Autodesk Design Review

[#1]

Hi All,

I think the question has been asked before, but I could not find an answer, so I'll post it again.

I am working on an implementation of DWF Composer for a client. What I want to do is enable a customer of my client to markup the drawings my client creates, to speed up the workflow. Since their offices are quite far apart, we want to use the Internet, and so I am putting the DWF files on a webserver and wrote a website around it. The client surfs to this website, looks at the drawings, adds markup if necessary, and here is where the tricky bit comes in: It looks like DWF composer will not allow the client to save the marked DWF back to the webserver. Is there a way to do that? Or does the customer have to save as to local disk, then upload the file to the webserver again? That would be a rather clumsy approach, if you ask me. Composer should be able to see that the DWF is coming from http://www.server.nl/drawings, and try to save it back to that URL in my opinion. The documentation suggests as much:
It says somewhere that embedding the Composer in your website allows the customer to markup and view drawings without having to download them! Which is why I reccommended Composer to my client ...
Was I wrong in recommending Composer? I certainly hope not.

TIA,
Stefan

[#2]

Someone from the viewer development team can correct me if I am wrong, but
the way I understood is that both the Autodesk DWF Viewer and Autodesk DWF
Composer operate on local copies. When you view a DWF file from a web site,
a copy of the DWF file is downloaded to your computer. That local copy is
then loaded. When you save a DWF, the file is saved locally and then
uploaded back to the server. I am thinking of how the viewers integrate with
Buzzsaw. On the other hand, DWF files do stream in that some of the geometry
starts to be displayed before the entire file has been downloaded, so I am
not sure.

wrote in message news:5132431@discussion.autodesk.com...
Hi All,

I think the question has been asked before, but I could not find an answer,
so I'll post it again.

I am working on an implementation of DWF Composer for a client. What I want
to do is enable a customer of my client to markup the drawings my client
creates, to speed up the workflow. Since their offices are quite far apart,
we want to use the Internet, and so I am putting the DWF files on a
webserver and wrote a website around it. The client surfs to this website,
looks at the drawings, adds markup if necessary, and here is where the
tricky bit comes in: It looks like DWF composer will not allow the client to
save the marked DWF back to the webserver. Is there a way to do that? Or
does the customer have to save as to local disk, then upload the file to the
webserver again? That would be a rather clumsy approach, if you ask me.
Composer should be able to see that the DWF is coming from
http://www.server.nl/drawings, and try to save it back to that URL in my
opinion. The documentation suggests as much:
It says somewhere that embedding the Composer in your website allows the
customer to markup and view drawings without having to download them! Which
is why I reccommended Composer to my client ...
Was I wrong in recommending Composer? I certainly hope not.

TIA,
Stefan

[#3]

Scott,

The fact that they work on local copies is not what bothers me. As a matter of fact, that is how browsers work (Temporary Internet Files: You can find anything you've visited there). What bothers me is that it is not very user-friendly, because now I have to write an upload-function in my website, the user has to markup de DWF, save it to his/her local disk, then upload it back to the server. If Composer would simply save the DWF back to the server, it's much easier for the user. How it works under the hood (that there always ia and always will be a local copy) should remain hidden from the user. And checking out the DWF Viewer code, it IS streaming the DWF's in so streaming in or out with a URL as source/destination shouldn't be that hard.

Regards,
Stefan

[#4]

You are right; saving to a web server is very doable. This would be a good
feature for a future release. I will forward your request on to the product
manager.

Ben Cochran
Autodesk

wrote in message news:5134324@discussion.autodesk.com...
Scott,

The fact that they work on local copies is not what bothers me. As a matter
of fact, that is how browsers work (Temporary Internet Files: You can find
anything you've visited there). What bothers me is that it is not very
user-friendly, because now I have to write an upload-function in my website,
the user has to markup de DWF, save it to his/her local disk, then upload it
back to the server. If Composer would simply save the DWF back to the
server, it's much easier for the user. How it works under the hood (that
there always ia and always will be a local copy) should remain hidden from
the user. And checking out the DWF Viewer code, it IS streaming the DWF's in
so streaming in or out with a URL as source/destination shouldn't be that
hard.

Regards,
Stefan

[#5]

Ben,
Thanks, if it's added it would be a big help. Not now unfortunately, I know how it works with big software companies (worked for one myself - now I am a small one myself ;-) ), it will take some time, but I've designed a website around it that they will find serviceable (I hope). Later on I expect that the functionality will come in really handy.

Thanks,
Stefan

PS. Composer's Helpfile is ahead of you:
"Embedding a DWF file into a Web site allows your customers to
quickly access a drawing for review, without downloading it." straight copy-and-paste!