to focus entirely on the design. Predefined workspaces can be used out of the box or customized to your liking.

3D Navigation and Visualization Made Easy

3D navigation is something that can disorient and even intimidate newcomers. Autodesk's ViewCube and SteeringWheel controls are intuitive, easy to use, and are constant across most if not all of Autodesk's 2009 design applications. Both features shown in Figure 2 provide a clear visual reference for 3D object and camera transformation.

In addition to having easy 3D navigation, you can pull apart models (especially helpful in manufacturing), cut sections through models, and play animation saved in the original design application within Design Review.

Markup Tools

Marking up a drawing, map, or model (aka "redlining") is an essential feature of Design Review because it allows comments captured within the design context to be recorded and tracked digitally. Figure 3 shows text and arrows drawn with the freehand markup tool. In addition there is a Markup palette that tracks any markups you add to a drawing or model, and a Markup Properties palette that allows you to set the status (for review, question, or done) or add additional notes to any markup entity.

Markup tools include callouts, text blocks, stamps, freehand sketching tool, standard shapes, custom symbols, and revision bubbles, all of which can be saved to the DWF file.

Marking up 2D drawings and/or 3D models in Design Review is doubly efficient—firstly because a picture really is worth a thousand words, and secondly because digital markups can be transmitted around the world in mere seconds.

Combining Design and Project Data into Archives

Multiple document types can be dragged and dropped into a single DWF project archive, making transmission and organization of project data much easier. In Design Review, you can concatenate drawings, maps, or models with images, written documents, spreadsheets, email, specifications, contracts, etc—all in one file.

Design Review has a single document interface, so only one DWF file can be opened per instance of the software. Double clicking a second DWF file opens another Design Review instance visible on the Windows task bar. It is not necessary to open two instances of Design Review to combine project data into one archive.

Figure 4 shows the following workflow: open one DWF file in Design Review and then open the Windows Explorer (pressing Windows key+E is a shortcut) and position it alongside. Drag a DWF (or DWFx) file from the Explorer and drop it into the content palette (with Thumbnails and List View tabs) in Design Review. Voila, you now have the beginnings of a project archive. Unfortunately this workflow only works for DWF, DWFx, and image files. Read on to learn how to combine PDF, DWG, DXF, DGN, and other file types with DWF—it's not exactly elegant but is possible through clever use of a Windows printer driver.

Once documents are in a DWF archive, they can't be extracted to their original formats after inclusion, so a DWF archive probably isn't going to be acceptable for long term storage. However, DWF archives are great for collaboration purposes. Sending a single file that contains all pertinent project information makes it a lot easier to ensure that all team members stay coordinated.

Comparing Drawings

It's quite useful to be able to compare drawings in Design Review without the original design-creation software. Instead of opening two DWF files and then trying to compare them (my initial instinct) Figure 5 shows how you must open one DWF file, choose Tools > Compare, and then select the other DWF file.

Differences in geometry between two sheets in separate DWF files are identified as light table overlays. By default, the additions are shown in green and deletions are shown in red (see Figure 6). Both additions and deletions show up as separate nodes in the Markup palette.

Design Review 2009 is not able to compare 3D DWF, polylines, tabular data, images, metadata, or markups.

Measuring in 2D and 3D

Taking measurements is straightforward both in 2D and in 3D. Figure 7 shows examples of both length and area measurements taken off a floor plan in DWF format.

Although it is possible to measure a length in a 3D DWF file, it is challenging to get dimensions to snap to all endpoints or intersections, especially in a sectioned model. That said, measuring length is less important in models when you also have plans, sections, and/or elevations.

Finding Data within DWF Archive

You can search for and quickly locate text, building components, equipment, a room name or number, etc., on any open sheet within Design Review. As you'd expect, there is a Find palette with a search bar. Found items are highlighted in green, as shown in Figure 9, and clicking on an item takes you immediately to the respective sheet and zooms into the item.

GPS Integration on Georeferenced Maps

Handheld GPS units can interface with Design Review. Naturally, this is relevant when you are working with a georeferenced map, so you'll see the Map toolbar (Figure 10) only when you open a DWF file published by AutoCAD Map 3D and Civil 3D 2008 or later. If you have such a map, Design Review automatically centers the map on the canvas to the coordinates provided by the GPS device—quite a useful feature in the field.

