3d Autocad Files

[Robyn Ruder]

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I am planning to learn autocad but use a mac. I was going to download the free month to see how it goes. If I create files through the MAC version can those be easily opened in a pc version of autocad and updated, modified, etc.? I do not want to have to buy a pc if possible. Thanks

Yes, as @pendean and @Patchy have indicated, the drawing format is identical between platforms. You could run into little speed bumps though if you use some features on the Windows version to modify your drawing files. Certain features that are included in the Windows version (Object Enablers, OLE, and more) are not supported on the Mac.

I suggest that you try to use the Trial to test how this would function in your workflow to see if things go smoothly. I use both the Mac and Windows versions on the same files and have virtually no issues.

I am coming back to your thread to see if the issue or question you posed has been resolved. If so, please mark the post or posts as Solution(s) to help others find the answer quickly. If your issue persists, please give me a bit more detail on this issue so we can continue to work towards getting this solved.

i will be recieving hundreds of fabrication drawings that need to be printed can i print them without having to open each drawing and plotting to printer. im using autocad 2010. i have read about using publish and page setups but cannot make sense of the instruction. id be greatful for any help

What might be irritating at the beginning is that you have first to create page setup's so they can be plotted to your devices (as I guess when you received some drawings from elsewhere that the plotter settings are different to yours).

Let me clarify what PUBLISH does. It will not help you here but is worth knowing for the future. When you open up AutoCAD and just start drawing on a blank page, if you look in the lower left corner, you'll see some tabs that say "model", "Layout 1", and "Layout 2". For big projects with lots of different pictures, most people make more tabs, rename them, and use them to put each page of the project on its own page. PUBLISH does one of two things: it can: 1.) print all the pages on different tabs at the same time, without making you click on every single tab, or 2.) save all the different pages on different tabs together as one .pdf file.

If, in the future, you want to learn more about PUBLISH, Google the words "paperspace" and "viewports", this will give you a better idea of how people use the tabs in the corner to organize big projects where they'll need the publish command.

I am going through a difficult transition trying to move a client serverless, and finding current cloud solutions offered by MS are insufficient for storing .DWG files. Prior to deciding to move data to Sharepoint we reviewed this article from 2019 which makes it seem as though Autocad in Sharepoint is not only supported but integrated.

Autodesk AutoCAD and Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint

Based on this information we made the move and migrated their .dwg files to Sharepoint with the intent of leveraging the One drive sync client to give them the file explorer access they are used to when editing designs. The result however was lost work, and we later stumbled upon this very recent article from Autodesk themselves stating Sharepoint is not a supported storage location for Autocad drawings.

Same DWG file on Sharepoint can be opened multiple times with no read-only alert in AutoCAD (autodes...

The issue here ends up being that in a standard SMB environment with files stored on a server share a user can open up an Autocad file for editing and when subsequent users open the file, they will get a message that another user is editing it, and the file will open in read only mode. With the mechanics of Sharepoint and the one drive sync client neither user is informed the file is open and they can both edit, resulting in multiple out of sync files or lost work for one of the 2 users.

Sharepoint has a check out feature, that SHOULD mitigate this by forcing users to check out the files prior to editing it HOWEVER the checkout feature is not compatible with the One drive sync client and if any user is syncing a library with checkout enabled it will auto-lock ALL files within that directory.

With these concerns taken into consideration Autocad DWG files and Sharepoint are neither integrated nor a workable solution for any real-world scenario other than a single user environment.

I thought moving this data to the Autocad Drive platform would mitigate this, but that makes it worse. They offer another product called Autocad Cloud, but with those costs considered they may actually be eclipsing server replacement costs and make this move a less than lateral one.

Could Microsoft alter the article to be more clear that his is only supported for single user environments? Stating that there is no way to directly open DWG files in Sharepoint without risking lost/duplicate work in multiuser environments would have put the brakes on this plan.

Has anyone run into this before and found a solution that works for Autocad users without greatly changing the work flow they are used to? I'm all ears. Thank you.

Thank you all for your quick response. I will definitely look into Zee drive. it also seems like it advertises overcoming some file size amount and naming limitations that have been a pain point for us when trying to move users to the cloud. I am also finding this CentreStack Software that does the same thing;

This all being said my question becomes, are there other options out there as well to deal with this, and has anyone been able to compare some of these different platforms and weigh in on pros and cons?

An interesting point here is that clients pay big bucks for both Autocad and MS products. MS makes a sync client that can't do what zee drive does, and Autocad also makes products to support cloud file locking that are astronomically priced. From the Website Zee drive seems like a small company and their product is a fraction of what Autodesk is charging AND outperforms One Drive Sync client. Both MS and Autodesk should buy one of these companies out and include these features rather than charging extra. What a customer Dis-service to have to involve a third party to get these products to play right together when you have been advertising since 2019 that they are "integrated". shame on Microsoft.

