Free Autocad Drawing Viewer

[Flaviano Goldammer]

FreeDWG viewing including cloud files. 30-day trial to create and edit. Use familiar AutoCAD drafting tools online in a simplified interface, with no installation required. Bring teams together to review and edit CAD drawings via quick collaboration with AutoCAD users on designs.

Both apps allow users to view, edit, share, and create 2D CAD drawings. AutoCAD web app is accessed entirely online in a web browser on any computer. AutoCAD mobile app is included with AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT and provides similar features on iPhone and Android devices.

For stakeholders who only need file-viewing access, we offer free viewers without a subscription. If you're transitioning to named user, be sure to take advantage of the trade-in offers available to you.

I am looking for a viewer type application that doesn't allow you to edit the drawing in any way other than adding dimensions, and printing it out. I am the CAD technician and one of our operators needs to use the viewer to program their machine, however we cannot risk them accidentally changing the drawing. We just want them to be able to print out a drawing with dimensions they add and that is it

I am the one wanting to get them the full version and allow them to copy files and create their own dimensional drawings, my boss doesn't want them being able to change anything because people in the past have edited and saved controlled files. I see no problem giving them a copy of the file to use and not the original but he still thinks there will be errors even if we train them...

I am attempting to distribute to all our consultants vectorworks file data that they can view and, set up .dwg files for use as backgrounds for their work. Our lighting consultant has said, if I understand correctly, this is entirely possible and would save me from having to translate to .dwg files each sheet with the appropriate background info for each consultant. GREAT! If True.

'I played around with the VectorWorks Viewer and I cannot seem to save or export. I keep getting a pop-up window stating that I need the full application to be able to do run this command. I also found is that all walls, furniture, etc? are all on layer NONE. Is there something that I am missing or doing wrong as far as the VectorWorks Viewer? If you could please send me some info I would really appreciate the help.'

The idea was to flow architectural drawings and work to our assigned civil, stuctural, mechanical, electrical, lighting and plumbing consulting engineers the exact plans we are currently using, and allow them to pick and choose which parts of the drawing they need to - to export and show their respective equipment without asking our office to 'example: turn off the doors furniture or create special background information' and then translate vectorwork to .dwg file and send each separated file (their request..) to each different consultant. Each consultant has an IT dept. with different cad criteria. I am getting jerked around more than a dog with 5 leashes trying to meet everybody's file expectation.

I have to say it would be very useful if NNA could provide a free VectorWorks viewer that exported to dwg....this would get around this issue neatly. Ashlar-Vellum have free Graphite Share and Cobalt Share applications which only open the native Ashlar formats but allow exporting to a wide range of formats including dwg.

It sounds like your real issue is consultant laziness. I've come across this often. Basically they want to be spoon fed the backgrounds exactly as they want them - they don't want to be bothered with having to switch off layers to get just the background information they want. If they really insist on being spoon fed in this way it might be worth you looking at whether a set of Saved Views will streamline the process.

I have reviewed the contracts that we have with the consultants. We could elect to send out HARD COPY in lieu of electronic data. I did not want to yank their chain but, this is getting silly and, expensive.

If dwgs are exported from sheet layers all the underlying objects in the viewports become a single block which makes it very hard to edit out unwanted objects in AutoCAD. If you export from the design layer you have the option of exporting by layer or class, which is easier to edit in AC, however any notes or other items you have on the sheet layer are not included.

A large project in the early stages is very fluid, backgrounds are constantly changing, and may need to be sent out to the consultants on a regular basis. If it takes them hours of their time, each time to clean up a background so that it suitable for their use, that is a huge waste of time and money.

My approach has been to contact the person who is doing the actual CAD work. From them I get a list of what they really want, so that I can set up my dwg exports in a format that will make their lives easier.

Why do all this, 2 reasons. First it only takes a few minutes or less to set up the VW drawings in a format to export for the consultant, and could take them hours to clean it up at their end otherwise. So what is a few minutes of my time compared to hours of consultants time $$$$. Second the goodwill that flows back to me from the consultants makes a better and stronger working relationship. Remember I will need something back from them too, and my life might be a lot easier if they sent it to me in a format of my choosing.