Design Review Enables the DWF Collaboration Process

Design Review enables a process that is bigger than this software itself. When project data is kept digital from content creator to reviewer and back again, the process is called roundtripping. The "designer" in this process might be an architect, engineer, fabricator, general contractor, subcontractor, or other party with design software. The "reviewer" in the process might be any of the above, or client, building owner, developer, project manager, consultant, or others using Design Review, possibly without the original design software. What follows below is a typical design data "roundtrip."

1. Designer Publishes in DWF

The designer publishes to DWF from any Autodesk 2009 design application including all flavors of AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, and Map3D. Design Review does not create DWF content in itself, although it can concatenate DWF files published elsewhere.

Autodesk additionally provides a free driver (described in some more detail later) that creates DWF files by printing from any Windows application.

2. Reviewer Receives DWF file

The reviewer might receive the DWF file as an email attachment, from a shared folder on a company network, from an Autodesk Buzzsaw or Autodesk Streamline project folder, from an FTP server, from a CD or DVD, flash memory, embedded in a web page or online storage system.

The reviewer installs Design Review, opens the DWF file, and views the design.

3. Reviewer Marks Up DWF in Autodesk Design Review

The reviewer views, navigates, comments, marks up, and possibly prints the design data. The markups are saved in the same DWF format.

Note: some DWF files might be markup-, measure-, or print-disabled by the designer.

4. Reviewer Returns DWF Markup to Designer

The reviewer sends the marked-up DWF file back to the designer. One option is to publish the changes to the web via Project Freewheel, a form accessible to Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and smart phone users. More details on Project Freewheel are provided in a later section.

5. Designer Revises Source Data in Design Application

Based on the reviewed and marked up DWF file, the designer uses their Autodesk software to revise the design data. For example, AutoCAD brings in a DWF file as an overlay via its Markup Set Manager palette. Changes are tracked and saved in the original design context.

6. Reiterate Process

The process repeats, possibly many times as the project continues. Design Review enables faster design iterations, lowers overall costs due to increased efficiencies, and avoids coordination errors because DWF information comes directly from the original design data.

Huge Benefits to Keeping DWFs Electronic

In addition to saving time and money with Design Review in a DWF collaboration process, you can reduce the project's environmental impact by keeping design iterations 100% electronic.

Figure 11 shows the primary benefit—trees are what you can save by keeping DWFs electronic and not using paper. Less apparent are secondary benefits in saved time spent waiting for paper documents to arrive, fuel burned in document shipment, its associated energy and environmental costs.

In large projects, reprographics and courier fees often run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, so Design Review can greatly help reduce the project budget when DWFs are kept electronic.

Not There Yet? If You Must Print...

Not everyone is at the point yet where they can do 100% electronic design review. Volker Joseph of Autodesk says it well in his DWF blog, "For DWF to go beyond the paper, it has to get to paper first."

Design Review can print to any Windows printer. There is also batch print functionality under File > Batch Print Wizard, so you can print an entire drawing set from DWF quite easily.

Reprographics service bureaus have specific challenges with respect to printing DWF drawing sets in an automated fashion without user intervention. Here is an article that offers specific recommendations for reprographics professionals printing DWF.

DWF vs DWFx

DWF is the original Design Web Format and is still supported. DWFx is the new and default format of Design Review. DWF files are generally smaller than DWFx files. If desired, you can change this default under Tools > Options > General tab.

DWFx is based upon the eXtensible Markup Language Paper Specification (XPS) from Microsoft. Vista has an XPS viewer built-in, so you can see DXFx files on Vista without Design Review. You can download an XPS viewer on XP too. The idea here is that newbies who might have trouble installing any software at all can see DWF files, at least on Vista.

If you can handle software installation (and perhaps more importantly have administrative privileges to do so) then Design Review is your best bet for viewing DWFx on Vista and XP.

Writing DWFs from any Windows Application

Autodesk's DWF Writer 4 is a free driver that outputs DWF or DWFx files from any Windows application that can print. So you can convert a PDF to DWFx by opening the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader and printing to the Autodesk DWF Writer for 2D (see Figure 12).

