Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Earlier in this chapter, I explain how you can exchange drawings via e-mail and FTP.
That's all the Internet connectivity that many AutoCAD users need, but if you're curious
about connecting drawings to the Web or sharing drawings with people who don't have
AutoCAD, this section is for you.
The AutoCAD Web features are built on three pieces of technology:
A special “lightweight” drawing format called DWF that Autodesk originally deve-
loped especially for putting drawings on the Web.
An updated, XML-compliant version of the DWF format called DWFx that can be
viewed using the Microsoft XPS Viewer that's built in to Windows Vista and Win-
dows 7 or available as a plug-in for Windows XP.
A free program from Autodesk called Autodesk Design Review 2012 that enables
anyone to view, mark up, and print DWF files without having AutoCAD.
All about DWF and DWFx
The AutoCAD DWG format works well for storing drawing information on local and net-
work disks, but the high precision and large number of object properties that AutoCAD
uses make for comparatively large files.
To overcome this size problem and encourage people to publish drawings on the Web,
Autodesk developed an alternative lightweight vector format for representing AutoCAD
drawings: DWF (Design Web Format). A DWF file is a more compact representation of a
DWG file. DWF uses less space — and less transfer time over the Web and e-mail — be-
cause it's less precise and doesn't have all the information that's in the DWG file.
DWFx is a version of regular DWF that's compliant with Microsoft's XML
Paper Specification (or XPS for short — had your fill of alphabet soup yet?).
Everything about DWF in this chapter also applies to DWFx. The DWFFORMAT
command determines whether the PUBLISH, 3DDWF, and EXPORT commands out-
put to DWF or DWFx. If this sounds like something that might be important in your
work, look up
DWFFORMAT
in the online help system. Windows Vista and Win-
dows 7 include an XPS Viewer, and the long and the short of this feature is that
drawings plotted to DWFx can be viewed automatically in these Windows versions
without AutoCAD or any special viewing software.