If the files are on a network (which I suspect they are), then someone or something is opening those files. To find out who, look inside the recycle bin for the share and see who the file owner is for the .dwl/.dwl2 associated with those times of outage.

A user may not be opening those files. But, some sort of management software may be. Plotting or updating from a sheetset opens the drawing for a couple of minutes. Programs used to manage file metadata (like Adept and Vault) also temporarily lock files while making those edits.

Depending on yourAutoCAD version and edition, you may avoid this by setting temp files to be stored locally, this would increase the file saving times but reduce the resources needed during rendering (especially if running SSDs locally).

Having this problem right now with AutoCAD LT 2020. If your user is using the preview pane in Explorer, the prehost process may crash on certains files and the process AcWebBrowser.exe keep the file locked even after a taskkill of prevhost and explorer.

Seen stuff like this when the file is in a location watched by sync software. File gets touched by software to see if it has been updated and if attempted to be opened while it is interacted with the sync program, you only get read-only access and sometimes it shows locked

I use Autocad to work on files I have stored and shared here in Dropbox. My Autocad is set to save every ten minutes. I also manually save very often because I've learned a valuable lesson once when we lost power and my battery backup (UPS) didn't work. Hours of lost work is not fun so I constantly save to avoid losing work. With that being said, I frequently get an error "Unable to save to drawing C:\Users\xxx\Dropbox\thedrawing.dwg. Drawing saved to C:\Users\xxxx\Dropbox\sav###.tmp. This is filling up my Dropbox Folder that I'm working out of with all these *.tmp files. Is anyone else experiencing this problem and what can I do to remedy it? I shouldn't have to monitor my account for these *.tmp files.

It seems that those files are automatically generated by another application, not Dropbox. If that's the case, I would recommend you to contact directly with the support organization of that application to ask for further instructions about how to prevent those files from being created or how to make the application to store them in a different location.

I don't think you understand. The *.tmp files are created and saved to my Dropbox folder because Autocad was 'unable' to save the original file, which is on Dropbox, in the first place. A .tmp file is created and stored to Dropbox when this happens. Usually, but not always, after the second save attempt, the file saves to Dropbox. I stress, not always because sometimes, I have to try to save 3 or 4 times before it actually saves the original file. In the mean time, after each failed attempt, a .tmp file is created and stored in my Dropbox Folder. Autocad doesn't have this problem saving my files anywhere else. Take for example, if I work on a file that is stored on my Hard Drive or on our Company Network, Autocad never, I repeat, never has a problem saving the file, never gives me an 'unable to save' error message, and never creates a .tmp file because it was unable to save the original. On the other hand, working on a file or files that are stored in my Dropbox Folder, numerous times throughout the day, after trying to save the file or files, I get this error message. And since Autocad couldn't save the file to my Dropbox Folder, a .tmp file is created and stored to Dropbox. So why would you consider this an AutoDesk (the maker of Autocad) problem? Isn't Dropbox supposed to be an extension or similar to an external hard drive? In the mean time, my Dropbox Folder is filling up with these .tmp files which I have to manually delete at the end of the day. The only solution I have to remedy this situation is to work on the file locally, then save it to my Dropbox Folder at the end of the day. But that doesn't do much good when I make numerous changes to the drawing throughout the day, yet the other 6 trades I'm collaborating with don't see those changes till the end of the day. I guess it's the best I can ask for until a real solution to this problem can be discovered. But I doubt Autodesk will have the answer. This, I can almost certainly say, is a Dropbox problem. Here's another example, from software that is not created by Autodesk. Cadpipe is software that I use to draw 3D Piping Systems for large buildings. Cadpipe uses a Database that it loads at startup for it's pipe dimensions, fitting dimensions, what type of material the pipe is made of, such as copper, cast iron, pvc, etc. This Database is critical for Cadpipe to properly work. The Database File I point Cadpipe to load through it's .ini file is stored on Dropbox. Cadpipe can never load this critical database file directly from Dropbox. It gives me an error also. Yet I'm looking at the file right now. It's there. The only way I can get Cadpipe to load this database file is to copy it from my Dropbox Job Folder over to a folder on my local Hard Drive or my Company Network Job Folder and load it from there. The Problem with this is, when I work at home, I don't have access to my Company Network, forcing me to save the file locally at home also just so Cadpipe can properly work. Are you going to blame this one on Cadpipe? As with a lot of software companies I've dealt with over the years, when I point out a bug or flaw, it never seems to be their problem, it's always the other guys problem so it never gets looked into, therefore, never fixed. We shall see if I have these same problems if I were to start using Box.Com or Wuala.com, or Google Drive, Sky Drive, or Team Drive or any of the numerous other alternatives that are out there.

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