This is a clever solution for maximum compatibility because most all Windows software can print. It is impractical for Autodesk to create DWF output plug-ins for every piece of software used in the design process. However, I feel that including a native PDF importer in Design Review would be a helpful feature in the future. It would be much faster to be able to drag PDFs into Design Review without the additional step of first printing the PDFs to DWFx.

When Publishing to DWF is Not an Option

If the designer doesn't use Autodesk content creation software, Design Review can very likely still be used in a DWF collaboration process. Most design software has the ability to export in DWG or DXF formats. Design Review 2009 can import these through File > Import. Microstation DGN files also appear under File > Import after a free DGN plug-in is installed in Design Review.

Viewing DWF in Powerpoint, Word, Excel and HTML

It's very simple to embed a Design Review viewer in Powerpoint, Word, Excel, or within HTML code. Click here for detailed instructions. You get complete Design Review functionality for viewing a DWF or DWFx file within a presentation, document, spreadsheet or web site. As the technology used in this context is ActiveX, Design Review controls embedded within web sites are viewable only on Internet Explorer 6 or later. Firefox, Mac OS, Linux and cell phone browsers have another solution via Project Freewheel, described next.

Autodesk Labs Project Freewheel Integration

Within Design Review, choosing File > Freewheel prompts you to install a free plug-in from Autodesk called ShareNow. Choosing File > Freewheel again after installing and restarting Design Review allows you to directly upload your design to Autodesk's Project Freewheel server. Figure 13 shows the legal warning associated with this free service.

If you choose to go ahead and post your design to the Project Freewheel server, your default browser will automatically launch and display your DWF/DWFx file. Bookmark the URL and email it to your team. Figure 14 shows a 3D DWFx file, visualized in Firefox 3 on Mac OS X.

The beauty of Project Freewheel is that it will work on any browser that displays images, as no plug-ins are required. The navigation isn't as smooth in Freewheel as it is in Design Review, but it virtually reaches everyone, including smartphone users. Now you can easily show quality 2D and 3D design data to colleagues in the field. Embedding a Freewheel control in HTML is a simple edit/copy/paste operation, as shown here.

There is some difference between Autodesk Labs' Project Freewheel (which Design Review is integrated with via its File menu) and Autodesk Freewheel, a more stable and less experimental implementation. See the AECbytes article, A Closer Look at Autodesk Labs, for more information.

Conclusions

Autodesk Design Review 2009 is an amazing free software that enables an entire DWF collaboration process. This process has the potential to greatly speed up design iteration, saving you time and money. In addition, there are potentially huge environmental benefits to embracing Design Review and moving toward 100% digital design collaboration.

What I don't like about Design Review is relatively minor, but worth mentioning. I don't like the inefficiency of having to first open non-Autodesk applications and then print from them to DWF before being able to integrate these files into a Design Review project archive. In addition, being able to later extract files from a DWF archive back to their original formats (assuming permission was granted by the content creator) would make DWF archives far more useful as project records. Beyond Design Review, Project Freewheel is a work of genius, and its integration with Design Review is a step in the right direction.

Compared to Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended, a competing solution that was recently reviewed in AECbytes, Design Review does comes up short on some counts. Acrobat now supports IFC files, thus allowing non-Autodesk BIM workflows. It also has other sophisticated capabilities such as support for video, a synchronized view realtime collaboration feature, more extensive design review tracking through Acrobat.com, and PDF portfolios that preserve the original formats of their files. And what's more, the PDF format is far more ubiquitous than DWF. Of course, all of this comes at a price tag of $699, even though many of the viewing and review capabilities are free with the Adobe Reader. Autodesk Design Review is free all the way, providing an impressive set of features in the bargain, with some capabilities that are even superior to that of Acrobat, including more detail on object properties, easily modifiable section views, and better navigation tools. Free is certainly hard to beat, and it should be interesting to see if the "free" strategy pays off for Autodesk in having all of their customers adopt Design Review and the DWF format to broadly share their designs.

About the Author

Scott Onstott has a degree in architecture from UC Berkeley and worked in several prominent architecture, engineering, and interiors firms in San Francisco. In addition, he taught AEC software to thousands of students at several Bay Area colleges and universities. Scott has written and edited scores of books, magazine articles, and video tutorials. He can be reached via ScottOnstott.com.

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