Topic Title

Since we unfortunately are in an AutoCAD dominated market, I would like to see DataCAD develop a built in drawing viewer for the different drawing types. First and formost being the .dwg format.

All the viewer would need to do is show what the drawing would look like to someone using that selected CAD program.

While I know there are lot's of viewers available out there (I use e drawings), it sure would be nice if DataCAD could do it.

Thanks!

Greg

I think if Datacad worked on any viewer, they should do an AEC viewer. It would help boost Datacad's public user friendliness . The viewer should be standalone and free so we can send it to clients if needed. There are already a dozen free viewers for DWG. If the Datacad engine could properly display DWG files in a built in viewer properly, then it could probably handle the importing process just as good, thus we wouldn't need a viewer in the first place The importing of DWG's is actually based on the OpenDWG format (at least it used to be). I'm sure there is expensive licence requirements for a true DWG viewer, and I'm sure Autodesk would not grant rights to one of their main competitors. But you never know. You know how generous Autodesk is.


How useful would it be? I'm not sure. It's pretty easy to just send PDF's which everyone and their mom has Adobe Reader. Other than not having to take the time to batch plot a file to PDF, I don't see much use for a 2D drawings, maybe for 3D viewing of a model.

Didn't mean to pop any bubbles, but this has been brought up before, and I doubt it will happen any time soon. Maybe once the smarts entities get rolling?

I think you missed on my post a little bit.

The idea is to NOT have to use a 3rd party application to view the drawings.

I would hope that while in the process of developing the viewer, it sheds some light on how DataCAD can sucessfully import .dwg files to their fullest, but in the meantime the the view will allow me to see what it's suppose to look like.

As for PDF, while they are great for certain things, they are worthless for sharing drawing files for people to actually use.

I don't want people to send me a PDF of what it should look like and the dwg file so I can actually use it. I'd like to be able to import it and have it look right for the get go, but that's difficult to do, so give me a built in viewer in the mean time.

Also, while there are dozens of viewers out there, they are all not that good. And most are not worth the cost. I know that AutoDesk has a viewer as well, but I really don't want to download a 110 MB program.