I wish I could get a dwg sent to me to represent what I need. I doubt a single AC user would take the time to format a background to represent the information revelent to me. I base my fee schedule counting on spending at least an hour per dwg update to get the dwg to represent my needs. Does not seem to matter if I give them info ahead of time.

All of the objects land on the same layer in the newly created DWG format, but that is fine for us because we gray everything out anyway. The text sometimes has issues, but is easily fixed by modifying the Textstyle. and changing Mtext to single line Text objects.

As for swag(sh*t we always get) what I would really love is a copy of Vectorworks to play with export settings to try and make the process painless for consultants who use Autocad, or have them place the export to DWG in the free viewer so that clients can set thier own export settings. One size does not fit all. The are million ways to setup a VW drawing as well as a million ways to setup an Autocad file. Each client/consultant relationship may need different settings to make things happy.

On a side note I believe they should also put an save as Vectorworks 11, 10, 9 ...etc. format options in the free viewer or other free conversion program. The burden of work should be on the person who refuses to upgrade not on the person running the latest and greatest. This is avalible for autocad and makes lives easier and happier."

One job has 60 seperate files and 7 consultants for a total of 135 sheets. 4 of the consultant wish to have certain views of plans. Using saved views and saved layers I can set up specifically for each of thier different requirements, batch .pdf a portion and open and process for each of the 4 At thirty seconds per process with 8-10 file open at a time = 4.5 hours of purely mundane unmitigated doom for the poor soul who thought interning at an architects office would be a great creative outlet- But no, thirty seconds is not realistic. Lets say one whole day of Fun.

We might distribute 4 times during a typical project which gets expensive and not the best use of the clients money - I have an idea though, we could purchase VW programs and give them to the consultants to do their own exporting... yeah, then they could stubornly continue to use acad or, they could work on vectorworks directly depending on job size and number of stations they have. I could justify the cost - maybe we sub-lease the license even?

We're building a DXF exporter and from what I've read, this extremely simple file should be valid. We don't have any CAD tools to test with, so I'm very limited in my abilities to debug. This opens fine in the Proficad online viewer but I get an error from the Autodesk viewer, saying "The drawing file is invalid and cannot be viewed".

LWPOLYLINE requires a bunch of extra overhead to use. You need a TABLES section and then you have to deal with AcDbEntity and AcDbPolyline entries. It gets complicated fast. Switching to the POLYLINE entity will save you a ton of headache.

The 5 above is the code that indicates the handle(ID number) will follow. The 7C is the actual handle. If you add more entities, you will need to increment the handle for each one, so every entity has a unique handle.

According to the official DXF spec from Autodesk (PDF here), the vertices of an LWPOLYLINE are 2D-only; e.g., they should only have 10 and 20 codes and NOT any 30 codes and since all of your 30 codes are 0.0 it shouldn't make a difference. If you do decide that the LWPOLYLINE needs to have Z-values other than zero, you can specify a code 38 pair (elevation) before your first 10 code pair.

Well your question is specific to particular data format problem in DXF which is missing/adding some values that AutoCad is not happy about. Your best chance to resolve this is try creating a similar file from the AutoCad and compare what you might have missed/added wrongly. Very difficult for others to debug for you in this situation. I have seen the DXF specifications pdfs from Autocad, have some writing DXF file help sections in the bottom, refer to them too.

I might be totally missing something, but I'm not seeing an option for opening that WebViewers layers or data inside of my AutoCad project. I have the ArcGIS connector all setup and working properly, I can pull up the base template coordinate systems and maps, but whenever I search for or try to use the id # of the above webviewer, it can't find it.

Specifically really just trying to get the Topography Layer, Stream Orders Layer and Property Lines Layers. Right now I have to screenshot it and manually trace it into AutoCad, would love an easier way to do it.

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